I’ve been a stay at home Mom since my daughter was born in November, and looking for ways that I could work from home to earn some extra money. My husband works in a large office where many of his coworkers have to keep blogs for the company web site.

I asked him if he thought any of them would be interested in a blog transcription service like you mentioned and he asked around the office for me. This week I got 8 customers from his office.

With the baby I’m limited to how many customers I can have, but the extra little bit of income will sure help my husband and I.

Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for a 4 star idea.

His advice to me for anyone using it is to be selective and not under bid on jobs. It’s easy to try to compete on prices, but that can devalue your work and hold you back. Instead, he says to compete on quality. Sell the quality of your work, and the efficiency with which you can deliver a project in your bids. Many job posters aren’t necessarily looking for the lowest bids, and those are the jobs you really want if you’re serious about earning a living with this.

There are other similar sites out there too, and I won’t name any specifically, but the general consensus is that they’re flea-markets where everybody is after the cheapest work.

Everyone has to decide for themselves if they’ll chase under-paying jobs just for the work. Personally, I wouldn’t. I think the time you spend chasing and performing those low wage projects would be better spent networking and seeking out unadvertised jobs that pay more honest rates for the work required.

Remember, not every job available is advertised. In fact, often the best jobs won’t be advertised to the general public anywhere.

For example, if you’re a programmer looking for freelance work, then I’d suggest finding forums and blogs that are created and frequented by corporate web masters (there’s nothing wrong with self-employed web masters, but they’re not going to know about corporate gigs coming up) and IT personnel. Become a regular, be helpful and get known there, and keep your eye open to any opportunities that come up in discussions.

If you live in a medium or large metro area, seek out and get to know folks locally who work in IT or web departments.

Make friends with people in the Corporate Communications departments of companies. These are the folks developing the content for their company sites, and often they know about projects even before the IT department will because they work on a close level with the company executives.

Just to mention my friend one last time, Mike is neighbors with a woman who works in Corp. Communications for a major financial institution in our city. She’s actually the speech writer for the President of the company, and she always knows about projects before just about anyone else. Mike gets a ton of those projects.

If you want to develop web sites for small and medium size businesses, approaching the owners is often your only route, but if the business has employees, then getting to know the owner’s secretary or a mid-level supervisor or other management official can often be the open door you want.

The point is, hustle and network. Remember that everyone you meet is a potential customer or open door to a potential customer. Freelancing is hard, because in addition to being good at your work you also have to be a salesperson, you have to sell yourself and your services to everyone you meet, but you have to do it without being obnoxious.

I hope some of this is helpful for you.

How would you recommend someone go about acquiring work in these areas? Something like elance.com?

Regards.