TechWench is continuing its double feature on Croudsourcing; discussing how you can start generating income online. Last time we looked at just what croudsourcing is and where you can being to look for jobs and gigs using various online job markets. This time round we will be discussing what skills do internet employers want so you can stand out from the pidgeons.

Firstly it is important to state that, as with any type of work, there are basic skills which you should possess which will help in the process of getting work and more importantly getting repeat orders for work. One of the most obvious of these is punctuality, if you say you will have a certain amount of work delivered by a pre-determined date then be sure to have all the work by then or make your client know in advance and why you won’t have the work. As with any job. Good literacy is also a major selling point as your first contact with a potential client will be through email or written text of some form and so spelling mistakes, poor grammar and bad literacy will lead to people not even reading your proposals for their contracts and discarding you without a further thought. Practise your spelling and literacy. Enthusiasm also goes a long way though don’t overdo it, if you appear over enthused about working for them then you will also appear to be false. Remember that when searching for anyone to do work, clients must sift through sometimes hundreds of proposals so you also need to be good at self-promotion, build your portfolio, keep it updated and flash it at every opportunity. As with any job.

What Skills?

A cursory glance at the categories available on croudsourcing sites will show you that a wide range of job types are catered for from web development to writing, from film and video to niche requests. Below we will discuss a few of the routes available to you the new Croudsourced Freelancer.

Writing

A very good starting point for getting into the world of croudsourcing is writing jobs, you do not need an especially good twist on words or be able to craft sonnets to get work here. Obviously a high standard of literacy and an approachable style of writing will certainly help you get started but what do people want written? Blog articles, childrens stories, website code, entire books and much more! But jobs in the writing industry are not limited to writing fresh content, if you have an eye for detail then maybe you can try your hand at proofreading, checking peoples already written work for spelling mistakes and editing it to make it easier to read. From experience I can tell you that there is a lot of poorly worded and poorly spelt work out there and you can capitalise on this by proofreading their work for a fee. Returns on writing fresh content are much better than proofreading and there is just as much work out there, the pay is variable dependant on the gig. Short Blog articles can garner $5 a go and are a good way to build a portfolio for other writing gigs which pay more and are a good base to start from. Writing short stories, press releases or SEO for a website (search engine optimisation, writing an article designed to be picked up by search engines with greater frequency) can pay quite a bit ($50+ easily) per contract, it all depends on the client and their requirements.

Creative Media

In the digital media realm of the scale there are just as many wide ranging opportunities as the business world moves slowly but surely online. Businesses are finding themselves requiring an online presence, more specifically; an online video presence has become a necessity in the past 5 years for a lot of businesses. Hosting their video advertisments online means that they do not have to pay the expense of a TV advertising run and consequently have money to invest in a good online marketing strategy. If you are a motion graphics or video designer then good money can be made creating title stings, intros or idents for company videos. Just short clips which have the companies logo or message fly in and fly out again for use at the beginning or end of their corporate video can sell for $50+ for a few hours of work. You can find batch work in the online creative media industry sector such as sorting through images and applying a watermark to them all or resizing them for use online are all available to you if you know a little digital media such as Photoshop or Illustrator. At the high end of the scale, advertising your skills as a can yield some very high paychecks if you can create whole videos, songs, installations from scratch. If you have a very niche skill then croudsourcing your clients can put you in contact with a whole host of people who need your skills outside of your local area.

All in all there is more than just writing and creative industries catered for in the online job market but as with any type of work you must be able to deliver a good quality product on time or this will show in your work history, there is much more of a track record of feedback than in other industries as you rely on your good name as a worker to get more work. Good Luck!