This article is guest blog by Sarah Lam.

Freelancing is not as easy as it seems. From quitting your day job to finding freelance projects that pay well, you need be careful in everything you do. Since freelancing is rather new in Malaysia, you might not know that there are many sites that you can try your luck in getting the best projects.

Common Malaysian sites such as Lowyat Forum and AsiaPartTime provide local opportunities but what if you want to try international projects that can be more difficult and yet more fulfilling, where do you go?

There are sites that require biddings while others are more flexible in terms of applying for the projects.

If you want to try bidding for projects you never dreamed of working on before, Elance is the best place to start.

Why Elance?

• Elance provides three free bids for you every month. Upgrade your membership if you want up to 20 bids or more. (It is not compulsory to upgrade since registration is free).
• Elance is using escrow to process payment so you are well protected from scammers.
• Elance has a huge database with thousands of projects to choose from so you can browse through the projects and pick the best three to bid on.
• Elance connects you to international clients and if you are successful, you stand a chance to have a long lasting relationship with your clients.

Other bidding sites include:

• Scriptlance
• Project4Hire
• Guru

However, apart from having to apply for projects, you can get potential clients to approach you in a simple way.

By using Malaysia Craigslist, you can advertise your services and potential clients will be able to contact you should they be interested in your services. While this is not a guaranteed way to score freelance projects, but it is worth a try. At least I managed to get a job through my ad on Malaysia Craigslist.

The key is to post your ad in the suitable category and the right country (I.e.: Malaysia).

Wish you all the best form us.

This is the last part of this series which goes on discussing the Sins that many freelancers commit which often result in a complete loss of their freelance business. This part will deal with the importance of not sacrificing ones integrity.

Many freelancers start out as part timers, for various reasons, such as they may be tired in their regular 9-5 job, working for someone else, making the company owner rich and not getting to have enough time for their own activities, or may be they were told to do something illicit which they felt they shouldn’t do. Or may be the company was imposing impossible condition such as installing Servers at the middle of the night and not compensating this extra hard work later on. Any case many regular 9-5 guy has turned to freelance business because they couldn’t sacrifice their integrity. So why is integrity so important to a freelancer?

Self-Gratification

You will always feel better when you know that you did not swindle anyone out of anything. You have worked hard, and you hard work helped someone in someone, howsoever small or big it may be. So treating your freelance projects with integrity will feel you with wonderful gratification which will only bring peace and satisfaction to you.

Self-Image to Others

Off course you have to compete with other freelancers, even in some cases the competitions will be intense if the client is a big gun. So, if you employ any bleak method to consistently make other freelancers bereft of good projects, sooner or later the word will spread out to the community of freelancers and your image will suffer a drastic blows. You will be probably chucked out of the community border, which might have been so helpful to you before.

Reputation to Clients

Without doubt, if you work with integrity and care, clients will obviously notice you and word about your sincerity will run faster than you could imagine, in the end bringing to you more and more projects.

Remember one thing, sincere hard work always pays off. It is the law of nature. Sacrificing integrity and ethics may bring some short term profit, but at the long run it will be the sole cause of bulldozing your business.

With this we end our last part of the series. If we can avoid these seven sins, our freelance business can thrive in no time.