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.

To be an effective freelancer, it is vitally important that you keep your mindset fresh and jubilated throughout the day. The best way to instigate this process is to have a comfortable and relaxing start of the day. This article will point to some ideas which can help you to maintain a regular charming inception from everyday morning, greatly impacting your work in a positive way.

Having a Sound Sleep

It is worth mentionable that a good and solid sleep can supplement your productivity with a real boost. Normally, it is advisable that a regular person goes through a sleep cycle of 8 hours each day. Discontinuation and regularity in sleeping has been proven as an active ingredient for obesity, heart disease, reduced work-output etc. Thus, compromising with this issue is not advisable.

Getting into a Disciplined Act

Every morning do something that requires strict discipline to maintain over time, such a jogging or some kind of light exercise, may be for half an hour or so. Even if you do not like the habit, it will aid to remember your duties ahead in that day, and once you finish this early morning act, you will feel great and encouraged to go about rest of your work in that day.

Taking a Nice Breakfast

Well this is something mandatory needless to say, there is no point rushing for work without an empty stomach and sacrifice dramatically on productivity and concentration issues. Thus, take a good breakfast and make it an important part of your habit as well.

Thinking up a To-do List

Instead of making a long written list of each and every things to be done, just mentally think up a short list of the most important things to be completed and the things that have hoard up for today. Just think that once you’ve gone though all these, you would have achieved something good, this will boost your inclination towards your work and other duty. In the end if you just smoothly go through, at the end of the day you will be satisfied.

Starting the Work

Now its time to put the focus on the real thing. Remove yourself from any kinds of distractions and solely concentrate your ‘FIRST’ task in hand. Don’t think about the other stuffs. Once you have completed the initial task, you will already be in a solid state of mind to propel to the next one.

Following these advises, there is a great chance that you can increase your productivity and enjoy a refreshed mind throughout the day.

In today’s freelance world, it is hardly enough if you only have one skill to offer to the clients. Instead, increasing number of freelancer is coming up with multiple skills thus grabbing more and more jobs. This article will focus on how they can manage to acquire such diverse range of skills and how you could do it too.

The answer the question how they can do it, I have to give "Self-Learning" the number one priority. Self -Learning can be as effective as classroom learning which is later on get a paper backing from the university or some institution. There are people out there who normally disagrees with the fact that self-learning can be a wealthy source of knowledge and it can have a great impact on your professional life as well; to them if anything is not backed by certificates, it is worthless, which is absolutely gibberish.

In the modern world, there are number of experts in almost all different fields who are "self-taught". They have learnt a certain skill in their workplace or they have gone though books and journals before they can master that skill and offer the service to their clients. Thus as you can see, what all it takes a different way to look at the things and willingness to learn and upgrade oneself.

In this era it has become easier than ever before to acquire knowledge on a subject due to the progress in Information Technology. You can have almost any kind of training ranging from Universities to any institutions through their distance learning program; geography is not a barrier anymore for the self-motivated.

Also, you can have innumerable number of books written and published on basically any subject, and you can search the book of your choice using Internet just sitting at the home. Books can be one of the most important source and aura of information to you. Obviously some professions such as "Doctor" require you to have training on site, but by any means, the importance of books is unquestionable.

Thus, it is vitally important that if you are lagging behind, put yourself on the shoe of  "Self-Learning" soon as you can, else you will be too far behind the race to cover it back.

Contact information of clients is of vast importance as it is the only thing that glues two entities even if they are not together. Therefore, losing it is like losing the client himself. And it can really be one of the worst fears that can come true. It also means you are losing substantial business opportunity as well. Sometimes, may be you have the contact information but you may lose valuable documents related to projects, such as description or outline of what has to be done. All these can make you crazy in no time if you happen to land in this kind of unfortunate situation.

The way to get out of this trouble is to deploy "Customer Relation Management (CRM)" software into your disposal. This article will discuss some points relating this kind of systems.

A CRM is a software system that allows you to store all your information regarding current and previous clients as well as prospective ones. This kind of system can be quite complicated but they come in varying flavour allowing you to choose from a wide range of options and functionality. Despite its initial complexity, it can be hugely beneficial to every freelancer. Below is a description of some common and most useful types of CRMs:

1. Operational CRM: For people involved in Sales and marketing. This system will record the interactions with customer such as phone conversations and other communicational follow-ups. This way you can have a detailed record of day-to-day progress and plan changes.

2. Analytical CRM: This system offers various tools and practices that can be used to analyze a certain market condition and effectively design a successful marketing campaign. It also helps to determine how profitable a customer can be based on the information that it records regarding the customer’s involvement to the project.

3. Collaborative CRM: When a client has multiple contacts within a company, it is important to keep track of that, so this system can track multiple contacts at a time within an organization and also helps to analyze how the information can beneficially be used.

4. Sales Intelligent CRM: This is an advance type of CRM which produces reports of customer trends along with market progression. Based on these data it is able to predict the future movement of both market and client responses.

5. Contact Management: Most simple type of CRM. There are systems completely dedicated only to this functionality. But with time, it has become an integral part for other types of CRMs as well.

CRMs can be of great use if reliably deployed and maintained. Client’s information is one of the most important segments of a freelance business, and thus every freelancer should take steps to secure it.

Freelancing is an attractive business as long as it is done with a proper spirit. Like any other business, you also have to work hard to reach to the success, but the added Freedom-Factor associated with freelancing makes it a lucrative way to go. However, if you find that you have lost your passion for the work, or in other words, can not motivated yourself enough to deal with the challenges, then it certainly is not a good news for you freelance career. Therefore, it is extremely important to keep yourself charged up and not dwindle under pressure. This article will discuss some of the methods that have been widely employed by the freelancers all over the world.

If you are a photographer or copywriter, it would be best if you always keep hunting after new and fresh works and snapshots. One good way to do that would be to subscribe with magazines related to new and innovative ideas.

Another way would be to always remember that accepting ‘Failure’ is tough and hardly acceptable, thus you always have strive to get the best out of what you doing and keep staying as far as possible from the word ‘Failure’. This should perk you up right away. One more way would be to think about the positive sides for which you have initially chosen this field of freelance business. Remembering those will surely bring the motivation back to your work.

Some freelancers engage in multiple types of work, such as graphics designer as well as writer. Therefore, try to have projects for both the sides and thus if one makes you bored at times, concentrate on the other. This mixing will bring freshness each time you start a topic. Few other freelancers will mix their activities between various day-works and projects on hand. This is also a good way to not become bored in one specific task.

Thus as you can there are various ways to encourage oneself to go about completing the projects. If you can successfully ride out this lack of motivation factor, surely you can succeed in this great world of freelance opportunities.