Any Tips on How to Get Some Small Jobs Online?

[chaseman]

I'm looking to generate some profit online.

 

I've signed up on oDesk and Elance, though most jobs have 20-40 applicants, so it's not quite easy to stick through for a beginner, especially when complete agencies are doing the same job for the same price as you (the individual).

 

I've already developed a Wordpress theme, which I'm planning to put on market places, so that may be one legit way for me.

 

I was wondering if you guys have any tips to be more successful with this?

 

My areas are HTML, CSS, SEO, and basic PHP, Wordpress set ups and the design of it, and understanding of niche websites.

[tomfmason]

The web development market has been flooded for a long time now and from what I have seen it is hard to get started anymore. When I first started using odesk, elance and vworker(another good one imo) I had to take smaller easy projects and under bid them. I did this so I could build up some positive feedback quickly. After completing ruffly 20-30 projects like that I was then able to get in on some of the larger projects. This also lead to a few more long term projects with a few fairly large development firms. For me, the greatest stumbling block was the lack of education in any related fields. I have since overcome this by 7 years of experience and tons of positive feedback.

 

edit

You may also want to consider working on a few opensource projects. This will provide proof of experience and generally looks good to prospective clients.

[KevinM1]

You should also check around locally and see if there are any small businesses that want a site.  You may not make a lot of money at first, but at this stage of the game one's reputation tends to matter more.