Freelancer is NOT a survey/sweepstakes site! I cannot stress this enough! If you are just passively looking for easy occasional income then do not even bother signing up here.
Freelancer is a reverse auction site for various web-related jobs. In layman terms it is an Ebay of a sort, where real people put up jobs and real people can bid on them. You are expected to do work to a high standard so the buyer accepts the work. This is great for writers, web designers, artists, graphic designers, etc.
Reputation is everything on this site. You need to do an amazing job every time. This will get you a lot of rep so that people might be willing to accept your higher bid over lower bids by people with terrible reputation. It all depends on what the person is looking for and how skilled you are over the next candidate.
Since you are doing skilled labor, this is a great opportunity to build your professional portfolio and still make a bit of cash. If you are a writer, then you can prove that you're able to write articles under deadlines. Website designers can build a lot of websites for profit and then use them for their profiles. Generally, this is a win-win situation for college students and anyone looking to build their profession, references, and portfolio.
General Tips
1.) Only bid on things you can actually do! If you are a writer do not try your hand at designing a website. It will take you way too long to complete the task, or you may not even be able to complete it!
2.) Complete tasks on time. Show that you can always work under a deadline.
3.) Bid LOW - When you are starting out no one knows who you are and you have to build reputation.
4.) Don't get discouraged! This is just like a real life job and you will not be accepted for every job.
5.) You are applying for a job! Be professional!
FreeMarket
This site is under the same owner as Freelancer, but this is specifically a place to buy and sell everything from templates, flash, banners, etc. Pretty much everything digital is either up for sale or can be put up for sale.
Those of you who do not want to work for someone else can just put your own work up for sale! This is a great place to put up your own work since it is targeted to people who want to actually buy the stuff. Also, the volume of traffic on this site is pretty high.
