Drawar

You can gear yourself to provide both. I live in a very small town (UK), and do design for the local businesses, but I have done projects for people in the US. I think you're probably best SEO wise to target yourself more locally though.

Harry

Yeah I'd say try and do both. Though it's convenient doing everything online, if you have the chance to meet with locals for business meetings, that could be beneficial.

Try it locally first, even though its not mandatory, but depending on your skills and experience in web design. If you are not very experienced, trying it locally will give you more experience and a portfolio and will give you the knowledge and understanding to deal with clients online.

Still, u can try both but assess urself ....if u are new to it , go local first for a few clients and then put your portfolio online.

Hope it helps

Start local if you can. But, if you need income sooner and don't have any good leads at the moment, consider using E-Lance or a similar site. It's not the greatest place to earn a living, but it'd be a start.

I like long distance design jobs. Less meetings. :)

I think it's probably a good idea to start off local - there's really no substitute for meeting face-to-face with a client. It's so much easier to get to the bottom of what they're really looking for in a website when you can sit down with them and have an actual discussion, as opposed to limiting your interactions to just text or telephone calls.

Also, I've found that the local work I do often results in a lot of word-of-mouth advertising and referrals, whereas I haven't had so much of the same results when I'm working with a client strictly over the internet.

I think locally is the way to go, too. I'm just wondering why you only want to do this "on the side". It's the best job a designer could have. Why not go all out?