Posted 7 years ago in Small Business Tips by Tim Chaves
Freelance Jobs Are Easier than Ever to Find Online 2017 (47 websites)
So, you’ve decided to pick up some freelance jobs so you can work from home and be your own boss. Getting started freelancing can be pretty tricky, whether it’s a side hustle or full-time job. Where do you begin?
Luckily, here at ZipBooks, we get it. We’ve been there, and we’re here to give you all the tips and tricks we’ve found. These online sites are an awesome and easy way to build your client base, so let’s go over them together.
Upwork
Upwork is a favorite for almost all freelancers. It offers worldwide jobs for almost every skill level.
You may have to start with lower-paying gigs until you build up good reviews and relationships with your clients, but eventually you can make a lot of money on this site.
Getting Started
- Make a profile. Sign up for an account and get to work filling in your profile. Be sure to include samples and references. The more information, the better.
- Take tests. First, take the Upwork Readiness Test, then take tests specifically relating to your skill set to prove to your clients that you know your stuff.
- Search for and apply for jobs. You can just browse through job postings or you can filter based on your skills. When you first start out, you have a certain amount of “Connects” that allow you to apply for jobs for free. If you pay to upgrade, you can get more “Connects.” You can track time and get paid on the site itself.
- Write up a cover letter for each project. Though these may not be long-term gigs, you should give the clients the courtesy you would give any other employee. Include a specific cover letter for each job.
- Hook up your bank account. This can take a while, so it’s best to get started now. Upwork will make a tiny deposit at first to make sure that your account is linked.
- Give feedback. When you finish the project, remember to leave feedback so that your client’s feedback shows up in your profile.
Craigslist
Craigslist might seem a little strange to find freelance jobs on the same site where you sold your grandma’s porcelain pig collection, but Craigslist is actually a great site for freelancers. And, unlike Upwork, it’s entirely free to use.
How to Get Started
- Select a city (or cities). Don’t pick only the telecommuting option or you will miss out on a lot of potential opportunities. Instead, pick either the city that you currently live in or any other major city in the US, Canada, and Europe. Then check both the “Jobs” and “Gigs” sections for each city.
- Look at recent posts. Going too far back in the job listings can mean putting in the effort to apply for a job that might not be available. Try to limit yourself to about a week in the past.
- Read carefully. Make sure you read the entire post so you can follow the instructions completely. Some companies ask freelancers to use a specific email subject line so they can filter. Don’t miss out on key words and potentially lose the job opportunity. Also make sure to verify its legitimacy so you don’t fall victim to a scam.
- Show your work. There’s not really a place for a portfolio on this site, so make sure to include links to or attachments of your previous work.
General Freelance Job Sites
Toptal only hires the top 3% of freelancers (though we’re not sure how they calculate that), so you have to go through a pretty rigorous application process. However, once you do, they work with big names like Hewlett Packard, J.P. Morgan, and AirBnb, among others.
Fiverr is bigger, better organized, and better established than Fourerr. It’s one of the best freelancer sites with a wide range of freelancer categories.
Fourerr uses the same ideas as Fiverr. The main categories for Fourerr are graphics, music & video, writing, and technology. Although it’s not as established as Fiverr, it claims to be 20% less expensive and claims 100% customer satisfaction.
Freelancer is a much more organized site than its competitor, Freelanced. You can browse jobs, apply, and get hired fairly quickly. There’s also a chat option for you to directly engage with your clients.
Smashing Magazine has been around since 2008 and a lot of official blogs, magazines, and websites have featured it. It’s a site for all jobs, not just freelance ones, but you can select freelance to filter out any of the other ones.
StudentFreelance is specifically for hiring students for freelance work. Their professional clients include NYT, Yahoo, NBC, aol, etc. The freelance jobs are both local and online (telecommuting).
Guru is a site with a more professional side than many others. You can work on teams using workroom tools and better communicate with your client. It also uses SafePay, so your transactions are secure.
If you can do home repair, furniture assembly, home improvement, moving and packing, mounting and installation, or yard work, this is the site for you. It has good reviews and you can make a fair amount of money as your own boss, but it is only available in some cities in the US at the moment.
Damongo covers a lot of different categories of freelance work. You put up a bid for a task you can do with your price. There’s a review at the bottom, so you might need to work your way up to having good reviews. There is another part of the site where you can see the prospective employers’ projects, time limits, budgets, and how many competing offers they’ve had.
Freelance Jobs for Writers and Editors
This site is for freelancers that are interested in writing, editing, blogging, and publishing. It works in the form of weekly blog posts with links to new job postings.
Freelance Writing Jobs is super professional and good for portfolio building. The only downside is that it’s specifically for Canadian writers.
Here are thousands of sources and daily notifications of matches. It’s set up as a bid system for government jobs.
This site offers freelance journalism jobs from legitimate newspapers and media companies. It’s a great way to get published and build your resume in every branch of journalism.
These freelancing writing jobs pay up to $50 per article. This site also offers online website copy-writing jobs from recognizable brands.
Text Broker claims to be the leading article and content writing services. This site includes thousands of authors, thousands of writing opportunities, and variety of content.
This site offers a competitive salary without a registration fee. You do have to pass grammar and formatting styles tests, and write a short prompt for an essay example. There is a minimum requirement of a bachelor’s degree. But the top 10 writers make thousands of dollars every month using WriterBay.
Freelance Jobs for Designers and Programmers
Authentic Jobs claims to be “the leading job board for designers, hackers, and creative pros. They partner with the New York Times and provide a variety of full-time and part-time work, as well as internships for freelancers.
Coroflot offers jobs for a large number of well-known brands, but it’s a little more difficult to apply. You have to send in a portfolio application to Coroflot, which then undergoes a pretty intense review. They don’t accept everyone, so use your best work.
This site claims to be the world’s #1 custom design marketplace. There are hundreds of thousands of projects, with 25–100+ designs per project, so there’s plenty of work to be done. It includes a wide variety of categories from logo design to envelope design.
99 Designs is a great way to get freelance projects, but it’s customer-based rather than freelancer-based which makes you do more work. It works mostly through design contests.
Artwanted.com is much more than just a freelance job site; it’s also a community with feedback. There’s no commission fee, and you can sell originals and prints. It lets you rack clicks to see which of your pieces is the most popular. It also comes with a free portfolio website.
This site offers lots of high-quality jobs, but you have to sift through all the other kinds of jobs in order to find the freelancing jobs.
CrowdSpring caters to buyers instead of sellers. There are no bids, you just request to work on a creative project posting. Join over 203,000 designers and writers worldwide that contribute to CrowdSpring.
www.programmermeetdesigner.com
Partner with StudentFreelance.com. This is a site for programmers, web developers, designers, entrepreneurs, and writers. However, there are a few thousand users, and less than one hundred active job listings.
Topcoder is a 16-year-old business with “a community of over 1,000,000 design and technology experts” that work on app design and development, as well as algorithms and analytics.
Taskr is specifically for designers and marketers. You post tasks and bids, and potential buyers will contact you.
Other Freelance Job Sites
To use Find Endeavor, you create a bid for potential clients, share it via social media, get notifications when someone orders your bid, and then charge them once you complete the work using PayPal. There are a lot of cheap offers for little projects, but not so many on bigger projects, so don’t depend on a one-project moneymaker.
Flexjobs is for all job seekers looking for flexible work hours. They have a thorough screening process so you don’t end up with scams or junk sites.
Freelanced is not as organized and heavily portfolio-based, so you have to put in more effort than some other sites. However, there are a larger number of high paying jobs available.
The good thing about this site is that it’s focused on the freelancers rather than employers, so you get more attention. There are no fees and the site updates daily.
This website is about getting you paid for the stuff you’re already doing, like blogs, photos, videos, and links.
Task Army doesn’t do bidding, because they want freelancers to actually make money. They have manually approved services, so there won’t be any scams or sketchy jobs.
The price range for this site is from $5 to $50. Posting bids is free and you can post an unlimited number. However, the majority of the bids involve increasing social media following.
The gigs that you can do on this site pay one of three amounts: $5, $10, or $20. It’s not as professional as other sites and is mostly for social media followers.
There aren’t as many jobs available on this site and a lot of the expiration dates are inaccurate, However, they do have guides and advice for freelancing.
HelpCove can be a little tricky to navigate because it’s buyer-based instead of seller-based, so you have to do some work in order to get the paying jobs.
With this site, you complete jobs and then submit proof. It may not be the best way to build a professional resume, but it might help you make some quick cash.
This site is mostly for promotional freelancing, like blogging, posting reviews, and sharing or following things on Facebook.
People Per Hour is your basic freelancing site with run-of-the-mill job postings to sort through, with one exception: Clients also post contests, and the more contests you win, the more likely it is someone will hire you.
This freelancing site is only for tutoring. If you’re a college student, teacher, adjunct, professor, or industry professional, use this site to share your expert knowledge (mostly math and science).
Weworkremotely.com is less gig-oriented than most other freelancing sites. There are more remote part-time jobs in business, programming, and design.
The staff at WorkHoppers provides hand-screened jobs, so you don’t have to sift through scams. There’s no bidding and no commission, instead you match with jobs. It’s completely free.
This site has a fairly large selection of freelancing jobs to choose from, but they also charge 10% commission.
While this is a site for freelancers to make some money, they do not manually process each offer so there may be scams or illegal offers. Be sure to check each client out for yourself.
This site is a little less professional than some of the others. It works through a bidding process, though the job descriptions can be a little confusing.
About Tim
Tim is Founder and CEO of ZipBooks. He keeps his desk really nice and neat.