The opportunities are out there. You just have to find them. Use this guide to help you find your next freelance opportunity on the web and get in the habit of getting work.
Find People Who Are Looking
Job Boards – A very obvious solution to the problem of how to find jobs on the web. However, There’s more to job boards than it might seem at first.
We’ll look at Freelance Switch as a model for what all freelance job boards should be. They have the highest quality and best paying jobs out there and are easily the most reliable and best out of the other sites on their own Monster List of Freelancing Job Sites. The posts on this job board are monitored and checked for fair requests and fair pay making them an excellent starting point for young freelancers looking for work.
A good posting will have:
- A clear vision of the project and it’s scope
- Specifics in terms of tasks that need to be completed
- A description of skills needed to complete those tasks
- What you as the freelancer need to do to apply
Stay away from postings with:
- Vague description of tasks to be done
- Unprofessional writing in the post itself
- Very tight deadlines
- Unreasonable Rates
Part of the trick to getting the jobs that are posted on job boards is in how fast and how well you can respond. Many of the job boards have RSS feeds that you as the freelancer can subscribe to and be updated the instant a new job is posted. Getting the jump on the competition can be the edge you need to win that perfect job that pops up in your RSS reader. Another time saving technique for winning that job is having a few response templates ready for a few different situations. I have a few templates set up for web design jobs, print jobs and development jobs, each with their own set of sample work and list of experience and previous jobs.
Job Bidding Sites and Competitions – These sites tend to have a great quantity of jobs but many charge for registration and in general, a bidding / competition site will favor the client and create conditions for freelancers to sell themselves short of their rate and potential.
The big bidding sites are not the only way to go about finding your next client on the web. Their extensive listings do draw in quite a lot of freelancers but on the whole, rates for the jobs posted on these sites are much lower and are further driven down by competition between freelancers. They can be good to help build up a portfolio especially if actually getting paid is not a main concern. Use them as a last resort and let the rest of this guide help you to get your next job on the web without resorting to bidding sites.
Sites that host competitions for design or writing or any other would-be freelance genre have many of the same problems as the above mentioned big bidding sites. For one thing, you are more or less doing spec work by participating in these competitions. There is no guarantee of getting paid / winning clearly, and most of the time the winnings for such competitions are minimal. Things like logo competitions, and t-shirt design competitions are good practice but not a way to sustain yourself or good ways to spend you time when you could be freelancing for real clients.
Make Yourself Known on the Web
Your Homes on the Internet - There are a great many sites out there where a freelancer can post his or her portfolio and a little bit about themselves and become apart of another online creative community. Sites like carbonmade, Behance, cpluv, and coroflot are great examples of places where you can promote yourself on the web somewhere other than your website and hopefully have people find you. Many of these sites have their own job boards as well that you should look in to.
Cold Emails – The old gold standard of beginners freelance marketing; find something you want to freelance for, get an email address and send one off. This gives you to the power to choose who you want to work for and the opportunity to take the first step in a client-freelancer relationship. This technique involves some persuasive writing and creative ways to make the recipient of your email stop and take notice.
Another wonderful product from google is their alerts which allow you to sign up for emails about a certain keyword or say, an industry that you would like to be kept up to date about. I occasionally use it if I want my next job to be in a particular market or if I have a keen interest in a certain range of clients. Jamie Mintun has written an article at freelance switch about 20 Hot Client Industries to get you started on some keywords to plug into google alerts.
Promote yourself in your niche – Many freelancers have a particular area of expertise that they like to promote themselves with. It stands to reason that promoting yourself in related corners of the Internet might get you that next job. Whether it is by simple networking or expertise in a certain field, your particular niche can be a powerful place to start searching for opportunities. It may seem that promoting yourself in you niche might be counter intuitive since that would be where all of your direct competition is but specialization is an important survival technique to freelancers and you next job could come from anywhere.
Think Outside the Box
Scholarships – Often overlooked as a real opportunity by freelancers, scholarships can be important portfolio builders as well as a good source of money should you win. Thousands of these scholarships exist on the web and they aren’t hard to find. Seek out a scholarship that applies to you skill sets and area of expertise and go for it.
Contests – I know I referred to contests and competition sites negatively earlier in this article but here I am referring to the big leagues of contests that have real potential payoffs and career boosting potential. Things like state and national competitions and international contests are the resume boosters that young freelancers are always looking to acquire. These are important testing grounds for yourself and your freelance work so don’t hesitate at the opportunity for contests such as these.
Design Awards – In most design awards you are competing with the big boys of design but that doesn’t mean you should stay out of the fray. Getting your work out there and noticed is always beneficial and you may even win something. As another opportunity to hone your skills, these awards serve an important purpose in the grand scheme of a freelancers career.
Email a Famous Person – If all else fails, email a famous person and ask them if they need any freelancing done. Many more experienced freelancers will have overflow work that they are needing to unload onto a willing young freelancer. Firms will also have this problem so don’t hesitate to contact them as well. Like cold emails, sending an email off to a famous person should be a well considered matter but you only have things to gain by doing it.
