The Freelancer’s Guide: Part One
This is the start of a new series, I was going to hold off on releasing it, but I figured with the success of the first MonkeyBlogger series on Networking With Digital Point, I’d go ahead and start this one now.
In this series we’re going to be talking about freelancers, and where to find work, how to land a job, how to gain repeat clients, how to deal with clients, and how to create smooth work-flows when you have numerous jobs.
In this part one, we’ll cover where to find work.
We’re going to go over 3 websites you can use to find work, and the pros and cons of each.
Digital Point
Now, I know I’ve talked about Digital Point before, and I know that a lot of people are going to give me a hard time about bringing them up again, but they do provide a great place to find freelancing work. Let’s start off with a few pros and cons of this freelance work resource.
Link: http://forums.digitalpoint.com
Pros
- Free to use
- Provides you with a resource for any kind of freelance work
- Fairly easy to gain a good reputation
Cons
- Requires you to make 25 posts before you can access the Services Section
- You must be a member for 7 days before your allowed to access the section
- You will most likely be scammed a time or two (I’ve been scammed 5 times or more)
- People are cheap and you won’t get paid too great
All in all, it’s a good place to get your freelancing started, but eventually, you’ll want to move on and find some better work.
Get a Freelancer
Get a freelancer is a directory of freelancing jobs in every category you could think of, from writing to data entry, to graphic design, heck, even video editing services.
Link: http://getafreelancer.com
Pros
- Huge directory
- Any kind of work you can imagine
- Most jobs pay well
- It’s free to sign up
Cons
- Costs to find freelancers
- Hard to get jobs when you don’t have much experience
- Jobs get so many bids, that it’s hard to always get the job
All in all, Get a Freelancer is a great site for freelancing work, highly recommended by me.
Freelance Switch
This site is well designed, has some great work, and it’s pretty cheap to use.
Link: http://jobs.freelanceswitch.com/
Pros
- You can find a lot of long term work here
- Jobs are usually very well paying
- There’s less of a chance you will be scammed than at any other freelancing site
Cons
- Costs money per month to join as a freelancer
- Most people will want strong portfolios, which as a new freelancer you will most likely not have
For the most part Freelance Switch is a great resource for freelance work, although it has a few things about it.
So this will conclude the first part in this series, where we talked about where to find work. In part two, we’ll cover “How to Land the job” and I think you’ll enjoy it, so Subscribe to the full RSS Feed and keep updated.












This is another good post and the series will probably be an extremely useful source of information!
Shanes last blog post..The Daily Special - 24/04/08
Thanks Shane, I do hope it helps a lot of people.
Nice Post…..
This is good information for starts. I just referred a part time tech of mine who has some extra time into some freelance work. I’m sure he will find it helpful.
Thanks,
Eddie W.
Cool. That’s great. I hope this will help him as well.
Digitalpoint is NOT as unsafe as people say.
You yourself say you’ve been scammed serveral times but it is not hard at all to avoid this. I have 500+ posts and hav done 40+ trades and have not been scammed once. Many times I have come close to buying something but looking at feedbak decide against it only to find out later that they were in fact a scammer.
Just look out for the simple signs and you can avoid this. Like wait for some of the ‘dumber’ people to purchase something before you do…. im guessing you’re one of the people I wait for lol…. no offense intented.
Just look for them signs and ull be right
Well, it’s not that simple for me.
Since I’m a freelancer, I would get scammed the other way. Someone who is reputable has me do work, and then either files a PayPal refund, or does some other screwy stuff.
I personally don’t hardly ever buy things on Digital Point, for that same reason.
[...] Part One: Where to find Work [...]