Freelancing is great. You get to be your own boss, set your own hours, and even work at home in your pajamas. If you’re lucky and established enough, you also get to pick your own clients. But before you get to that point (and sometimes, even after you get to that point) you will often find yourself wondering where your next paycheck is going to come from. Therefore, if you are not a freelancer yet but you consider following this path, read this article about the Top 7 self-employed jobs.
How to find freelance jobs from home
It can be hard to find work if you are in an extremely competitive sector. Or if you are catering to a market that has regular ups and downs, you must have a certain level of anxiety.
So, if you’re in such a hot spot, don’t just sit there. Clients won’t be coming to you on their own. Get proactive! With our handy little guide to the best freelancing jobs websites, you should be able to find freelance work in no time.
Freelancer.com
With over 17 million registered users and boasting “millions of small businesses” using the service, freelancer.com is, as the name suggests. It is a website where businesses can post open projects for freelancers to bid upon. If you are looking for freelance jobs from home, this is the right place to search at.
Projects may cover any area, from Writing and Web Development to Graphics Design. Details such as payment and client communication are handled through the website.
While you’ll be mostly competing on price, Freelancer.com also has a reputation system in place — so that the more work and the better ratings you get through the service, the better you appear to future clients.
Upwork
Upwork is a mature player in the field of freelance job websites. It is a re-branded revamp of the popular oDesk website which later merged with the equally popular Elance freelancing marketplace. The site claims to have over 10 million freelancers and pushing an impressive $1 billion in annual freelancing revenues.
It’s not just for programmers or creatives either — with over 50 job categories, it covers everything from programming to paralegal services.
While any freelancer may respond to a job posting, the site also provides business customers with personalized recommendations about the best candidates for a given project. To get into these you’ll need to work on your Upwork profile and build your project portfolio and client feedback.
Toptal
Catering exclusively to programming and design freelance jobs, Toptal is both more constrained in scope than the usual all-encompassing freelancing sites, and more elitist, targeting only “A”- level professionals.
If you qualify as one (and are able to pass their approval process), Toptal will be a better value proposition to you than other freelance jobs websites, offering better (and higher-paying) projects.
And not just with small and medium businesses either, as even well-known companies such as Pfizer, JP Morgan, and Airbnb use the service to find talent.
Envato Studio
Envato Studio (formerly FreelanceSwitch) is a well-known job site for smaller freelancing gigs, especially related to web programming and design. The company also operates its own marketplace (Envato Market) where you can sell and buy stuff like WordPress themes, audio jingles, and 3D models.
Unlike sites based on a “bidding/reverse auction” model, Envato Studio lets clients directly pick and communicate with any freelancer that they’d like to work with.
The site also provides inbuilt messaging and job management tools for collaborating with the client during the project. To join Envato Studio as a freelancer you’ll have to be approved first, as they prefer to “hand-pick” the designers and developers that they feature. With millions of creatives already on the site, though, that should be much of a challenge.
Behance
Owned by creative software giant Adobe, Behance is primarily a social portfolio site. Primarily, it is very popular with creative professionals (designers, UX experts, photographers, etc.).
Users get to showcase their own work, rate, and comment on projects, and follow the work of other users.
What makes Behance appropriate for our top 10 freelance jobs websites list is its jobs section. It is aptly named “Behance Jobs”, which has businesses from all over the world posting creative jobs. For your information, it also includes full-time jobs, in case you want to take a break from freelancing).
Stack Overflow careers
As a programmer, you probably already know Stack Overflow, the programming assistance site that seems to have the right answer for any possible programming problem one might face.
You might not know that they have a companion site, Stack Overflow Careers, that provides job listings of tech companies from all over the world.
Listings include permanent positions at some of the biggest names in IT, such as Google, Amazon, and Cisco. Moreover, it offers contract and freelance jobs that you can do remotely.
Guru
Guru is an up-and-coming freelance jobs website, with 1.5 million members worldwide and 1 million completed jobs. Unlike sites that mostly cater to programmers and designers, Guru covers the most popular freelance sectors, including sales, marketing, finance, and legal services.
As a freelancer, you define the freelance services you want to offer, allowing potential clients to find and contact you when they search for freelancers to hire.
You can also directly apply to job postings that interest you — the service will even suggest potential gigs you can apply to, on a daily basis.
Flexjobs
As the name implies, Flexjobs specializes in flexible job arrangements, including freelance, telecommuting, and part-time gigs.
One key differentiator between Flexjobs and other job posting websites is that they screen every job and company to make sure they meet their standards. Thus, they eliminate low-quality postings, scams, and shady employers. Access to these curated job listings, however, comes at a price: of $14.95 per month or $49.95 annually.
99 Designs
As you’ve probably already guessed, 99 Designs is a freelance job website for design work.
It’s of the “competition” variety of freelancing websites, where potential clients post a design brief and a price, designers submit their pitches and ideas, and the winning design gets the money.
Working without a guarantee that you’ll get paid (known as “spec work” in the industry) is frowned upon by some in the design community. To others, this is no problem at all. It really is something for you to decide and might not be worth it if you’re an established designer. To sum up, 99 Designs (and other similar websites) might be a good way to find freelance work and get some experience when you’re just starting out or even while you’re still studying.
Fiverr
Fiverr claims to be the world’s largest marketplace for creative and professional services, and with over 3 million different services offered in over 100 categories, it might very well be that.
Any freelancer can post a service that they offer and set their own price, starting at $5 (hence the name of the service).
Clients can then use the site’s search engine and filters to find freelancers offering the kind of service, and place their order. Freelancers are only paid once the order has been approved and delivered. The emphasis on the $5 starting price means that the site is flooded with simple low-priced tasks. However, you will still be able to charge extra for more demanding tasks.
