How To Find The Job in Freelance Marketplaces?

The first and most obvious place to find jobs is the freelance marketplace. A freelance marketplace is like a classified ad site, except that the ads are completely focused on freelance jobs. Some marketplaces even specialize in “niche” freelance jobs, like voice work, or writing, or “web stuff”. Other marketplaces have a broader appeal and list jobs in a number of categories starting from call for personal assistance to graphic design to do-my-bungee-jumping-for-me- tomorrow.

The typical marketplace format is that people who are looking to get things done post their “jobs” and people who can work it out for them place their proposal, explaining why they are the right candidate to fulfill the task at hand. There are exceptions to this format, a popular example being fiverr, where the “sellers” list their skills and the buyers seek them out.

Marketplaces are the simplest places to start looking for jobs. I’ll mention a couple that have worked for me personally, but I’m not too obsessed with  the  particular  marketplaces  that  you  zero  in  and choose to spend time at. Here’s a checklist that you can use on nearly any new marketplace that you want to spend your time at, to see if it is viable for you.

Marketplace Commission:  Check that the commission of the marketplace is between 5% and 10%, anything more and you should consider moving on.

Free Membership: Most marketplaces offer free memberships with the possibility of upgrading, and the free membership allows you to do everything you should need to do get through a project from beginning to end. It might be crippled on the number of jobs that you can express your interest in, but it shouldn’t cut you short in the middle of a job application process.

Withdrawing funds: Make sure it is feasible for you to withdraw funds to your bank account, and this is especially important if you are in a different country from where the company running the marketplace is located!

Withdrawal Limits: Ideally, you should be able to withdraw any funds that you have, and there should be no set minimum funds “required” before you can withdraw. “is  will be less and less  of an issue as you move on, but in the beginning, if $100 could make or break your day and the  marketplace lets you withdraw only if your balance exceeds $150, then you might want to move on. A typical and reasonable limit is anywhere between $25 and $50.

The marketplace that I’ve found to be among the most effective is Elance.  It has a fairly clean and attractive user interface and a number of categories to look for jobs in. Writing, design, development, and SEO – the four possibilities we discussed in Chapter one – are all covered.

For the free account, all you need is a phone number to sign up.

When   you  have  some  spare  time,  you  could  hang  out  at  the Watercooler and interact with other freelancers (it’s like a forum) to get a feel for the culture at Elance. But most importantly, the  free account lets you bid for jobs in one category only, so choose wisely, and each bid will cost you “connects” – that’s Elance currency – and the free account comes with 10 connects per month.

Some of the other marketplaces that are equally popular, in no particular order, are:

1. Guru.com
2. Odesk.com (Popular for administrative and writing gigs)
3. VWorker.com (was: RentACoder)
4. Freelancer.com
5. Voices.com (Focused on voice work)
6. Scriptlance.com
7. iWriter.com
8. FreelanceSwitch.com
9. “e Official WordPress Job Marketplace
10. Woo  Jobs (WordPress  jobs  with  a  focus on  woothemes customizations)
11. Fiverr.com and any number of specializations and clones
12. 99Designs.com
13. People per Hour (an UK-based marketplace)
14. GetAFreelancer.com

Of these, some places focus on specialized skills, like Voices and iWriter, while  others  have  a  reputation  of  attracting  inexpensive worker (Odesk and scr iptlance). The inexpensive-worker marketplaces are great for getting initial gigs easily and accumulating testimonials – and once you have some, you should look to move right along to the premium marketplaces.

Author Bio:- Charles West is a professional content writer and blogger since last 2 years. I have writing expertise in technology and certification topics specially. I love to share that recently I passed my A00-281 exam from SAS institute and C90-03A exam from VMware. Thanks for reading 🙂