Finding Work


You’ll have to branch out, establish a great portfolio of past work and maybe even prove yourself through tests that showcase your skills. Here’s a list of the 15 best sites to find work as a freelancer.


1. Upwork
2. Toptal
3. Elance
4. Freelancer
5. Seoclerks
6. Guru
7. 99designs
8. Peopleperhour
9. Freelance Writing Gigs
10. Demand Media
11. College Recruiter
12. GetACoder   
13. iFreelance   
14. Project4hire   
15. SimplyHired

Figure Out Your Skills

To start freelancing you need to know what skills do you have. Which is your field of expertise?
As companies scale back on their expensive, benefit-heavy workforce, they're increasingly turning to outside--freelance--help. If you've got expertise in the right areas, there's a good chance you can parlay it into a freelance career by sharing your knowledge and skills with a variety of clients.

"'Follow your heart and do what you love' is just a slogan. You need to get real," says Kelly James-Enger, author of Six Figure Freelancing . "If you're not offering a service people are willing to spend money on, you're not going to be in business [for long]." Search your local paper and the Internet to see who's doing what you want to do, what they charge and who their clients are.
Talk to everyone you know until you turn up freelancers doing what you hope to do. Then call them up and pick their brains about which segments of the market are growing and where most of their work comes from. This information is critical to helping you carve out a niche and fill a current opening in the market.

Be Your Own Brand


Now more than ever, anyone applying for any position has a so-called “personal brand” to maintain — a voice, visual or written style, and overall body of work that reflects who they are and the kind of projects they’re best suited to complete. Though it might not seem too important in the early going, establishing that brand as quickly as possible can give you an edge when competing with others for jobs.

“Read about what others are doing, share your work, and put yourself out there,” Jantz says. “Attend conferences and meetups to network with others in your same position.”
In many cases, “getting yourself out there” involves keeping a consistent visual identity on the web, even if you don’t work in a visual field: Use the same profile picture everywhere you post online and make sure your service’s website accurately represents your experience and skill level.

Sample of Your Work

In industry speak, this is called a portfolio. You need a portfolio to show clients what you're capable of. You may have a portfolio of work from your time as a student or from work you've done on a voluntary basis. Otherwise, you'll need to create a portfolio of mock projects.
You’ve probably heard me talk in the past about how risk typically dominates the hiring decision. When a client feels that someone is particularly high risk (“Do they know what they’re doing?”, “Do they understand what I need?”, “Are they reliable enough to get this done?”) the default position is to put less money on the table — if the project goes bellyup, the client would rather have wagered less money. So the obvious converse is that if you can prove that you are a very safe bet, and that hiring you will almost certainly yield the business results they’re looking for, pockets will deepen.

Get Social

As you've probably worked out by now, finding clients is essentially about talking to people. The more people you talk to, the more potential clients you'll connect with.

Social networks - such as LinkedIn and Twitter - make it easier than ever to reach out and make new contacts. Here are two quick wins when you're looking for clients on social media:
  • Use Twitter's Advanced Search Tool to find people looking for freelancers with your skills. You can even narrow down your search to find potential clients near where you live and work.
  • To meet new folks on LinkedIn, join LinkedIn groups. Open networking groups are the fastest way to grow your network of connections. Take time to message each new connection you make. It's only by talking to them that you'll find out if they need your services.

Be determined

All the romance of working from home with the cat on your lap aside, by now it probably occurred to you that being a freelancer is primarily running a small business with you being the CEO, COO, CTO, CMO, CFO and all interns. There is probably one principle that all freelancers would agree on: You need to hustle. Just as running a startup with multiple people filling several roles, running your freelance business is a marathon with euphoric moments and stretches of despair and helplessness. And when the latter come, you need to be prepared. Before making the decision to freelance, think carefully about why you want to do it and analyze how functional your motivation is. Personally, I don’t believe one should freelance for any other reason than personal and/or professional growth (which can also mean financial improvement of course, but statistically speaking it usually means the opposite, at least in the beginning).