Job Boards for Freelancers Seeking Great Gigs

For freelancers, finding work is the name of the game. Be it long-term clients or short-term successes, finding the right work for the right rate is what keeps us in business. Depending on your network, you’ll hear tons of great ideas from a variety of professionals.
At the end of the day, the best fit comes down what you’re looking for. We think these sites will catch your eye with great clients and projects:

Hirable

One of the more interesting in this field is Hirable, which promises business clients that it will pair them with the ‘top 2% of freelance developers for short and long-term projects.’ How does Hirable manage to deliver on that promise? By having freelancers apply, not just sign up. They want to see LinkedIn profiles and portfolios, and get real names and address before they give applicants the keys to the car. For now, the services is only available to developers, but the Hirable team plans on expanding its services in the near future. The client list that has already invested in Hirable speaks to its success – Google tops it. Hirable might seem a bit snooty in its practices, but think of it this way. If the top freelancers are doing great work for big clients, those clients are likely to hire more freelancers in the future; and when industry trend-setters are doing something, other companies are likely to follow in turn, creating more freelance opportunities for everyone.

Crowded

For pure innovation, there’s Crowded, which allows users to upload a simple digital resume and matches them to freelance job postings from several sites. Launched in 2015, it racked up 400 platform partners and 11,000 freelance users in its first year of life. The value of having one big list of jobs from lots of different sites is a game-changer for freelancers; when we’re looking for work, we’re not making money, and that’s a problem.

FlexJobs

Flexjobs has one major entrance barrier for freelancers; there’s a monthly membership fee of $14.95. That can be a steep price for a service you know nothing about going into it, but the good news is that Flexjobs often offers discounted or free memberships to encourage new users. Even better, every job listing it puts online has been vetted by the service beforehand, meaning no more bogus listings on Upwork where the budget is $12,000, but the text lets you know that is $3/1,000 words of copywriting. If you find Flexjobs a positive stream of income, you can upgrade your membership to either quarterly ($29.95) or yearly ($49.95) and save a bundle of money in the process. Even more impressive, Flexjobs offers a money-back guarantee for anything short of total customer satisfaction.

LocalSolo

LocalSolo offers the bonus of looking for freelancers or looking for work in a particular city. This lets clients reach out to local talent for jobs that might be on-site, or a mix of on-site and telecommuting. A big barrier for many clients looking to outsource work is the fear of hiring someone on the other side of the world who might be able to cobble together a professional looking online profile, but has neither the skill-set nor the language capabilities to do the work correctly. As a bonus, LocalSolo has partnered with several other businesses that have benefits for freelancers and small business owners. Adobe, Shopify, and Fiverr Workspace are among those who have discounted their services in this arrangement.
The takeaway here is one that should be exciting for startups and a strong word of caution for giants like Upwork and Freelancer.com. Freelancers and their clients are some of the best people in the world at adapting to new technology, streamlined processes, and expect things to move smoothly when they are looking for work, doing the work, and being paid for the work. When that process becomes sluggish or inconsistent, there’s a very strong possibility of the talent pool deciding to make a splash somewhere else.