Marketing Yourself Online Freelancing 101 – Top 5 Freelancing Sites

Before the widespread use of the Internet, working for yourself was a much tougher undertaking than it is today. With over 13 million people claiming the status of “self-employed,” sites have sprung up online to fill this niche and offer help through a variety of services. From helping you find work projects to offering advice, these sites can be a real asset to anyone striking out on their own.

Job categories range from writing, management, legal, Information Technology, marketing, and more. The primary focus of these “Business to Business”(B2B) sites is to match your skills with companies that have projects for someone with your talents. Some charge for membership, some are free, and some take a percentage of each job that is awarded (usually from the employer).

In the beginning, you’ll need to fill out an online profile that specifies your experience and skill level and sometimes allows you to list examples of your work.

Let’s take a closer look at a few of the bigger freelance sites:

1) Guru: http://www.guru.com

This is probably the most popular, likely due to their large advertising budget. You’ll find their ads on all of the more popular PC magazines and pasted everywhere online.

Like most of these services, you must first create a profile that details who you are and what you do. The site currently has over 320,00 members and over 7,000 job listings. They also offer a variety of backend services, such as articles, an ezine, and other goodies that will help you run your business more efficiently.

2) Upwork: http://www.Upwork.com

This site is set up in an auction setting, where you bid on projects that interest you. The use of an online rating system allows buyers and sellers to make comments about each other, which are then publicly shared. Upwork covers all the business categories you can possibly think of.

3) Fiverr: http://www.Fiverr.com

Fiverr got its name because it originally facilitated quick freelance gigs for five dollars, but it’s grown quite a bit since then. Now, you can set your own starting prices, packages, and add-ons. Many savvy freelancers use lower sticker prices for small projects to lure in new clients. Kind of like giving them a cheap sample so they’ll want to contract you for larger projects.

4) We Work Remotely Exchange: https://weworkremotely.com/

We Work Remotely boasts that they get around 4.5 million visitors to their job board. That’s huge. They have a multitude of job postings in categories like programming, design, sales, marketing, customer support, and more. We Work Remotely is one of the most well-known sites for online jobs, including both freelance and full-time gigs.

If you’re looking for online freelance jobs, We Work Remotely is a solid resource for part-time and full-time freelance job opportunities that will fit your skill set.

5) Toptal: http://www.toptal.com

Toptal pitches itself as a place to find the top 3% of freelance talent. Their screening process is so rigorous that out of the thousands of submissions they get every month, they only accept a few into their ranks. This exclusivity sets them apart from so many other freelance job sites out there. It may seem intimidating to get in, but if you do, you’ll get the chance to put yourself in front of some pretty big names — Airbnb, Duolingo, and Shopify are companies that have used Toptal to share job opportunities for designers, software developers, finance experts, and product managers

So next time your business is slow and you’re not quite sure where your next paycheck is coming from, browse through these sites, and you’ll have a “gig” in no time at all!

If you need more help with finding gigs or helping our your business, feel free to contact us at http://allmarketingsolutions.ca