Ask HN: Recommend a freelance job board | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Recommend a freelance job board

96 pointssperic37 comments

Can anyone recommend some good freelance job boards that are not eLance/oDesk etc.?

I've been doing contract work for three years; 95% of my work has come from Craigslist or from referrals from people who I connected with through Craigslist. You have to wade through an incredible amount of junk, but the volume on CL can't be touched anywhere else, and there is good stuff in there. I look in computer gigs and I also periodically post an abridged version of my resume in the resume section.

Other places I've found stuff include Dice.com, 37signals Gigs Board, Freelance Switch, and AuthenticJobs.

I get a lot of recruiters for contract jobs contacting me through Dice, my resume post on CL, and my blog. That might not be the kind of thing you're looking for, but it doesn't hurt.

I agree. More than half of my work has come from CL. The nice thing about CL is being able to win work locally if you are in a larger metro area.

Even if you are not in a big CL city, many replies to job ads are from overseas or from developers with limited communication. If you can communicate well and provide a solution for exactly what the customer is asking, you can win some good (and potentially long term) work.

But as Ryan says above, you need to weed through a lot of bad listings and be persistent in your search.

Can you give a rough percentage of people who respond to you from CL?

I've only recently started hunting for gigs via CL. I've picked 3 and responded (I took time to write what I thought was a good, carefully-worded response) within 24 hours or so but no one's responded back. I know sales is all about volume, I'm just trying to get an idea of what to expect.

3 to 1 sounds about right for initial responses, assuming you pick jobs that you are obviously qualified for. this goes up and down, obviously, depending on how qualified you appear to be for the position you are responding to.

Once you get the initial response, there's still a pretty good chance of the gig falling through for whatever reason. Contracting is rough this way, really no matter where you get your clients.

I agree from the other side too. As someone who hires freelancers more than freelancing, I've had the best success with:

- Craigslist (specifically SF & Seattle) - Authentic Jobs - 37signals

I've landed a number of good gigs with CL in Atlanta, definitely worth a try.

I've had luck with Craig's List as well. Look at big cities like New York, LA, etc and make sure they don't specify being on location. Also, Freelanceswitch.com has a decent job board. But watch out for job posts like this: http://thedon.me/2010/09/29/freelance-job-post/

really helpful.

Thanks :)

do you think a small software to help filter and notify jobs of interest from CL can be helpful? what kinds of them do you use ?

This was from an another HN thread (HN Contractors) - https://spreadsheets2.google.com/ccc?key=tk7rUIb-2aPdk_5gFJE...

I've been contacted for work through it.

Why was this down voted?

I got most of my contract work via networking in the local tech scene using twitter and going to a couple of events, and just generally jumping at random opportunities. Replying to local people who are urgently looking for a small job to be done is by far the easiest route to get yourself out there. Once you gain a reputation of being good at what you do, people will start referring you work.

For what it's worth, I'm fairly introverted, and talking to random people isn't all that easy for me, yet I seem to have managed just fine[1]. All I did was talk to people what they were working on, what I did, and random techy banter. The idea is to make people remember you when they need stuff done, not sell yourself right there and then. This probably only works for techy customers, if you're designing web sites for random businesses you might want to use a different strategy.

[1] I'm offered far more work than I could possibly accept 2 1/2 years later, rates increasing steadily, and I don't even have a website.

IMHO, the problem with oDesk and most freelance job boards is that they are lemon markets[1] and are therefore disadvantageous to good programmers. If we take the analogy from the used car market explained in Wikipedia and adapt it to the freelance programming market:

[...] the problem of quality uncertainty. It concludes that good programmers will not offer their service on the freelance market. This is sometimes summarized as "the bad driving out the good" in the market.

That being said, I would suggest you contact companies directly to offer your services or look for specialized job boards where buyers know exactly what they are looking for.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

Are you near a college with a decent CS department? Go there. Seriously. In no other place is there such a high concentration of talented individuals who are willing to work for bargin rates. Put up some flyers, get an announcement in the departmental newsletter, and buy candidates a cup of coffee once you get a good set of potentials. Of course, there is an upper bound on the talent/quality you are going to find. But depending on the type of work you need done it could work out great.

A few years ago I used rentacoder.com (now known as vworker.com) and made about $10K in 3 months. I made the majority of the money from doing a good job on something (generally at a very low price) and then getting repeat business from outside the bidding system.

Most fun project was writing some software that showed prospective patients what their teeth would look like after having their teeth bleached!

I have been using RAC sporadically for 2 years now, but didnt even manage to make the tenth of that number ! Do you have a suggestion/advice on how to boost my business ?

RAC is very competitive, i suggest you move to elance or odesk or guru, where you can get decent paid projects. And portfolio is a must to win the bids there. i am in odesk for 3 yrs and now work as long term contractor for a US firm in Chino, CA. All thru odesk. i dont have enough patience with elance, it is overly more competitive

Yeah... I had similar experiences on E-lance... you'd do the work within e-lance or whatever, and if it was successful, there was a lot of other work you could do direct for the client.

Also, the people who frequent those sites tend to be very cheap. the $10K in 3 months of work number sounds pretty realistic to me; while where I am, a reasonably good sysadmin can expect to make that much in a month of agency contracting full-time.

I created this little site that aggregates around 10 fairly decent freelance job boards: http://jobs.plasis.co.uk

Avoid them all, you will only find pain in that strategy, kind of like 6 pool. Focus on building your network of contacts, they will be the source of most of your work, mainly through word of mouth and referrals.

i agree, network is really important.

Sorry if this isn't helpful, but the direct approach has always worked for me (and job boards not so much). I try to contact people I'd like to work with on IRC, Skype, or just through email.

I include a few links and that has worked alright for me.

Authentic Jobs has design/development freelance listings: http://www.authenticjobs.com

+1 for Authentic Jobs. The jobs are generally high quality but it can be quite competitive to get selected since so many people are watching this job board very closely.

Craigslist? ducks

At least here in NYC, the % of listings on Craigslist that are freelance is rather low and in general, given the time that most people put into posting jobs in general, the overall quality seems to be low.

That's been my experience. I haven't really seen a good freelance job board with high-quality postings and lack of sketchy characters since 37signals Gig Board.

Shit, I'm sorry. I meant to vote Craigslist up but instead gave your comment the fat-fingered iPad treatment.

Well I wasn't going to vote up or down, so consider my up vote a fix for your down vote.

I downvoted both of you, so there. :P

Wait, seriously? Down votes for this? I don't get you sometimes, HN.

If you are anywhere near Washington, DC check out http://www.socialmatchbox.com. There are not a crushing number of freelance jobs there, but there are some good ones with startups, consulting companies, and interactive agencies.

I started using this strategy yesterday: http://sivers.org/how2hire

From the CD Baby guy. It's pretty straightforward and so far I'm getting decent responses.

I've had success with this one: http://jobs.freelanceswitch.com/

It works the other way around. Job listing is free; job seeker has to pay.

Speaking of job boards, are there any with non-trivial number of remote/telecommuting gigs or permanent positions ? The ones mentioned here have few if any such jobs.

Try oDesk. I've hired a bunch of help from there. Its been hit or miss but I've found a few real gems who I now hire regularly.

scriptlance.com

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