Top 4 Freelance Sites for Writers
Writers gotta work, and thus we gotta find the work. Read on for the top four sites I have found for finding freelance writing work online!
Warning:
There are a lot of job sites out there, and plenty of scams and exploitive pay as well. There is also a seedy underbelly of internet writers, who work for less than a penny a word and “write” a thousand versions of the same piece of content using programs called spinners (I refuse to link to this scum). These people feed a piece of original content in and the program rewrites it with synonyms. It looks disjointed and awful, but they don’t care. It passes copyscape.
These services generally cost money to get anything useful out of, around 9-12 dollars a month US.
That said, lets get to it.
Elance
Elance is where I get most of my best jobs. There is plenty of bad jobs and jobs where you can’t understand what they want you to do (this is why they need writers, I suppose), but there are some real gems as well. I got my current favorite gig, writing the lore and designing the character classes for Ghostees!, an upcoming MMORPG, from Elance.
They have a full escrow service, which protects both you and the client, and record all dealings through a private message board. The fee is very reasonable, and the various features are useful and focus on taking care of you, including making sure your taxes are prepared properly for all money earned through their service. Highly recommended.
Guru
Guru is a lot like Elance. In fact, it is almost a clone, in format, pricing, and services. The main difference seems to be the quality of jobs, which seems lower, and the overall functionality of their resume system.
I would recommend Guru, but only in addition to Elance, not alone.
iFreelance
iFreelance really, really wants to be like Elance and Guru. They have the look, they have the format, and they certainly have the pricing. The problem is that their site barely works. It’s very hard to search for jobs, the resume page has an irritating scrolling banner of your portfolio file’s icons, and there are very few jobs. In addition, they seem to let people set jobs to expire in months, so bidding on anything is pointless. By the time a job is close enough to expiring for me to know whether I will have the time to work it for the money they are paying, it has 3 months worth of bids. This is just poor infrastructure.
However, a certain sector of jobs seem to come here and nowhere else, so I still suggest opening an account with them.
GetAFreelancer
If a iFreelance is a wannabe Elance, GetAFreelancer is CraigsList on steroids. You can bid for free (up to 15 bids) but you get access to better jobs through getting a “gold account”, which is about the normal price for all of these services. The interface is awful, the search functions laughable, and the resume section almost non-existent…but it has some great jobs on it, and they usually don’t require a “gold account” to bid on.
Recommended if you can deal with the interface. If you want glitz, go for one of the others.
Final Words
My advice is to have accounts on all of these, if you can spare the cash. The reason for this is simple economics. The clients need one or maybe a few jobs done. They only need to have one account they pay for to post jobs, and as long as it is a reasonably good site they are assured of finding a provider. Providers, on the other hand, always need access to continuous good jobs. Thus the client’s best choice is to have one account, while for the provider it is best to have an account on each. Thus if there are four great jobs you can handle at once, but each of the clients go to a different service, you can get one job or all four depending on where you have accounts.
That’s all till next time. Let me know if you have found any other good freelance sites…I might have missed a few.
Keep reading and writing!
Hi Derek,
http://www.LetterRep.com
It’s my site and it has some good points. It’s in redevelopment now. I promising some changes.
LetterRep receives 100 to 150 requests for letters to be written each day. The majority of these are not ‘Paid in advance’ making the writer’s work seem useless, I know, it’s one of the problems we’re fixing, but all letters are to be written as templates that, regardless of whether or not they were purchased, get put on the site for future customers with similar situations to review and purchase, if the letter suits their needs.
It’s my own little spin on the collection of ’social media with a focus’ - letters for every possible situation.
Anyway, there are 1700 writers who currently have accounts on the site (all eagerly awaiting the new release) and more writers are always welcome.
Hope to see you there.
Sincerely,
Rob Noyes
http://www.LetterRep.com
Thank you for your post it is valuable information for me
[...] Top 4 Freelance Sites for Writers [...]
Yeah, GetAFreelancer has its issues. Elance is my fave right now.
Thanks for the digg!
I used ‘GetAFreelancer’ for a while. It honestly didn’t work to well for me. I like to give contact details, I like the ability to email, and the bid systems totally confused me.
But that’s just me. (Dugg, BTW
)
Thanks for the information in the new site! As you see, I advise writers to have accounts on more than one site.
Great list of freelance sites. I just wanted to bring to your attention a new freelance site on the scene making some small waves called RemoteGurus.com (http://www.remotegurus.com), enjoy!
I can’t think of anything right now, but i’ll let you know if something specific comes to mind.
Hi Derek! Darren’s post is making me a lot of new friends, too!
Thanks for the kind words. Helping (and sometime that means motivating!) writers in new media is what this site is all about. What do you think would help you get going? I am always willing to cover specific questions from readers.
Nice post, came across your blog from you adding me on twitter due to the problogger social media love in.
I’ve been meaning/wanting to get my feet wet with freelance writing for years now, but have never had the motivation due to not knowing where to start. This was a great article and hopefully will finally motivate me. Thanks!
Derek Neulands last blog post..Top 4 Freelance Sites for Writers
Thanks for the suggestion, Atniz! I had seen Scriptlance before, but not really looked into it. They seemed more a coder’s site.
Upon seeing your comment, I went and looked at their writer’s section. The jobs looked like GetAFreelancer fare, which is not bad, just very specific. Since their sign-up is free and it is free to bid, I went ahead and started up and account. Thanks for the lead.
I would like to add one more here.. Scriptlance.
Atnizs last blog post..Can you write using a pen or prefer a keyboard
Well, as I said in the OP, I advise using multiple sites because of simply economics. Clients benefit the most from being on one site, while providers benefit most from being on multiple sites. So I would say if you are happy with Odesk stick with it, and if you are going to add any services then add Elance. The other three are great in their way, but I make the base of my freelance writing through Elance.
Well that’s true. The software turned me off at first, but several people I know were giving good feedback despite it, so I decided to try. Still, it’s great to have options. Elance comes highly recommended too.
Kats last blog post..TRUTH THURSDAY: I want to show the world…
Thanks for the kind words, Kat. I have to say the reason I did not get an account with Odesk, which I did try, was the extremely intrusive software. It clocks hours, which I prefer to be able to bill myself (I bill for writing time, which is what I sell, not “something else came up while I was supposed to be working”). Odesk simply didn’t offer good enough jobs to justify their intrusiveness into my computer.
Great post! I’ve heard a lot about Elance but I haven’t tried it. I’m currently using oDesk and so far it’s going good.
Kats last blog post..TRUTH THURSDAY: I want to show the world…