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| 8 Best Freelance Websites To Find Web Design & Graphic Design Jobs Posted: 27 Jan 2015 06:00 AM PST You can’t run a freelance business without creating a system to get more clients. Job search websites are a popular tool in that system, but if you’ve used one, you’ve probably had a bad experience. Before we started building our freelance job site, AwesomeWeb, we researched the big players. Their pros. Their cons. What people loved. What people hated. We created accounts, combed forums, and read reviews all so we could bring you the last client-getting tool you’ll ever need. Freelance Job Sites Pricing and Philosophy
*Data based on information published as of January 1, 2015. What’s Important to Web Professionals?
We built AwesomeWebFor professional web designers and developers Only 150 spots left at $17/month.
Major Takeaways from Our ResearchAfter researching Freelancer, Elance, oDesk, PeoplePerHour, 99designs and others, there were several big takeaways:
How To Succeed With Biggest and Best Freelance Websites?While doing research I found a few success stories from freelance web designers and freelance developers. What did they do differently when most people tend to have a bad experience?:
Using these top job websites to earn extra income is good…But how can you support yourself full-time? I have always been big believer in quality not quantity. If you are working with 10 clients at the same time, you will not do your best work. You’ll be in a rush to finish jobs quickly. You want to earn more money after all. But by always rushing your work, you won't be able to create something you’re proud of. What Is The Alternative? Find 2-3 high-paying clients you work with regularly. You need to build trust, provide exceptional service, and by doing so you’ll be able to charge more. Finding high-paying clients will give you peace of mind financially and you will be able to focus on the work you enjoy.  I have always been big believer in quality not quantity Did you know the biggest challenge for business owners (clients) is finding reliable people who do what they promise? If you can deliver and build trust, you will always be in demand! It is as simple as that! Here is the proof from Quora where somebody asked: “How does a business person hire a good developer/programmer/engineer on Elance or Odesk?” Many answers were similar, but here is the best response from Yishan Wong, CEO of Reddit: “You shouldn't do this; it will probably result in failure. I have a friend who is a designer (so, closer to technology and implementation than a business guy; about as close as you can be without being outright technical yourself), and he was hiring developers via eLance. Even with consultation from friends of his (e.g. me) who were real engineers, it was extremely difficult to find decent engineers who could do the things he needed, deliver reliably, and iterate according to ongoing testing/customer feedback. The end product was merely "okay" – kind of slow, with little glitches here and there. If you have total technical ignorance and no local (friend) resources to help you, hiring from eLance or oDesk is almost impossible to do correctly. I would recommend trying another route.” You Just Need to Get Out ThereNever lower your standards and after a while clients will start looking for you themselves! There is no magic bullet, it takes time. But as an expert of your craft, big marketplaces are not a reliable place to make your living and enjoy your work. You will always be burdened by lower bidders and clients who don’t appreciate your expertise.  Professionals are smart enough to work with clients directly. Professionals are smart enough to work with clients directly. They know they need to ask for 30-50% payment upfront. They know which client proposals sound too good to be true. Pros don't want to work on quantity – hourly projects, they want to create websites they are proud of. But they still need to look new clients sometimes. But where? Big freelancing sites are a bad choice for professionals. The biggest freelance websites are also bad for clients who are are looking for high quality results. We saw this as a problem, we can solve. That’s why we created AwesomeWeb, a quality job search website where only professionals can get listed. People, who go to oDesk and Elance generally aren't looking to pay for quality work. They are looking for bargain deals, forcing you to undersell yourself. Don't get me wrong, top freelancing sites are great places to get started and build a portfolio. But professionals get lost in the ocean of freelancers, who are looking for programming jobs from home, graphic design jobs. Let's Dive In and Take a LookAt the best freelance websites pros and cons! Table of contents (jump to interesting review for you): These are the marketplaces reviewed in this articleNote: Codeable.io and Studio.Envato are new players, who we admire because of their focus on quality. They are not big (by choice), but we still included them here. We must give you alternative solutions after all, not just show how dire the situation is out there, right? Many angry people in reviews were throwing words like So let me set it straight. None of these companies are scams. They are well-known and credible companies. And yes, they have their challenges and downsides that people don't like. It’s a tough and important business helping people worldwide to earn their living online. As with politics, when your well-being is involved, people get emotional and throw bad reviews all over the Internet when something doesn't work as they expected. I tried to look past anger and notice real issues. Most bad experiences could've been avoided if job seekers would be more careful and would learn how to play the game before they start playing. Freelancer.com Review Freelancer has really made their financial model work for them. Freelancer is one of the biggest job search websites in the market. If you compare oDesk vs freelancer, you will find they are very similar in size and functionality. You can register and submit 8 bids per month for free. As with all big freelancing sites, their biggest trouble is with support and high fees. Freelancer has the lowest ratings of all marketplaces, at SiteJabber review site they have got 374 1-star ratings and 26 5-star ratings. This review about Freelancer from client's perspective illustrate very well how Freelancer is different from oDesk and Elance: “Freelancer: Horrible, Punishing Up-sells The reason why Freelancer has been able to acquire many competitors is because of their profitability. And that profit comes from fleecing their users as hard as possible. The moment you register on the site they try to make you pay for everything and anything. From paying so that your project is available straight away without a review (even though they go live in a few minutes anyway) to prompting you at every step to become a paying member to get crappy 'perks'. At the moment, they're even trying to flog Freelancer baseball caps. If you want to delete a project that you've posted, PAY for it. If you want to hide it from search engines, PAY for it! The list in endless, exhausting and overwhelmingly frustrating.” While almost every marketplace has upsells, Freelancer has really made their financial model work for them. Freelancer is built around membership model and they are asking money for everything. Freelancer pricing strategy is really complicated and gets expensive. Read all about Freelancer fees and charges here.  Very tough place for freelancers and clients to be in. Usually as freelancer you will pay 10% service fee + $0.30 USD + 2.3% (withdrawal fee). Fee on earning 4k/month is $400 + $83 + $0.30 (if you withdraw just once) = $483.30. Freelancer is the most expensive job search website comparing to oDesk, Elance and PeoplePerHour. Want to have:
If you don't close your account and leave it active, after 6 months you will be automatically paying a $10/month maintenance fee. The same is happening on the business owner’s (client) side. You can buy so many little things here. It is a great financial model for Freelancer, but very tough place for freelancers and clients to be in. Pros:
Cons:
Here you can read more Freelancer reviews, if you want to dig deeper yourself:
Elance.com Review Registration is free and you receive 40 connect points/month. On Elance listings you will find a good mix of hourly and fixed price work. Registration is free and you receive 40 connect points/month. You use these points to send proposals, promote them, but it all costs points. For example it costs 2 points to send proposal, 4 points to get your proposal to appear on top of the list. While Elance registration is free, if you want to use Elance actively, you should get $10/month plan, otherwise you are using a limited version of Elance. It’s sad you can pay to appear higher in search. You need to pay to view competitor pricing or feature samples in proposals.  There is Escrow Security and your hourly rate is guaranteed.
Keep in mind Elance charges 8.75% service fee for every project you complete. There is Escrow Security and your hourly rate is guaranteed because of Tracker with Work view, which takes screenshots of your screen as you work. Elance has helpful applications for an enhanced experience of communication for both job seekers and clients such as live chat, video conferencing and file sharing with version control. How can you increase likelihood of being hired? First of all, you need to become a paying member to appear higher in the search results (or ignore that and just be active in client proposals). Then you need to build up your profile by featuring your best work, earning good reviews and ratings from clients. Here is a helpful guide by Elance outlining how to setup profile for best results. Trouble starts when clients who submitted projects sees many low price bids from seemingly great people usually from Pakistan, India, or Philippines (Elance India sub-site is very popular). Seeing how everybody charges so little, they think that professionals who charge 3-4x times more are simply overcharging. It’s hard to be appreciated for your skill when there are so many temptations for clients (often inexperienced) for paying less. This is bad for everybody, because freelancers need to bid lower and then they rush to complete more work to earn living. Clients get just “good enough” result and are not satisfied with results.  Clients who go there in general expect to pay little for your services. Pros:
Cons:
You can read more Elance reviews from design job and coding job seekers, if you want to dig deeper yourself:
Oh, before I start oDesk review, keep in mind oDesk, Elance is owned by the same company. They are more similar than you might think. oDesk.com Review oDesk registers both freelancer and client profiles. On oDesk listings you will find hourly and fixed priced projects. Be careful when accepting fixed priced projects however, because there contracts aren’t covered by oDesk Guarantee and payment is at client’s discretion. Clients can abuse this. oDesk registers both job seeker and client profiles, registration is free and it is very easy for you to get started immediately. To increase likelihood of getting hired, check oDesk contractor manual about how to setup great profile. oDesk fee is 10% from any money you make on their website. Unfortunately when reading reviews about oDesk, I found people are most upset about how hard it is to earn decent wages there. They even encourage you to bid lower. Every client tries to find the best option, where he can pay smallest amount and get highest quality. This leads to only “good enough” or “bad” results. Good difference between oDesk and Elance is that oDesk doesnt have a paid membership option. But oDesk fees are 10% compared to Elance 8.75% fee. When you register you can submit 2 job applications at a time. But you can increase this number by taking oDesk tests and receiving positive feedback ratings from clients after project has been completed. You can read more about job application quota here. I found it tough to compare Elance vs oDesk, because they are owned by the same company and in overall oDesk or Elance – there is no big difference. The biggest oDesk competitor basically is Freelancer with PeoplePerHour being new disruptor in market. Pros:
Cons:
Here you can read more oDesk reviews, if you want to dig deeper yourself:
PeoplePerHour Review PPH don't ask to pay anything upfront to start bidding. PeoplePerHour was founded in 2003 and quickly became one of the best places right now to find web designer jobs, web developer jobs, WordPress jobs, graphic designer jobs. PPH is pretty good place to get started, get part-time gigs with it's pros and cons. They are more focused on hourlies (term used there for quick jobs that take less than hour) and smaller projects. As with all big job websites they have challenges with clients expecting to pay minimal wages and having many low qualified freelancers. A friend of mine succeeded here a year ago by getting well-paying creative jobs within the UK, but lately it is getting more and more competitive, where low bidders start to take over. From reviews I read PPH seems to be very good place to get started. PPH don't ask to pay anything upfront to start bidding for jobs. You can bid on 15 projects per month for free. If you need more, you can buy 5 credits for $6.50, 10 credits for $9.50 and more. As for the fees, here is the breakdown of what you will be paying to PPH when you start working: For buyers there are basically no fees unless promoted posting, freelancers are billed % on every project.
Here is complete breakdown on PayPerPeople fees in case you want to explore yourself. If you are a professional however, you will struggle with low quality clients, PPH getting in your way to ensure you cannot work with the client directly. There’s no way to get on the phone with your client. Once they get you in the system, they intend to keep you there to ensure they take a piece from all exchanges that happen on their website. From all job search websites, this could be the best place for pros to earn extra income with hourlies.  PPH does everything to lock you in the system. Pros:
Cons:
Here you can read more PeoplePerHour.com reviews, if you want to dig deeper yourself:
99designs Review It’s a great place for beginners to build up their portfolio 99designs is the most popular so called crowd-sourcing platform. It is based on contests, which means that you get paid only if your design is picked as a winner. Still it’s a great place for beginners to start their web design career, gain experience and some professionals have found ways to constantly win the contests. You will find lots of creative jobs like graphic design, logo design, product design jobs and web design jobs on 99Designs. But there are no guarantees. There have been lots of negative emotions in the designer community about this kind of work, where clients expect to receive many different design variations, but only pay for one. However there are ways to make money here. Now 99Designs offers you a chance to keep working with your client using 1-to-1 projects with much more reasonable fees. For 1-to-1 projects 99designs charges 5% support fee + 2.5% payment processing fee = 7.5%. Designers are the most disappointed about 30-50% fee, 99designs keeps when they win a contest. This isn't clearly translated in their fees, in fact I couldn't even find in their terms specific percentage they are taking. I was only able to find something in their forums, where 1,600 votes have been gathered and 82 comments to lower the fees. 99designs reply was – "If you believe that our fees are not aligned with the value we provide, then we certainly encourage you to find an alternative that is more in line with your perceived value.” Fair enough I guess, if you don’t like something, nobody can force you to use it. But in terms of fees this means that if you complete $4,000 project you would only keep $2000-3000. Good news is that 99Designs doesn’t charge for withdrawals, except Western Union transfer which is $25. If you are really good, you will find ways to make money here. Your whole focus should be on winning the contest and getting to work with the client 1-on-1. Costly 99designs fees and no guarantee’s to be paid really discourage participating on this site though.  99Designs doesn’t charge for withdrawals. Pros:
Cons:
Microlancer, Studio.Envato Review They focus on one-time, short-term projects. MicroLancer, which is now renamed as Envato studio, is the newest marketplace to find freelance jobs online specifically focusing on artists, but they are a closed community. They handpick designers who can post their jobs there. This allows Envato to maintain quality and a good supply/demand ratio. If you want to apply, read more about it here. They focus on one-time, short-term projects, which can be done in few hours or up to 7 days. Pricing is fixed ranging between $50-500. Envato Studios keep 30% of your income. What they promise in exchange:
Since Envato Studio is still small and new I couldn't find many reviews or feedback about them. I know Envato is a trusted company and their intention to stay small is a good way to ensure quality.  Envato Studios keep 30% of your income. Overall, it seems like a good place to get creative jobs and freelance projects, and earn some extra part-time income. However right now they have more service providers than clients, so you might have a tough time getting in. Pros:
Cons:
Codeable Review Codeable maintains quality by hand-picking experts. This is a small community, where clients can get their small WordPress tasks done quickly. You will find quick front end developer jobs, php developer jobs around WordPress. This is not a place to look for full-time work. Codeable maintains quality by hand-picking WordPress experts they accept on their website. They take a 15% fee from every freelance project you complete. In exchange they do marketing and hold money on Escrow to protect both contractor and client. Codeable takes care of their community, but they also protect themselves preventing contractors from communicating directly with clients to lure them away from Codeable. If you are WordPress expert you should apply there. I didn't find any bad feedback, seems like they are doing the right thing by staying small and staying agile. You can learn more about their mindset in 2013-2014 recap article by founder of Codeable.  Codeable takes care of their community. Pros:
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AwesomeWeb Review AwesomeWeb is focused on attracting professional. After conducting our research, we noticed all of these problems with existing marketplaces. Freelance designers and developers aren’t treated well because they all seem to cater to clients. So we spent a year building our job search website before we opened the doors in September 2014. AwesomeWeb is focused on attracting professional graphic designers, web designers, and programers. We manually review each freelancer before allowing them to be shown in the search listing. By collaborating with Michael Dunlop from IncomeDiary, a site which is read by business owners and entrepreneurs, we attract high level clients who need quality help. They’re not looking for cheap outsourcers, they are looking for experts who do what they promise. Turns out, not only are freelancers frustrated, entrepreneurs are too. It’s hard to find reliable help in the ocean of low-level freelancers. We want to fix this issue. I feel like Envato studio and Codeable are doing a good job of solving this problem for quick tasks. We want to expand upon that and let freelancers find regular clients, who want to work with you full-time, part-time, or on a retainer basis. Huge marketplaces like Freelancer, Elance, oDesk, PeoplePerHour, have challenges with maintaining quality, because they let everybody in. Their support cannot handle issues, they try to create good search algorithms, but it’s not working, because there are too many people. There is too much competition, too many people offer to work for low wages resulting in bad quality results. Nobody is happy – neither job seekers, nor business owners.  We hand review each application ourselves. AwesomeWeb has stayed small and expanded slowly. We aren’t greedy. We only ask for a $17 per month subscription and let you work with clients directly. No hidden costs, pure quality – that's it. Pros:
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If you’re a web design professional in need for more clients…Only 150 spots left at $17/month. That’s why we created AwesomeWeb job search website, to provide another, better way for you to find clients and work on projects you can be proud of. We’ll be increasing our prices as we hit our member quotas. The next price increase is at 500 members. Lock in $17/month today. What is your experience using different job websites? |
Freelancer
Elance
oDesk
PeoplePerHour
99designs
Envato Studio
Codeable
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