Freelancer is basically an online work market such as Fiverr, Upwork, Elance, and oDesk. It allows employers to find, hire, and compensate freelancers efficiently without wasting time on lengthy application processes. Freelancer doesn’t seem to have quite the same virtual office setting that Upwork boasts of, however it still has many features that guarantee that employers are getting value for their cash. For one, the number of profiles a company can create is seemingly limitless, which means that you can always turn a freelance gig into multiple ones, if you so desire. Many companies don’t realize this, but there is a lot of competition on freelancer sites, so you can pretty much always find work by posting your profile once, then potentially adding jobs to it over again.
Elance and oDesk are two sites that I would personally stay away from, because of how they treat freelancers. They are huge scams run by Internet con men, who are out to scam you and make money off of you. Even Fiverr doesn’t have nearly the same level of integrity as those two sites. If you want to find some quality jobs on Elance and do, go for them, but do so with your eyes open.
The other option that you have when looking for freelancers on freelancer sites is to use the search engines. Google is the best for this purpose, because you can type in keywords related to your freelancer needs and immediately come up with hundreds of results. Another trick is to go through the freelancer’s website and see what types of projects they are offering, whether they’re freelance gigs, web design, programming, data entry, accounting, or some other field. Once you’ve read their portfolio and gotten an idea of their skills, narrow your search even more by choosing jobs that are near your own skill level. If you stick with these two methods, you will find a large number of opportunities for upswings on the online work marketplace online.
