50 Freelance Job Sites For Designers & Programmers – Best Of | Web 2.0 Being a freelancer can be extremely advantageous and is probably a dream for many designers and developers who are tired of the cubicle lifestyle. Not only do you get to choose only the jobs you are really interested in, you also have total flexibility in terms of time, whom you want to work with, and where you want to work at. The problem now is where can you go to find work that will help you sustain your freelance lifestyle? To help you with this we have listed the best 50 freelancing job sites to help you in your project search. If you a company or individual looking to outsource or hire a freelancer, these sites will be able to serve that purpose as well. More: Check out our Guide to Freelancing series for more tips, pointers and discussions of what matters most to freelancers. Freelancer Find or post a project or post on this platform to get the best bids from a gamut of skilled web designers, copywriters or freelance programmers. Elance Upwork (formerly oDesk) Toptal 99designs Fiverr Guru
How to Make Yourself Stand Out as a Freelancer Jan 11 2010 The cybersea is full of freelancers all out to make their mark and their money to keep their freelance fires burning. With an abundance of opportunity pouring in to the market, getting yourself out there and making sure you are heard and seen will help you sway those opportunities more your way. But with so many others striving to do that same thing, how is it you can rise above the multitudes to still be singled out? Of course, most of us are of the mind that our work should speak for itself, and while this is a sound principle to stand by, we first have to get people to see our work. Below are a few ideas on how you can effectively achieve this. Also consider our previous articles: It’s About the Networking, People One of the major ways to help you rise above the rest is through the effective use of the various social media networks. Let Your Personality Shine… Focus on Your Professionalism Help Your Fellow Freelancer Build Up Your Brand Use the Power of Your Pen… That’s A Wrap
5 Free to Use Freelance Design Contract Templates :Speckyboy Design Magazine The most important and essential document a freelance designer should have is a rock solid and reliable contract. The worst thing is though, freelance web designers or graphic designers, especially when they are just starting out, can ill afford the expense of paying a lawyer to draw up a decent contract. As a possible cost effective solution for you, in this article, we have highlighted some freely available contract sample templates you could use. You are allowed to use the sample in their entirety, by simply filling in the relevant personal, client and project details, and use it as your own. Or, you could use them as a reference when writing your own. Which ever way you choose to use these sample contracts, it is recommended that you still have your contract draft checked by a lawyer. Contract Killer + Sample (24 ways) Freelance Web Designer Contract by Eskymo This contract has also been written so that there is not too much technical jargon and not full of legal speak.
Creatively Handling the Admin Side of Freelancing - Smashing Magazine Advertisement There are very few who would argue against the notion that most freelance professionals, especially those operating in the design/development and writing arenas, tend to operate from a creative base. They are, by and large, a group that has chosen to let the right side of their brain steer them as far as the road stretches out before them. Having embraced their creative and artistic nature, merging it into their career path and never looking back. And for the most part, a creative mind fits well in this freelance environment because they ultimately call all the shots and are bound by very few restraints — for the most part. This road, however, is not without its bumps, and for a lot of freelancers, these bumps come when the left brain must be engaged to navigate the terrain. The administrative side of the job tends to be left-brain-heavy, and can prove difficult for some right-brainers to tackle. Also consider our previous articles: Scheduling For more on this… Accounting (ll)
8 Sure-Fire Ways Freelance Designers Can Earn Passive Income | Spyre Studios Why wouldn’t you want to make some money on the side while you’re building your freelance business? Got your attention yet? Good. As a freelance web designer, I can speak from the heart when I say that there are times in my business building process that I just wish I could work on things I liked all day long and not have worry about anything else. In this article I am going to list and discuss 8 different methods we can earn some passive income and build the ultimate side hustle. If at the end of the article you come across some questions or would like to discuss things further, just drop a comment and let me know and I’ll answer any questions you may have. Stock Photography With the relative low cost of a decent quality camera these days, anyone can take it outside for an hour or two and shoot some pictures to sell on stock photography websites. Imagine uploading 10 photos a week for an entire year. Vector/Graphic Files Reseller Hosting T-Shirts/Clothing How To’s & Ebooks Consulting
Productivity Tips for Freelancers with Toddlers Underfoot If you’re the freelancing parent of a young child, you’ll find that many productivity books are simply not applicable. They were probably written by either ultra-productive people without children, or those who are never expected to change a diaper during the daytime. Advice like, “shut your home office door and focus on the task at hand,” is clearly not for the one who’s primarily responsible for the care of an infant, toddler or preschooler who needs constant attention 24/7. Yet, you’re a professional who works at home. Boy do I know how you feel. In this post, we’ll give you some tips to help you become more productive. Get More Done in Less Time Since you have precious little time to actually work, make sure you’re being your most productive when you do work. You also need to be super organized, probably much more than the average freelancer. Keep Your Child Happy A needy child is a clingy child, and you don’t want that. Train Your Child to Sleep Well at Naps and at Night Other Thoughts
16 solutions for designers to sell digital goods | Technology Many designers keep designing between each freelance work just for the sake of it. Sometimes great stuff comes from the design we create during these gaps and not few of them end up getting their bytes covered with dust. Instead of loosing forever that precious time why don’t we sell them online? We will review a series of sites that allow you to deliver your digital goods on your own site along with hosted solutions that allows you to market the itehostingms on your site while leaving the payment process to a third party. Payloadz This service is remotely hosted and offers a free account with 1Gb and a transaction limit of $50. E-Junkie E-junkie could be one of the most popular platforms, since it has no limits on transactions or bandwidth and no transaction fee. Zen Cart DigiVendor byteCommerce Plimus Zipidee
Essential Project Management and Collaboration Tools for Freelancers | tripwire magazine A while back I posted a few lists of Freelancer Tools for tracking time and collecting money. Great tools but they only take you half the way. There is more to delivering great projects to clients on time than these can offer. Keeping track on tasks/activities, scope, agreements, plans, dependencies etc. is critical and will be more and more essential as size and complexity increase. In this post I have collected some of the most interesting tools for tracking elements of Project Management and Collaboration. Hope you find something you can use and that you will let us all know if I missed a good tool you think deserves to be added to the list! Advertisement Writeboard – As simple as it gets really.This this service provides free web-based text documents you can share, that save edits, so you can collaborate, roll back and compare. ConceptShare - If you need to share your designs and get feedback this is a cool tool. Remember The Milk – To-Do List manager.
17 Essential Online Web Apps for Freelancer Web Developers Web development is not an easy job and especially in today’s word when technology changes are so rapid that every web developer has to work out with an extra pace. Since time limitations always remain with every developer, so I am presenting a wonderful collection of online tools and applications to speed up development progress process. I am sure these freely available tools will improve the accuracy and quality of your development. You would also like Chrome Extensions for Web Developers. Here is the most wanted list of these Applications and Tools. 1. Carbonmade is a very excellent application for web developers to manage their online portfolio. Advertisement 2. You need some text for each of your layout you design to analyze width, height, margins, and look of certain areas. 3. This small but very useful utility is a service that provides browser compatibility test. 4. When designing a new website, cross browser testing is the biggest issue for web developers. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.