It’s 2017 and freelance work is now more accessible than ever.

Just a few years ago the idea of online work was very difficult for people to understand and the opportunities were far and few between… those days are gone.

There are plenty of websites out there now for you to find work online, these are just a few of them:

Upwork.com

Upwork.com is one of the best freelancer websites out there. If you have expertise then you can find work for just about any skill-set e.g. web design, graphic design, online teaching, administration, translation etc.

The important thing to remember is that you do not necessarily need specialist skills – you can also find unskilled work on here. For example, you could transcribe audio files for up to $20 an hour. All you would have to do is listen to an audio file and type out what the person is saying. There are lots of jobs like this and the best thing is that anyone can do it!

Sign up, create a profile and start looking for new opportunities today.

Freelancer.com

This is another online freelance site where you can find good working opportunities. You can decide on how much you are willing to do the work for and bid for the clients.

There are also different versions of freelancer.com for each country e.g. freelancer.co.uk, freelancer.co.es. Make sure to sign up to your native countries version to earn in your home currency (if that’s what you want).

Guru.com

Another freelancer website catered towards professionals. They focus on finding talented freelancers and have a pool of over 1.5 million freelancers currently signed up.

If you have a specific and in-demand skill set then this will be the place for you to find reliable, repeat work. Simply create a profile and showcase your previous projects and the companies will find you.

Fiverr.com

Fiverr.com is built on the idea of micro-work. You can create a ‘gig’ depending on what service you want to offer and people can choose to buy that gig for a fiver ($5). The gigs can be absolutely anything you can think of. For example, I once saw someone offering (and very successfully) to write a message on a potato and send it any address. He made thousands.

Update: Fiverr have recently changed their terms of serice and now have a $1 administration fee. Therefore the total cost will be $6 per gig. Still waiting on the name-change to Sixerr.

Gumtree.com

I was surprised when doing the research for this article that Gumtree didn’t feature at all in most people’s lists. Although a bit ‘old-hat’, there are still plenty of opportunities on here for remote work that you might not find elsewhere.

People usually post to Gumtree because they don’t know where else to advertise. Take advantage of this and you might be able to find repeat clients that aren’t registered to any of the previously mentioned sites. The same applies to Craigslist and any similar classifieds sites.

Friends and Family

Getting off the laptop and talking to your friends and family will always be a good way of finding new clients. People often talk about the ‘strength of weak ties’ and I couldn’t agree more. If one of your friends mentions that they have a friend that needs some work done, 100% follow up on it.

Even though we are spending more and more time on the internet, nothing will replace the human connection. In fact, you will often find repeat work from a satisfied client who you have met in person or who you have a common connection with.

Good luck with finding your own freelance work throughout 2017.

If you know of any more sites that you think should be included in this list, please comment below.

Jordan Simons

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