Freelance Sites

Freelance Site Assessment

Whatever you think of the difference between going full-time with the 20-year employer of your choise versus freelancing your expertise to the best paying best fit versus a mix of the two (i.e. moonlighting), you have to admit that freelanced professional services is certainly becoming more common.

With that in mind, I have listed here some of the freelance web sites that I use most often and a short quip of what I like (or dislike) about some of the freelance job sites I frequent for my opportunities.

I plan to revise this list over time to provide a normalized assessment (e.g. defiing several categories and giving each site a score on each category so you can compare apples to tangarines). Between now and then, feel free to read and click through to what I think of these sites.

Honorable Mentions

So there are tons (of the metric kind) of freelance sites out there; too many to effectively list or describe here. There are, however, a few that I wanted to include for reference anyway.

And no, I do not have a share or stake in any of the companies or sites listed here (yet - wouldn't it be cool though?).

	guru.com is by far my favorite freelance site. It is easy to find opportuities, provides clear and easy contract tools, and notifies you only of the gigs you specifically want to know about. I have a paid account here (abt. $100/yr) and get some nice advantages for my investment.
	oDesk.com is one that I haven't used very much. Nonetheless, I like the presentation and the way they go about providing gigs. I'd say this is a great site for starter freelancers. I hope it gets more popular among the client groups to provide more opportunities in the field sooner than later.
	SoloGig.com is another great freelance site - a lot like hotgigs.com (not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg here). Tons of opportunities and easy to use.
	HitGigs.com is a Great site where it is typically easy to identify good-fit opportunities. Most gigs show the duration and budget for the opportunity up front, which certainly helps in deciding which ones to go after.
	InnoCentive.com is the most amazing site on the Internet - whether Al Gore had anything to do with it or not, with a very unique approach. Any company (or "Seeker") with a need to solve a particular problem posts their need for an innovation, and the "Solver" who solves it gets the incentive ($5K-$100K). Freelance solutions rather than just freelance expertise.
	iFreelance.com is another great site for those who may not be highly experienced in freelance work - or in technical work, but wants to find great opportunities. My only complaint with iFreelance is that there is no non-paid account that allows you to submit a bid.
	ComputerWork.com is what is says. Personally I think there are many temp recruiters using it (which means you get contracted by a contractor instead of contracted to the client), but lots of good opportunities.
	guru.com is one of the most powerful sites I know. Not just for searching job opps, but also for networking and finding just the right contact at a specific company where you want to freelance. It also lets you build a network of your own. Join my network if you like, which (through multiple connections) gives you access to a million+ professionals.