When people find out I’m a freelancer, one of the first questions every single time is where I get work from. And it makes sense, given I had no either before I started this journey. So, four months in now – where’s the work coming from?

Free Freelance Platforms

It was the first one I found People Per Hour – the self-proclaimed “the UK’s number one platform for freelancers”. A platform where you can create a profile and pitch for work that’s being advertised or be contacted directly by people needing work done. As soon as I started having ideas about freelancing, I signed up. I thought this would be the perfect way to start – a small dabble on the side of employment, building up a profile and a portfolio before deciding when, or even if, to make the leap to doing it as my sole source of income. What I liked is that it’s easy to set up, and they require you to get verified on the site by completing work within the first three months. It felt like a good start to ensure it was full of real people rather than online lurkers. Work offered covers all sorts of areas, from website design to vocal coaching. I also knew people who’d used it to commission one-off bits of work that needed a specialist skill set like graphic design.

So I signed up, and spent the first few week eagerly trawling for opportunities. And what I found was a whole lot of work wanted for absolutely no money. I tried the mindset of “I’m starting out, I need to get some experience under my belt” but the level of demands in some of the outlines was eye-watering. There was no way of denying that bad gut feeling that you’d be trapped in endless rounds of revisions and updates on any work to bank pennies. Or worse end in minus figures, both financially and mental-health wise.

I did one pitch, and that was the entirety of my experience. There’s a ton of similar platforms, including Fiverr a digital services platform for freelancers, who don’t have the same verification process. Alongside them there’s UpWork and there’s a lot debate about the pros and cons of each such as Codeless’s article Fiverr vs Upwork: Is Fiverr Better Than Upwork?

While I haven’t had any success, it’s interesting to read that they work really well for some people, and also that there’s a pretty long list of other options to consider as a freelancer on the hunt for work: Should You Use Job Boards to Jumpstart Your Career? (unemployable.com):

It depends whether it works for you to stay on general platforms or head to the specialist sites.

Paid Freelance Platforms

Another option is some of the closed paid-network options like Freelance Heroes which operate a £12 monthly free and one of their services is a jobs board. So far, I’ve avoided paying to join any networks so the range and quality of opportunities is an unknown so far.

General Job Sites

General job sites like Charity Job which covers all voluntary and community sector roles, have provided some interesting results. You can filter by contract or temporary role types, or by key word such as freelance or consultant. Equally I’ve had a rummage through Guardian Jobs using a similar approach as they’re quite well known for charity roles. Both are paid advertising options for the charity though so I think are more likely to be used for on-going roles rather than one-off pieces of work.

Social Media

LinkedIn and Twitter seem to be used to advertise quite a few opportunities. I think I’ve applied for one so far, but I’ve passed quite a few onto freelancer-colleagues. On the flip side, I’ve been passed a few good ones that freelancer-colleagues have spotted via social media.

I think that highlights the best and worst thing about opportunities via social media. They’re free to post and easy for an organisation to put together. They can reach a wide audience quickly and are straightforward to share across colleagues and networks. However, unless you use LinkedIn’s paid-for jobs service, there’s no set structure for how someone flags an opportunity on social media, which means sometimes you just don’t see them. You might search for keywords or hashtags that are just a little off theirs – is it #job, #charityjob #nonprofitjob or is it not under job at all but #opportunity or #vacancy or simply #freelance or #consultant, or maybe they haven’t used any hashtags at all. There’s a bit of a needle in a haystack feeling when trawling through. Although my preference so far of the two is LinkedIn for its ability to filter by post and date at least, so you’ve got a fighting chance of finding relevant recent content.

Word of Mouth

So far, I’m a little too early in to have developed much of a reputation or portfolio in the freelance sector yet so I didn’t think this would pop up yet for me. But amazingly a professional network I used to volunteer with had a recent change of approach and decided to pay for some capacity to move work forward. I was lucky enough to be remembered by previous colleagues and that it coincided with perfectly with my move to freelancing. I’m hopeful this one is particularly useful in future years given my specialism in palliative care and volunteer management. Getting exposure to the wider network in my new role feels a really positive move.

While I’ve set up a website and am attempting regular LinkedIn content as a freelance consultant, again I don’t feel confident either will create direct leads. They are, however, I think really important to help organisations “verify” me once initial contact is made.

Underground Networks

Confession time – the primary way I’ve got work so far is via the group that got me started in freelancing in the first place. And that was all down to a complete coincidence of a conversation, which a new contact in my running club who happened to be doing almost the exact same freelance work I was considering. She very generously invited me to a closed group which is set up for a group of like-minded charity-focused consultants.  Not only have they been instrumental in advice on everything freelance but they’re also a generous and collaborative group who regularly share opportunities – some they’ve spotted independently and some they come across through their networks and contacts. I’ve been lucky to secure short and longer-term work through these contacts and absolutely love the group.

Chance Encounters

I don’t know how representative my experience is, but I suspect I’m one of the lucky ones. Without the group I honestly don’t know what level of success I would have had through the other routes. The networks have provided the right access to the right kinds of opportunities, and this often cuts through some of the extra faff of the freelancer platforms and endless scrolling on some sites. It just goes to prove that sometimes you never know which conversations or connections are going to be the influential ones in your life.

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash