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8 job boards, for freelance web designers, that don’t suck
Posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 under freelance by Dustin Brewer.Being a freelance web designer is a competitive field, everyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of how to open Dreamweaver, or use Photoshop’s motion blur tool think they can hack it as a web designer. Not to mention a number of third-world countries’ easy ability to underbid you by a fraction of what you charge hourly.
All kidding aside, it is difficult to find decent work on job bidding sites due to the sheer amount of people bidding and the overwhelming amount of people looking for the lowest price and expecting the highest quality. This listing of freelance job boards is just that, a listing of just freelance job boards (that don’t suck) where you are hired (mostly) based on your talent rather than how low you can bid.
I use a number of these job boards and look for opportunities that fit my skill set as well as my rates, so finding work on them can sometimes be difficult. Especially if you make a list of them and share it with a few thousand people.
The list of freelance web design job boards
FreelanceSwitch – http://jobs.freelanceswitch.com/
This job board maintained by FreelanceSwitch probably has the most amount of jobs posted regularly, and they are typically pretty good quality. Designers do have to pay for their membership at $7/month and from talking with people I’ve won contracts with through it they literally get hundreds of responses, so there is a lot of competition when you apply for a project which makes it important to stand out from the other freelance web designers applying. You can also create a profile of your freelance web design skills.
AuthenticJobs – http://www.authenticjobs.com/
This job board has a mix of full time positions and freelance positions. Typically the freelance position I see on here are of pretty high quality and the companies aren’t looking for cheap labor but talented web designers and user interface designers.
Krop – http://www.krop.com/
This is very similar to AuthenticJobs as far as talent goes, a very high demand for creatives. I don’t see quite as many freelance positions on this site but for the work I do see it is worth my time to check it.
Smashing Jobs – http://jobs.smashingmagazine.com/
Smashing Jobs has a ton of work and it is pretty regularly updated, there are quite a few full time positions that out weight the amount of freelance work available but it definitely has some great opportunities on there, even if there is a lot of competition.
Designm.ag Job board – http://designm.ag/jobs/
Another great job board with a ton of freelance work available. There are quite a few good jobs to be found through it.
Design jobs on the wall – http://jobs.webdesignerwall.com/
Not nearly as many freelance jobs available as some of the others but the few that are found are usually high quality and worth the effort to send over your information.
Sitepoint’s Looking to Hire – http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/categories/looking-to-hire
Quite nearly the craigslist of this list, there are a few good freelance design opportunities to be found through this forum occasionally but a lot of it is pure junk, worth a quick skimming though.
Craigslist aggregator – http://jaysonng.com/jobs/aggregator
Although craigslist rarely has good freelance web design opportunities (depending on your location) this aggregator actually checks all (i think?) of the web info / design categories across the various locations for easy skimming.
Freelance web design job board advice
Some of the job boards don’t have a ton of freelance work available but going through each one of these sites at least once a day is the best way to find new work.
What job boards (or methods) have you found work well for you?
Whats Next?
19 Responses to “8 job boards, for freelance web designers, that don’t suck”
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About Dustin Brewer
Dustin Brewer is a freelance web designer based out of Oklahoma City, OK passionate about web standards, and beautiful web design. Dustin Brewer has been in the web design industry for over 8 years through freelance and professional experience. If you are interested in hiring Dustin Brewer please visit the web design services page to find out more information. You can also checkout the web design portfolio.
Great post! I was thinking about this last night for my advanced web design students… I’ll send them in from the class notes. Thanks
great collection
thank you.
37 Signal’s and CSSMania’s Job Boards can have some great ones too. I’ve had the most success with FreelanceSwitch’s though. Great list.
Amber,
I didn’t list 37signals because I can’t recall it ever having a freelance job posting. Also, I looked up CSS Mania and I wasn’t able to find a job board. Thanks for the suggestions, glad you liked the list.
Thanks for including the DesignM.ag job board Dustin. When I saw the title I was hoping it would be included because I don’t want to suck.
[...] Visit Source. [...]
Great list! These sord of websites are hard to find because google results just show spam. Thank you. I replied to 3 jobs on the last one mentioned.
Cheap web hosting do not offer much disk space storage. This can serve as a hindrance especially if you are projecting to expand your web site through having more web contents such as graphics, video and audio files. The bandwidth (data transfer) in affordable web site hosting service is also limited.
[...] 8 Job Boards, For Freelance Web Designers, That Don’t Suck [...]
A friend recommended elance.comto me. He said he never had any problems there… Didn’t find the time to check it out by myself…
Regards, Michael
Freshwebjobs.com went a bit stale for a while, the site always looked great but the job listings never really seemed to get updated. But that’s all changed now. The site has been relaunched, same beautiful design but all new “fresh” jobs. Plus we are offering free listings for a limited time.
http://www.freshwebjobs.com
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Thanks for the list… I applied for a couple things too.
-jason
[...] 4 Likes jQuery: » Announcing the Official jQuery Podcast 3 Likes 8 job boards, for freelance web designers, that don’t suck | Dustin Brewer Web Design Being a freelance web designer is a competitive field, everyone with even a rudimentary [...]
I have looked into Odesk.com. There are a ton of freelance job postings. I haven’t yet had any luck getting a job through it, but I’ll keep trying!
http://www.osgiant.com/jobs/anywhere
osgiant.com has tons of freelance listings from all over the web.
Looks like a great compilation. We have been to most of these sites, and generally we would agree that they don’t suck…
Except for one little factor. Where we are in Sunny South Africa, we cannot get paid via PayPal, so, any site that does not offer a workable alternative, we have to pass by.
[...] One of the quickest ways to find work as a freelance web designer is through various job boards, finding the right job board can be difficult. It all comes down to the freelancer’s skills and availability of portfolio examples. I recently wrote an article going over, in my opinion, some of the best job boards for freelance web designers. [...]