Are There Any Decent Freelancing Opportunities Out There In 2014?

Work is horrendously slow and the only forum work I can find is usually penny chasers.

I've started looking at other opportunities to make some money including niche websites (I'm not sure these are still viable), forum posting and freelance writing sites. I've been writing since 06, but ever since 2014 hit, all of my clients dropped off the face of the Earth and the BST section here is utterly sad.

I stumbled upon Postloop, got a nearly 5.0 rating and then did some math on it. Just to earn a measly $15 a day, I would have to find and register with 30 forums that allow me to post 5 times a day. 150 well constructed posts (at least 5 lines) a day just to earn $15. I don't care what part of the world you're from, that can't sound appealing to anyone.

Every list I can find of decent freelance sites contains old and outdated information with sites no longer in operation.

I sure as heck don't want to go to the $1/100 word content mills like Textbroker. Being judged by uptight editors who expect $100 articles and being demoted because of a comma or two is just insulting at their pay rate.

I feel like I'm wandering around in a world that's been depleted of all its valuable resources. Is there any hope for freelancers to make a decent buck anymore in 2014? Or is everyone still trying to squeeze out Diamond quality work for the price of Bronze?

 

Freelancing is hard. I am constantly stressed over money and time! At this exact moment I have over $550 owed to me from clients and I have been waiting weeks to get paid. One person is waiting on feedback from his creative director, another one is too busy with an emergency and I have been making what seems like endless rounds of revisions (something new pops up that they want changed every-other-day) for two others.

I am not upset and I certainly don't take it personal, I offer to make revisions, although I don't like it when client's come up with new sets of revisions days after I already made revisions. It's like "come on, just tell me everything at once so I can get the project completed!" I am too nice though, especially cause I want good reviews and clients can get away without paying you on fixed-rate jobs. All it takes is one bad review and then you're screwed, it will always be harder to get more work (on sites like oDesk, Elance, etc).

Freelancing = Modern Day Slave ?

At the same time, I have some jobs for over $20/hr and I can't make this much money an hour at a regular job - so it's not that bad, just have to find long-term freelance contracts that pay well.

 

Oh, you guys think copywriting and web design is bad? Try being a freelance consultant. I don't complain though, I read somewhere that the best job is the one you are happy to do for free, not that I entirely agree with it but it makes me giggle and that's all I can do right now.

@coreygeer ditch all these so called freelancing sites and go directly to media publishing sites. You will get paid journalist rates and there are jobs out there for news content writers.

@cronik i'm guessing you are in the webdesign industry, good luck man that is one tough market to crack now.

 

It seems that most freelancers are under valued. I had a client whom I had been working for the past months. For some reason he gave me less and lesser projects, and kept bargaining the cost that I charged him. I eventually gave in, and soon he started complaining that there were "errors" to the articles, which are non-existent! He now owes me a sum of money but disappeared into thin air. And that is not the only client that's like that, a few of them are similar. I do still write articles, but then, I don't earn much any longer. Seems like there are lesser and lesser great freelancing opportunities out there....

 

Just looking at the marketplace here anymore is sad. Everyone wants .50c writers and they think just because they're getting replies that they're on the right track.

A lot of the English clients and people I used to see posting here have been scared off by all the broken English penny chasers.

I wish the forum forced people to specify how much they were paying and there was two sections in the content marketplace. One section for the people willing to pay $5 per article or less and another section for the people willing to pay more than that.

It just kills me, because I see the exact same people coming back week after week looking for new writers. These people continuously hire .50c writers and never obtain the results they're looking for. Does anyone ever put two and two together?

When Wendys wanted their website re-done, they didn't go to ODesk or here to look for $50-$100 web developers. They went with the highest bidder, which was Resource Interactive out of Columbus, Ohio. A lot of Grade A companies with high end websites do that. They paid $500,000 for a brand new website. Do you think their site would look half as decent if they continued to come to this forum looking for slave labor?

Then you have writing sites like Cracked.com. Can you imagine if they started coming here week after week looking for .50c per 100 writers? They pay $100 for every submission sent to them (of course it has to be approved).

The problem with this forum and other freelancing sites is that it seems to be inhabited by new business owners trying to achieve greatness and success through mediocrity.

I've tried the middle-man route. It's not nearly as easy as it looks and I had to go through hundreds of low budget writers before I could even find one that wrote intelligible and delivered things on a schedule. That was merely because the guy had no idea that writing basic English qualified him to earn more than he was currently earning.

 

I get most of my web design jobs local and it is about the same deal. Big companies have large advertizing budgets and pay well and small businesses try to get everything as cheap as they can.

I am just a small time freelancer so I get the small business owners. It keeps getting worse and worse people think because the economy sucks that people will work for nothing. I have low over head but I still have to make enough to live.. shelter, food, etc. I sometimes tell people that they might find someone at the homeless shelter to do that on the library computer for that kind of money. lol

A lot of my clients are sinking. Their companies are bleeding red and will probably die. This sucks because they get stressed out cut money everywhere and are hard to deal with.

I always wish I could just find a development team that would just dish me out some steady work from one of their big successful well paying clients.

 

I said this in another post a while ago: It's probably better to approach companies directly instead of working for mills or agencies. You'd get paid more. However, you'll also be fully liable.

 

Although the articles these small companies on 'budget' are paying is considered dirt cheap, they forget a number of issues.. Effects the quality of website, effects on their potential customers or readers, and worst part of all, losing their branding or whatever they are aiming to achieve! If only they understand these factors........the world would be a better place for freelancers...

 

Have you tried reaching out to your local companies? How about reaching out to blog owners with decent sites but do not update a lot? There are a lot of opportunities available but you have to reach out to the companies to know they are looking. You can find decent gigs by marketing on social media too. Keep in mind what you put into your marketing is what you get out of it. Jobs are not just going to come to you, you have to go out and seek them yourself. I have been writing online since 2011 and even though I have had my ups and downs my daily marketing techniques have allowed me to make a full time living working online and I have never had to go back into the brick and mortar world.

 

I seriously doubt. Things are getting worse for most freelancers. It very much depends on the location.
It seems that there are so many people that don't respect their work and themselves to charge very low rates.
On the other hand it seems that business owners doesn't care for the quality of work and buy exceptionally cheap services.

 

Scribie is pretty good. They are paying $1 for every 6 minute audio file that you transcribe for them and it usually takes about 20 minutes to go through one of these files.

The downside of this is that your application will take up to 2 months, sometimes even more so if you join them today you still have to wait a very long time to get approved by them and start working.

 

Have you considered signing up for Constant Content? If you can write flawlessly, the money can be really good. Plus, once you start to get noticed on there, you'll get a lot of private jobs sent your way.

 

I've heard about Constant Content, but I've also heard buyers are very few on there. I might as well give it a shot and start writing on some hot niches there.

I do like that you can set your own price, so you can factor in their 30% or whatever it is cut.

 

Yeah, you can set any price you want on there and because their guidelines are so strict regarding grammar, punctuation, readability etc. the buyers on the site are happy to pay for quality. It's a good idea to look at the 'recently sold' pages as it gives you an idea of what is selling, and their guidelines before you submit a post. They are stringent but it's worth it to write for an elite marketplace. Another good thing with it is that you can write articles for the site when your client work is quiet, and even if they don't sell straight away, they may do in future, so you're spending your time wisely.

 

it is sad because see people offering $1 for 500 words of content. Then they hire an Indian author who makes spelling errors in their profile. It is frustrating for those people who deliver quality (Yes that sounds cocky I realize) but also want to make a decent living. I do not need to become rich, but I want to be able to make a living.

 

The editors there can't be worse than the editors at Textbroker. You're expected to deliver a $100 article off of a $10 budget.

There's two editors there and they both have different rules regarding commas. You can be demoted an entire level and lose a lot of work if one editor doesn't like one of your commas in an article. It doesn't matter if all of the clients rated you 5/5 on that site.

Oh well, can't expect much from content mills.

As far as CC goes, I have nothing but time on my hands at the moment. I've been going back and forth if I want to build my own site to sell my services or not. Part of me knows that $20 per article writers get a lot of their business from their own website and the other part of me is hesitant to build it because it could be a giant waste of time.

Then again, wondering why people don't want to pay for quality and browsing job boards to make a living is a waste of time as well, so it wouldn't hurt anything to launch a site.

 

Still some good money out there for content, mainly specialized content. Some niches are still not saturated, you just have to target the right audience. DP isn't the only forum on the planet ya know...

 

If you're promoting writing services then a free blogger.com or weebly.com site will be fine, you don't have to get your own website built. Use social media to promote your services and start sharing your website with your current clients. Put your website everywhere, in your email signature, etc. Promoting writing services is way easier than web design, at least it has been for me.

 

Web development is something you have to actively find clients for. You would starve if you tried to find people on forums to pay $1,000 or more for web development.

If I went that route full time, I wouldn't utilize job boards or online forums at all for that. If you think writing services is saturated with penny chasers, the web development business is way worse. You have foreigners offering logos for $5, PSD to HTML services for $50 a website.

Sure, your site won't be responsive and the code will probably look like a newbie who just got his first WSIWYG built it, but at least it'll be cheap I guess.

I currently assist a decently successful web design and development studio and some of my friends offline are into development. You'll go hungry if you try to compete with penny chasers in that field. I know the writing field can look bare at times but development is just brutal unless you pick up corporations and $3,000+ clients.

I don't jack around with the $500 clients. Every website I touch has to look good in every major resolution and every browser.

 

I feel that freelancer.com and elance.com are good freelance sites to start off. Although most of the clients wants cheap articles. But I also know of some projects willing to pay few few hundreds for good quality articles. Some of them are willing to pay, but you have to show them you are up for the job.