Top 10 Freelance Web Design Sites
Working as a freelance web designer, developer, graphic artist, or outsourcing service provider can be challenging. Long hours, high competition for jobs, tight deadlines, and low budgets make running your own web design firm difficult. There are a lot of websites that provide a way for clients and designers to come together, but which of these are reliable places to find quality jobs? We did a review of the top 10 freelance job boards on webdevnews.net, and the results may be of interest to those looking for new places to network and find clients.
Our top 10 Freelance Sites for Web Design are:
- odesk.com
- getafreelancer.com
- elance.com
- rentacoder.com
- getacoder.com
- scriptlance.com
- guru.com
- serebra.com
- sologig.com
- Sourceforge Marketplace
These sites are also good when your workload becomes too much and you need to build a team to work together on projects. Outsourcing through the freelance boards builds a lot of new possibilities for independent web designers. If you need a custom theme designed, a new module coded, someone to do your SEO work, or to lay the installation groundwork for a site to finish up later, you can usually find good people on these boards to work together with from around the world.
We chose oDesk as the top freelancer site because of the number of jobs listed, the quality of the development projects, the innovative billing, collaboration, and work monitoring options, as well as its overall quality and professionalism. GetaFreelancer doesn’t even come close at second place, but the volume of projects posted their and the low rates for outsourcing make it a vibrant marketplace. We had issues with the membership fees at elance, but it is really a top quality site for finding good projects.
To see the full review and find out more information on these freelance sites, or to post your own comments and experiences with freelancing, visit the original review at webdevnews.net.
Download Design
October 20th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Thanks for giving oDesk the #1 spot on your list! We’re always trying to improve what we do, so please don’t hesitate to contact us and let us know how you think we can be even better.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
The biggest problem with oDesk is the high ratio of unqualified bids to qualified bids. However, places like E-Lance take it to the other extreme, making it so you don’t get near as many bids. I’m not sure how to find a happy medium, but I think one must exist.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
I agree with the comment above mine about unqualified vs. qualified. I’m sure oDesk is great for a lot of people – but from a freelance perspective, it’s really hard to get work sometimes. I’m competing against people who can do 3D animations for $8 an hour. I’m based out of San Francisco – I am literally incapable of competing with that.
I’ve gotten two jobs from oDesk, and they worked out really well for me, so I can’t complain. But for every job I get, I’ve certainly bid on ten others. For domestic freelancers charging anything close to market price, it’s hard to get noticed. Such is the life of looking at freelance websites, I suppose. Still, oDesk does what they sought out to do – offer a really easy way for people to post jobs and get freelancers. I just wish there were more people posting – much like the comment above mine, thankfully – that were looking for qualified bidders rather than the lowest price.
oDesk seems to be pretty heavy with people that just want it done fast and cheap. I can respect that from a business model standpoint – but I just wish the competition was a little more balanced.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Jen:
I actually know a couple people that moved to India (from the US) because they couldn’t live in the US and compete.
That may be an extreme solution, but part of what oDesk does is give people access to developers world wide. Unfortunately, that puts a lot of us at a disadvantage. I stopped getting work from sites like that, and started sourcing work TO these sites, so that’s really where my perspective comes from. You’d be one of the “qualified” offers, but even then there might be less expensive qualified people. Either way, they part that frustrates me are the unqualified ones. The ones that can’t complete the project no matter what they charge.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
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January 15th, 2009 at 7:25 am
You forgot freelanceswitch.com! Great list though.
February 25th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Thanks..
May 6th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
i think RentaCoder is better in getting response on jobs, i think odesk is heavy with a load of a lot of professionals out there……….i tried posting jobs on guru.com, elance, odesk and rentacoder.com…..
i found that rentacoder was the best in getting early responses
November 12th, 2009 at 12:38 am
Nice list.. Nice resource for those looking to sign up to freelancing sites to make some extra money. Thanks for this..