Steps to Find Freelance Jobs in Your Free Time

November 20th, 2007 · 16 Comments

Here are some steps to finding freelance jobs. Set yourself up so that you can find potential positions in the 10 minutes you have before leaving for baseball or on your lunch break. It’ll take a few minutes to set up, but once you do it really pays off. Save time and (hopefully) make money!

Step 1. Figure out where you go most often to find jobs.

For a writer, that might be http://sfbay.craigslist.org/wrg/ (wrg = “writing gig”) and other similar Craiglist postings. It might also be your account at Guru.com (which will provide you with a list of things you’re eligible and potentially qualified for) or aboutfreelancewriting.com’s job list.

Step 2. Bookmark them all.

Either put them in a Freelance bookmark folder that you can “Open in Tabs” or, if you have a “Bookmark all tabs” button (mine creates a bookmark icon that’ll open them all without actually making a folder for them) use that. You know your browser best. Here’s what you want.

Step 3. Hunt.

Now, when you have a few free minutes, make your all your bookmarked sites open into tabbed browsing. You should be able to do this in one click.

Step 4. Collect.

To collect interesting jobs, use Google Notebook, e-mail yourself, use notepad/Wordpad (both open quickly in my experience), print them on the other side of already-used paper which you will later recycle, etc. Save this! It’d be awful to go through lists and find possibilities only to realize you hadn’t saved the file and have to do it all over again.

Step 5. Apply!

When you have time, now you’ll have a nice little list to get started on. You might even be able to get one out of the way (depending on its complexity) before your spare time is up. If you have a general proposal which just needs tweaking per job (and this proposal actually works and doesn’t feel stilted) then you’re in good shape.

(If you use some sort of program which sends you eligible jobs, file them all in the same folder or use a Google label for them. Then you can just open that folder or search that label instead of Step 3. Or as well as Step 3.)

Happy hunting!

Note: Here’s a follow-up where I put together a bunch of Craiglist writing/editing job/gig feeds.

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Categories: alternative income & freelance · career & self improvement · writing

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16 responses so far ↓

1 FinanceIsPersonal.com // Nov 20, 2007 at 11:19 am

Good list, I’ve never thought of craigslist as a place to search for a freelance job! A great place to find freelance writing jobs is ProBlogger’s Job Board. I found my 2nd writer by using their service!
2 Mrs. Micah // Nov 20, 2007 at 11:25 am

Thanks, FinanceIsPersonal. I’d forgotted ProBlogger but I use them too.

When using craigslist, don’t just stick to your local area either (though don’t neglect it, there might be some things you’re eligible for) because many gigs and some in the jobs list are telecommuter-friendly! There’s a whole list of the cities here: http://www.craigslist.org/about/cities.html
3 Dave // Nov 20, 2007 at 12:09 pm

Hi Mrs. Micah. I came upon your blog from The Simple Dollar and thought I would leave my thoughts on Craigslist searching here. I used to be driven nuts by the painful inflexibility of Craigslist searching until I found out about Yahoo Pipes. I wrote about it over on my blog if you want to check it out. Yahoo Pipes would allow you to automate many Craigslist job searches and have the results delivered to you in whichever feed reader you prefer. Pretty cool if you ask me!

Check it out here: http://www.davidrhunt.com/index.php/web-20/15/craigslist-craziness
4 Mrs. Micah // Nov 20, 2007 at 12:13 pm

Thanks David! I’ll definitely check that out. I love that kind of thing.
5 Kelly // Nov 20, 2007 at 2:45 pm

I am a freelancer myself. I agree, put all of your job sources in one place. That is what I did which led me to making my blog Freelancer for hire http://www.kellybax.com
It has tons of daily job listings and I also feature freelancers on my blog to help them find jobs. Great blog you have here. Let me know if you would like to exchange links

Thanks,
Kelly
6 mrsmicah // Nov 20, 2007 at 6:57 pm

Very cool, Kelly! I’m still working on my blogroll, but when I get it done you should be on it!
7 Kelly // Nov 21, 2007 at 6:18 am

Thanks! I am sure we will talk again
9 wealthy_1 // Nov 23, 2007 at 8:04 am

This is very helpful information. I’m going to look into this.

Thanks, Mrs. Micah!