Freelancing: Working Out of the Box, with Help from the Web

FreelanceSwitch is perhaps the best freelance resource on the Web. Here you'll find a list of archived columns full of advice for beginning freelancers. This site always points freelancers in the direction of useful online sites and tools, and provides insightful and often humorous advice about the freelance world.

Phil Gyford (a Londoner who has been freelancing since 2003) put together a beginner's guide to freelancing that is quite comprehensive and very easy to read. He covers issues like marketing yourself, dividing work and personal time, and billing clients. Although some advice is specific to those workers in the United Kingdom (tax advice and the like), the greater part of this guide will be useful to any freelancer.

Entrepreneur.com has an article called  "How to Freelance Your Expertise," by Andrea C. Poe, that has some quick tips about how much money to save before you begin freelancing as well as how to generate business. Poe also provides a list of some common areas in which people find freelance work.

The Riley Guide is a useful resource for any jobseeker, and the "Telecommuting and Work-At-Home" section is particularly interesting to a contract worker or telecommuter. You'll find a list of a few job posting sites as well as some tips for avoiding work-at-home scams. This section even suggests some less conventional home-based businesses, such as organizer or professional pet sitter.

Garrett Dimon has some resources for those thinking about going it alone. This U.K.-based writer has some good, brief tips about what to consider before going solo. Another article on this site is specific to becoming a Web developer but can apply to anyone considering freelance work and provides more concise advice.

Matthew Stibbe is a freelance journalist in the United Kingdom who has some very useful tips for those considering freelance writing. This blog entry is specific to writers and doesn't go into much detail about the logistics of general freelancing, but provides hints about battling writers block, sending story pitches to editors, marketing and business development, and more.

Coroflot is a fast and free way for creative professionals to put their work online. You are allowed to upload an unlimited number of files to your portfolio (so long as they are not larger than 200KB each). Coroflot also serves as a job posting site and networking community. Even if you are not in the creative field yourself, it is worthwhile to browse the portfolios on the site from architects, designers, illustrators, and artists of all kinds to see the large spectrum of creative work featured here.

Carbonmade allows creative artists to put together an online portfolio for free. If you sign up for the free account, you'll get to upload 5 projects and 35 images. If you pay for the service (around $12/month) you can upload up to 500 images and even high-quality videos of your work. This is an easy way for an artist to get a nice-looking portfolio without having to design a personal Web site.

FigDig is a free portfolio-posting site that allows only eight images per user, but has file-size allowances for widescreen and high-quality images that other portfolio sites do not. Knowledge of how to resize your images to fit FigDig's requirements is a necessity. You can browse other portfolios and rate other users' work, upload a PDF version of your résumé for potential clients to view, and assign keywords to your portfolio to make finding it easier for employers in need of someone like you.

Portfolios.com spans a wide variety of creative media: photographers, musicians, artists, Web designers, and more. This site offers a free portfolio option that includes a very minimal five images, but you can pay (from about $10-$50 per month depending on which package you want) to display more material and to have the site showcase your portfolio on its partner sites. Unlike Carbonmade, which is really just a place for you to keep a portfolio and direct people to it, Portfolios.com will, for a price, show your work around the Web.

VoodooChilli.net is a portfolio service for artists. You'll get a few "upload credits" to start with and if you want to upload more images, you can buy the credits individually (rather than buying a monthly or yearly package like most other portfolio sites). This is a U.K.-based site so purchase prices are in pounds, but the site will convert to U.S. currency if you like.

LinkedIn is a networking site that allows you to set up a professional profile, then connect with colleagues (past and present), old classmates, or search for other people in your industry. LinkedIn is a pretty useful tool for freelancers because it enables you to see who your friends know and where they work (thus giving you an "in" with a company you might want to do freelance work for).

WhoToTalkTo is a place to post job leads and to get job leads from others. The site works on a point system so that you have to post your own leads in order to request one from someone else. It's a new way to get your foot in the door, find out who's doing the hiring, what they're looking for, and how you can contact them directly.

Ryze (pronounced "rise") can help you create networks with past contacts or others in your field, search for jobs using their "Classifieds" section, or check out what career-related events are going on in your area. Ryze is free and offers a video tutorial to get you started.

Ning is for you if you'd prefer to develop all of your networking contacts yourself, or if you have a niche skill that doesn't fit into any categories on some of the more traditional professional networking sites. Most social networking sites allow you to create a profile; Ning allows you to create your own social network. This is definitely not the way to get exposed to the greatest number of contacts, but by creating your own network you control who joins it. If your network is a success, you might even gain some expert credibility in your field.