Finding Gigs

I've searched the forum with no luck so I decided to post. I'm looking for feedback from others who use sites like rent-a-coder to get jobs. Does anyone else have sites they've used successfully?

Thanks in advance -- if everyone contributes then we'll all have an awesome list of where to find more business.

http://www.rentacoder.com

 

I don't know what kinds of gigs you are looking for, but if you can put your epirence and time to make a product than it is far more better than selling your services on RAC and similar places.

 

This is true to a certain degree, but when you need to support a family and pay a mortgage then you need what some would call, 'low hanging fruit', that brings in money in the short term while you're working on products and services for the long term. So in my situation there has to be a balance and this is where the freelance sites come into play.

 

Well, product or service depends on your background, expertise, and whether you just want an income now, or in the long term, being able to build a reputation. I run a service business. I've built a reputation around that, and the same with my writing on the side. Because of that, I earn a very strong regular income, have major players in my industry targets who follow my writing, and have been approached about the possibility of writing a marketing book (which I'll certainly consider once I have time to breathe again). If you simply go the product route, eventually most product sales die down. They have a lifecycle. You would have to keep creating more, creating updates, etc. And that's assuming your product's good enough that people want to keep buying updates. It's harder to get your name associated with a product to build your reputation as well. Sure, you've got examples like Bill Gates, but examples like those are probably far less than 1/100th of a percent of all product creators out there. If you run a service business, you can always create products down the road (such as the book example I already gave ... or software relevant to your industry, etc.).

Now, back to the original question, personally I haven't used sites like that often. But I do have pretty strong success with www.getafreelancer.com, which I've only very recently started to use (including picking up a few regular, larger-load clients). I believe there's also www.getacoder.com, but it's a bit out of my niche. Good luck.

Jenn

 

I've used http://www.scriptlance.com for both hiring programmers/designers and getting projects to work on as well. I have had great experiences with it.

 

Hi Jenn and Imabigbog,

Great suggestions and food for thought.

For those wondering what my skills are -- I've got a Masters degree in Educational Technology, I've been using the net for the past 11 1/2 years. My expertise areas include, interface design, computer mediated communication, HTML, CSS, Photoshop/Fireworks, mySQL, and more.

As Jenn, my clients come from referrals, the challenge is I want to build my business. I would also like to be able to finance some of my other ventures so they can grow and create more income.

Thanks again for the recommendations -- I'll check them out.

Vanessa