One of the most reliable ways to earn money online today is working as a freelancer on top freelancing platforms. These are platforms where you can find impactful work online no matter your skill set.
About 47% of the global workforce amounting to about 1.57 billion people across the globe are freelancers, with a global market size of $4.43 billion in 2022 and expected to expand to about $12.01 billion by 2028.
From the above stats, you can tell that freelancing has gone past just a side hustle or hobby kind of, it’s the real deal and many are actively pursing their passion in these growing gig economy to make some more earnings while creating a futuristic career pathway for themselves.
Many believed that the traditional approach to working is faulted due to a lot of issues such as the inflexibility, faulted psychological contract, job insecurity, micromanagement, wealth inequality, work-life balance and more, and owing to these reasons many more are beginning to tend to freelancing due to its numerous benefit and the major one being flexibility.
There is an increasing number of people who wants to be self employed, earn better pay and achieve a better work life balance for themselves and undoubtedly, become a freelancer is one of the surest pathways to achieve these goals. Freelancers enjoy the independence and freedom of choosing their type of clients, work hours, workload, pay and more.
Companies are forced more to recruit freelancers during the last pandemic outbreak and ever since there’s still an increasing demand for freelancers across different sectors and industries.
If you’re thinking of becoming a Freelancer too, it’s important to make sure you have the right skill sets that are currently in demand, freelancers with high paying skills such as coding, marketing, and data analyst and soft skills such as good communicators will do well as freelancers.
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List of Freelancing Websites to find Impactful work
More than just having the skills, you need to register your professional presence on the right freelance job platforms, the essence of this guide is to highlight a round up of the top freelancing websites in the World.
Fiverr
Fiverr is an online freelancing platform and gig marketplace that is arguably the most popular in the world. It offers jobs in all popular categories such as digital marketing, writing, translation, audio editing, and video editing. The platform allows both employers and freelancers to hire and earn. However, to get productive with the platform, one needs to master how it works and build a strong portfolio to attract clients.
Fiverr was established in 2010 and has since then offered robust payment solutions including PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Wire Transfer, and more. The top gigs on Fiverr include Website Design, Logo Design, content making, and Video Editing gigs. The platform has helped freelancers earn over 2 billion dollars and currently has a database of more than 3 million gigs, with over 500 million employers.
With 57.3 million freelancers working on the platform, Fiverr serves as a middleman making sure both freelancers and employers get the desired results. Fiverr withholds 20% of every transaction until the gig is fully delivered by the seller. Although gigs on the platform are not limited to $5, there are a good number of unbelievable $5 gigs. Additionally, Fiverr charges 2.9% on every transaction.
Link: Fiverr.com
Upwork
Upwork is a popular freelance website that was founded in 2015. It is well-known for job categories such as IT and networking, data science, admin work, accounting, and translation, among others. Upwork allows new users to send unlimited proposals to clients, and once a relationship is established, a fee of 20% will be charged for each project.
The website is beginner-friendly and has helped freelancers earn over $3m. Upwork has 145.4 thousand core active clients, each spending at least $5,000 per year, resulting in employers on Upwork spending a combined $2.52 billion annually. It has over 145,400 registered employers and 10,000+ freelancers working on its platform.
As a freelancer on Upwork you can earn directly to your PayPal or Credit card accounts freelancers in Nigeria can use these Upwork-friendly payment solutions to receive their earnings.
Upwork is a preferred platform for finding freelance work and the platform can be accessed via their dedicated mobile apps or through your web browser.
Link: Upwork.com
Freelancer
Freelancer.com is a highly regarded freelancing platform for beginners looking for profitable freelancing opportunities.
New users can enjoy up to 8 or more free applications before having to pay membership fees. To be hired, users bid for the charges and submit a proposal. Freelancer has a team of dedicated advisors to assist users in securing jobs, making the hiring process faster.
The platform supports both PayPal and card payments, making it convenient for users. Freelancer was founded in 2009 and has a vast number of job categories, including Website Design, Translation, Research, Logistics, Finance, Content Writing, product sourcing, sales and marketing, human resources, content writing, accounting translation and more.
To date, the platform has paid over $5 billion to freelancers, and there are over 21 million employers and 62m+ freelancers working for their clients on this platform. Freelancer is accessible on both mobile and desktop, and charges only 3%.
Link: freelancer.com
Toptal
Toptal is an exclusive network for freelancers across different industries that promises to match employers with 10x talent that fit their requirements. It provides access to elite and prescreen talents and is a suitable platform for freelancer finance experts, product managers, and other professionals. Users can find jobs from numerous industries like healthcare, e-commerce, banking, and more.
To ensure quality service, Toptal tests and vets applicants in a rigorous process before they apply for the job. They connect freelancers to top clients and have hired top professionals from institutions such as CERN, MIT, Google, Wharton, and more. Their placement process is pretty fast, with the possibility of finding an expert in less than three weeks.
Toptal is a high-end freelancing site that prefers fluent English communicators. They offer a two-week trial with no risk policy and no charge for freelancers to work during the trial period. This makes it a suitable platform for anyone who is particular about developing their career.
Link: Toptal.com
Guru
Guru is one of the best freelancing sites for beginners, accessible around the world, with free account creation for clients and freelancers. Freelancers can pitch for jobs and make enquiries about quotes posted by clients, which offers a potentially easy and smart way to get job offers from top employers.
It is a reliable platform for finding high quality professionals who are experts at what they are doing, with work opportunities in nearly all industries.
Demographic factors such as required skills, budget, location, and experience come into play in the marketplace.
Guru charges freelancers around 5% to 9% and facilitates payments with PayPal, Wire Transfer, etc.
The platform came around in 2006 and is popular for job categories like Data Entry, Graphic Design, Programming, Web Development, Writing & Translation, Design & Art, Administrative & Secretarial, Sales & Marketing, Engineering & Architecture, Business & Finance, Education & Training, and Legal.
Guru has paid over $300 million to freelancers and prides itself on having over 800k employers registered on the platform. They also offer Guru Enterprise solution for large companies and have over 3 million freelancers.
They offer top-notch customer support via mailing and phone and have an API-ready platform for developers.
Link: Guru.com
Jooble
Jooble One of the biggest and most popular job search directories.
Jooble a job listing website than a freelance website.
Some of the unique features of this job platform includes no signup, email alert, centralized job Discovery and more.
With Jooble you need not visit multiple online job websites to find find opportunities, Jooble sources jobs from over 140,000 sources across the world, providing intending job hunters with a centralized platform to find job listing opportunities across the internet all in one place.
It has a vast categories of aggregated jobs from top corporate Websites, classified websites, social networks, online job boards and freelancing websites.
The website is designed to be simple to use, you can start searching for jobs immediately without signing up on the website.
Once you input your preferred job keyword, you’d be able to apply the filters and see jobs according to the work experience, the range of salary, the date when the job was posted, and then the search engine can properly match you with your preferred job, based on your filters.
if you’re looking for freelancing jobs there’s a dedicated category to this type of offers.
Being a job search engine & aggregator, Once you find a listing that resonates with you, you can click on the available link and be redirected to the exact website where the job is.
You can also use the email alert system on the website to get notified when there’s a new job offer based on your profession’s keyword.
At the moment there are over 671 thousand new vacancies on the website. The website was founded in 2007, and today the website receives over 36 million monthly visitors.
It is ranked as the second biggest job search engine in the world.
Link: Jooble.org
Indeed
Indeed is arguably the biggest job sites in the world, the website has a simplistic design for best user experience.
The platform allows job hunters to find jobs using filter.
Indeed is job search engine of choice for small businesses owners to find appealing candidates from $5.
Indeed has one of the biggest job collections, you can find listings in almost all industries, sectors and categories that you could possibly think of. Be it professional, entry-level or lower-level there’s definitely hundreds of not thousands of listings for all.
Indeed offers job seekers job alerts and can also invite specific applicants to submit application.
The jobs site was established in 2004 in the Texas United States.
The job website is currently ranked as the 42nd most visited Website in the world and receives over 612 million visitors monthly according to similarweb.
Job seekers flock to the website due to it’s extensive reach, and also for being a very contentful Website with lots of resources on career, Business and more.
Link: Indeed.com
Flexjobs
Homebased job sites according to the name of the site ‘flexible jobs’.
Flexjobs is a well-established platform for people looking for remote, home-based and freelancing job roles.
It curated a lot of legitimate roles and claims to be the ‘number #1 job site to find remote jobs’.
Basically, when it comes to finding jobs that fits perfectly into your schedule and lifestyle then the site is worth giving a try.
The website does a considerable level of vetting to make sure the listing on the website are legitimate helping you to filter out scams and fake listings.
It’s also one of the few freelancing website receiving millions of users monthly but striked-out display ads as part of their monetization strategy.
Well established online job board that has been featured on popular digital publishing platforms like CNN, Forbes, the Wall Street journal, and more.
Flexjobs has evolved overtime with it’s business model, It currently has a subscription system starting from about $7 per week, it helps job hunters looking for flexible roles to access a large pool of vetted job opportunities, up to 20K vetted job listings.
Subscription can be initiated with PayPal or or a credit card.
As a pro member, you’d be able to access unlimited job listings on the website, unlock access to free skill assessment, a vast library of resources that are career friendly, including webinars, guides, career coaching, courses and a personalized work portfolio.
Link: flexjobs.com
PeopleHour
PeopleHour is a trustworthy flexible freelance job marketplace with amazing functionality and superb customer support.
The platform seeks to connect Business owners with matching freelance experts.
The website which was established in 2007 is the oldest freelancing website in the UK. PeopleHour is no doubt a platform for anyone looking to earn some extra dollars as full time Freelancer provided they have the right skill sets.
The prices here are somewhat affordable and the website interface is clean, modern and simple to navigate.
Over a million jobs have been listed on the website since inception in 2007
PPH has been a choice platform for freelancers from over 89 countries around the world.
They’ve helped freelancers to earn over $100 million till date.
Business owners can post their project proposals on the platform, like freelancers with the right skills can apply for the jobs, business owners can then pick the right real answers for the job based on their experience and project portfolio.
The website that has over 15 job categories including marketing, search engine optimization, social media, video editing, administration, IT, designs, tutorials, copywriting and more.
But the platform need to work on reducing scammers and helping everyone get more value for money.
They could help business owners filter freelancers according to experience and ratings, their customer support and the 7-14 days payment clause which is leaving newbie freelancers with no so good reviews.
Overall, they need to listen more to users on the platform, and work more on their brands perception.
Link: Peopleour.com
Behance
Behance is a portfolio platform by Adobe created for creative professionals across industries and sectors to showcase their profile, works, experience and expertise.
Creative artistes can setup their profile on the platform add their best projects, demographic data to position for job opportunities.
Behance offers a job board featuring several opportunities for graphic artists and designers.
Creatives on the platform can apply for the job which is categories like internship, freelancing, full time roles etc.
Employers need to pay a fee to the platform to list jobs but applying on the platform for job is free for all users.
Behance is majorly about helping talented creative people get the exposure and positioning they need to establish their professionalism.
Link: Behance.net
Lemon.io
If you’re a startup looking to hire developers or you need to find quality talents to work part-time or full-time, then lemon.io is one of the best platforms you should check.
They have well-vetted offshore engineers and makes sure to spend quality time assessing developers and Dev firms before they are accepted into the platform.
Lemon.io does a great job with their skill-matching system, they efficiently pair software developers to contracts from clients based on experience.
Several startups like Skyfi.com are delighted with their talent sourcing experience on Lemon.io. if you’re need great hands with on your team or project, they devs have good communication and top-notch development skills.
Link: Lemon.io
Codementor
Codementor is a unique platform for the software development ecosystem, it offers various services for both mentors and mentees.
The platform promises best-in-class help from vetted software engineers. It’s also a place to find developers and get mentorships.
Mentors on the platform participate in live coding sessions and help mentees solve complex problems. This is a great way to get personalized learning experience from professional mentors on the platform.
Mentors can earn fantastic pay from working on freelance projects, participating in code reviews, debugging, participating in developer discussions, contributing to frameworks, technical concept development and live coding sessions, while keeping themselves informed about the technologies required by their clients.
However, there are some issues with Codementor that users should be aware of. For example, the initial session with a mentor requires setting up a payment account/card, Zoom, and raising session/freelance requests, which can be a hassle for some.
The first live coding session can also be confusing for mentees who are not familiar with the platform. Additionally, from the mentor’s perspective, the platform commission is on the higher side, up to 22%.
Despite these issues, Codementor remains a popular platform for those seeking mentorship and freelance opportunities.
SimplyHired
SimplyHired is a job board for businesses to post job offers for free.
The platform runs a cost-to-contact model where employers can post jobs for free but only pay to get contact details of the applicant they’d prefer to reach.
SimplyHired also aggregate job opportunities from different sources across the internet and the Jobs arranged into categories and fields such as marketing, sales, customer services, warehousing roles etc.
You can register as an applicant, indicate the types of job, pay and location on the platform and start sorting through the available offers to find jobs you may be interested in.
Applicants can subscribe to get email alerts of new listings based on their specified parameters.
Employers pay only when they’ve find the right freelancer for the job and ready to work with them.
SimplyHired is a great jobboard, but may not be the best platform to find the the most qualified candidate for some roles.
Link: Simplyhired.com
99designs
99designs is a contest-driven graphic and design marketplace, established in 2008.
The platform which started has a forum has now grown to a global community of creative artists and designers.
99designs is a great platform to source for creative solutions for small business owners, startups, agencies and individuals who needs personalized graphic-design related solutions for their entities.
There’s a massive pool of bwginner to expert designers, that strive to exceed client expectations and requirements on every project.
A contest-based design job sourcing platform like 99design cannot be without it’s own challenge.
There are a few not too good reviews here and there like issues with toxic clients and refunding contest after creatives have participated, but overall 99 design is a nice place to get multiple designers with varying level of expertise battle for projects, a great win for project awarders and freelance designers who are confident in the skills.
Link: 99designs.com
Dribbble
Just like Behance is a platform for creative designers in different industries and specialties
Dribble is one of the best places on the internet to source for creative branding solutions.
The platform is a massive community for designers to exemplify their expertise and build a strong design portfolio to position for opportunities.
Dribble is also a great resource site for designers to get inspired on their next project, there are several resources made available by other designers across different cateogories to download for free.
When it comes to hiring talent, the platform has a section on the website where top designers can be hired on the platform.
It seems to help you connect and attract high quality designers for your project needs. Over 60,000 companies including top players such as Starbucks, Facebook, Asana, MailChimp have also used the platform at some point to hire creative experts.
Lee Munroe, thr head of Onesignal disclosed that Dribble “provides a wealth of quality candidates”
You can use the job board and designer search bundle on the website (paid subscription) to find and hire some of the best hands on the platform.
Link: Dribbble.com
