The Best Writing Job Sites for Finding Freelance Work

Struggling to find the writing job of your dreams in a diminished job market? Need to earn money fast? Finding freelance work online provides opportunities to both build your writing portfolio and earn some much-needed money.

A study by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that self-employment rates are rising in the UK. Between 2001 and 2017, the number of self-employed workers in the country increased from 3.3 million to 4.8 million, a figure that includes freelancers.

Emma Knowles at Prospects says that there is no fixed path to establishing a freelance career, but it does require dedication, enthusiasm and passion for the job — all of which secure clients and build a successful freelancing career. Top tips for establishing yourself as a freelancer include thoroughly researching what freelancing entails, adopting a business mindset, networking and being disciplined.

The challenge is that freelance work can be hard to find. For example, a 2012 study by the Artists Information Company found that 65% of work in the visual jobs market is unadvertised — so, often, freelancers have to put real effort into finding work for themselves.

To build up a client base, online agencies and listings are a great place to start, as they provide access to clients in a range of locations, offering plenty of different freelance assignments to choose from. To help budding writers, I’ve found several of the best writing sites for finding freelance work, so you can find the best sites to kick-start your writing career today!

In no particular order, I present the best writing sites for finding freelance work below!

FlexJobs

**FlexJobs **is a job board for professional writers to find potential clients and writing gigs. The advantage of FlexJobs is that all its freelance listings are screened and verified. This means that freelancers need not worry about scams or low-paying gigs. The site is based in the United States, but advertisers freelance work from all over the world. Also, many of the jobs are remote, so as long as you have an internet connection, you can work anywhere in the world! All users can tailor their profiles to meet their specific employment needs!

But, if you want to access FlexJobs wide range of assignments, you will need to sign up and purchase a paid subscription with the site. It’s possible to browse job listings for free, but you have to sign up to apply for work. A one-month subscription costs $14.95 a month, a three-month subscription will set you back $29.95, and a one-year membership to FlexJobs costs $49.95.

Although a subscription isn’t cheap, in our opinion, FlexJobs is a great place to find freelance writing work as you can guarantee that all the listings have been screened and verified! As the website caters for freelancers from all over the world, you can also find work that suits your geographical location and physical availability! You do have to pay to fully access its listings and apply for work, but in our opinion, it’s a wise investment!

Contently

Contently employs over 140,000 writers, filmmakers, designers and editors, all of whom create unique content for clients. Contently prides itself on hiring and nurturing talented writers, so if you are keen to establish a freelance writing career, it is worth checking out! Contently has an agency that connects its writers with brands that need help promoting their products.

Contently is a great website to get involved with as a freelance writer, as the company pays its talent well, offering hundreds or thousands of dollars per article. Contently also pays its writers on submission alone. In fact, Contently, out of all the freelance writing website platforms out there, is one most for the writer. A few years ago, Contently went a step further, setting up its own Freelance Advisory Board, which helps the company do its part to support its writers, and identifies what Contently can do to improve its already great relationship with its freelancers.

The only downside of Contently for freelance writers is that only the best will be allowed to work for this popular and dynamic web-based platform. So, if you think you have what it takes, there’s no harm in trying!

Journalism.co.uk

Journalism.co.uk is a great site for any of you freelance writers that specialize in journalism. Journalism.co.uk has a database of freelance journalists available for hire. These listings list each journalist’s name, location, skills, specialisations, the publications they contribute to on a regular basis, any other relevant information, examples of their work and contact details.

Journalism.co.uk is a common haunt for freelance writers, although the website’s job section features many permanent positions, by listing their specialisations and location, writers can inform publication editors where they are and how they can contact them, leading to hires for one-off stories and ongoing, regular work!

The benefits of paying £60 a year to register with Journalism.co.uk include exposure for a reasonable price, exclusivity, a branded email address and a listing on Twitter. But, the problems with Journalism.co.uk that might put many of you freelance writers off include the fact that the website is dated and difficult to navigate. Also, you have to pay to join the site. As well as this, Journalism.co.uk is not useful to anyone who does not specialise in journalism or content writing.

Nevertheless, Journalism.co.uk is an established, popular platform that gives journalists access to a wide range of potential clients!

Freelance Writing Jobs

The clue is in the name! Freelance Writing Jobs offers writers a variety of job opportunities and resources to help them kickstart and establish their freelance writing career. Every morning, the website has a post advertising current freelance writing jobs available online. Freelance Writing Jobs also offers freelance writers’ guidance through its blog and has a partnership with FlexJobs, offering its members 30% off membership with the latter site!

The plus side of Freelance Writing Jobs is that it offers a wide variety of resources for anyone who already does or wants to make a living from writing or editing. Also, Freelance Writing Jobs offers its members a wide variety of job opportunities, including blogging, journalism and web content writing. The website is particularly useful because daily updates are provided, and it caters for writers specialising in a wide range of sectors. Examples of its variety include technical writing, food writing and fashion content.

The only major flaw with Freelance Writing Jobs is that most of the website’s jobs are based in the United States, which may be a problem for anyone not living Stateside.

Copify

Copify offers its writers ‘hassle-free writing jobs,’ so once your application has been approved, the site lets you begin working instantly! Copify specialises in supplying website content, blogging, ecommerce content, article writing, press release writing and also has an email writing service.

One of the site’s major pros is that it allows its writers to accept work when they want without the hassle of contracts or commitment. Copify also gives writers clear briefs, provides full administrative support and does not require writers to bid on work or submit proposals. Another benefit of Copify also pays its writers immediately when a piece of work is completed via PayPal, eliminating the need to provide invoices, or concerns about not being paid for work!

So, Copify is appealing to us writers as it offers flexibility and a brief-by-brief payment structure.

Constant Content

Constant Content describes itself as “one of the largest and most established platforms for facilitating connections between big brands and you — the best freelance writers online.” By creating a profile on the Constant Content website, you can apply for writing projects with a wide range of prestigious companies, including Uber, Zulily, The Home Deport, CVS, eBay and Walgreens. Another attractive feature of Constant Content is that freelancers can write full articles on any topic they like, set a price, and advertise to companies looking for content through the website!

But, be aware that Constant Content is a website that focuses on recruiting freelance copywriters specialising in SEO, and the majority of jobs advertised are for businesses looking for online content. So, if you come from another writing discipline, this is not the job website for you. If it is though, the assignments on Constant Content vary from web copy, to online articles, to blog post so there is a wide variety of existing work available for you!

Constant Content also attracts positive reviews from both its brands and writers, including Celeste, who reports:

“I’ve been writing for Constant Content since 2006 and have sold over 5,000 articles, blog posts, content sets, eBooks, press releases, product descriptions, and white papers.”

So, if you get on the Constant Content bandwagon, you are looking at long-term, wide-ranging, writing job opportunities with a variety of well-known brands.

FreelanceWriting.com

Online since 1997, FreelanceWriting.com presents a comprehensive list of current, available freelance writing jobs every day. Whether you are a beginner or expert in the freelance writing field, FreelanceWriting.com will have something for you! Offering freelance writing jobs in a range of disciplines, including journalism, content, copywriting and blogging work, FreelanceWriting.com offers its members exclusive job opportunities and also presents the best opportunities for freelance writers posted on other, general job websites, such as Craigslist and Indeed.

Those seeking work via FreelanceWriting.com can search the opportunities available by sorting them by the date they were added to the site, the source the job comes from, the skills required and the location where the company is based. So, if you don’t want work for a company in another country or to use a certain website, such as Craigslist, you don’t have to!

Another great feature of FreelanceWriting.com is the resources it offers to writers to help them get started and establish themselves in the business!

Also, our mention of FreelanceWriting.com would be incomplete without mentioning its Morning Coffee eNewsletter!

Established way back in 1998, Freelancewriting.com’s daily newsletter Morning Coffee eNewsletter features new and updated information about the company’s freelance writing jobs. It is useful for writers as it provides a useful summary of a wide range of freelance writing and editing, and jobs from all over the web with competitive pay rates.

Examples of the sources of the jobs provided on the Morning Coffee eNewsletter include Indeed, CraigsList, ProBlogger, as well as gigs exclusive to FreelanceWriting.com. The jobs advertised by the Morning Coffee eNewsletter are handpicked by the writer, Mark, so you get to hear about the best freelance writing opportunities around!

The use of signing up to the Morning Coffee eNewsletter is that it saves you the time of looking around numerous websites for work and brings the right jobs right to your inbox!

WriterBay.com

Based in the UK, WriterBay offers freelance writing opportunities to freelancers and companies based in that country. Nevertheless, the website offers jobs from clients all over the world. It offers you the opportunity to choose projects in a wide variety of subjects, depending on your own strengths as a writer.

One of WriterBay’s plus points is that it offers opportunities to writers specialising in a wide variety of writing mediums. These include academic writing, creative writing and freelance writing in general. WriterBay also has its own Writer Support Team, which offers help and support to its writers for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!

One of the cons of WriterBay is that it is skewed toward the academic writing end of freelance writing, so if you specialise in another area, this may not be the website for you. Another is that you need to complete a test to prove that you are qualified to seek work with the company.

Freelancer

Freelancer began life as GetAFreelancer, and offers all kinds of freelance work, not just freelance writing! With 1350 different categories of writing available, of particular interest to us freelance writers are its article writing, ghost-writing, copywriting and SEO categories! Freelancer caters for all skillsets and can help anyone find a client.

There are a number of advantages of using Freelancer, including the fact that it provides writers like you and me with massive jobs, with some even requiring the writer to create over 500 articles at once! Also, on Freelancer, freelancers can post a profile and allow potential clients to see examples of freelance work. Freelancers can also use the site to chat with clients about the progress of orders and any questions they have about the work. The website is also mobile-friendly.

However, be warned that you have to bid on work to get it on Freelancer, and, as one of the most popular Freelance websites out there, there’s still competition!

Fiverr

Based in Tel Aviv, Italy, Fiverr was founded in 2010 and, since then, has become the world’s largest freelance services marketplace. It offers a large platform for freelancers to advertise, as it offers services to customers from all over the world.

Fiverr offers freelancers from a wide range of industries, such as graphic design, digital marketing, and writing and translation work opportunities! Of particular interest to us freelance writers is Fiverr’s wide range of work in our discipline, including articles and blog posts, website content, UX writing, product descriptions, resumes and cover letters, translation, book and eBook writing, proofreading and editing, beta reading, technical writing, scriptwriting, creative writing, research and summaries, and so much more!

Although Fiverr is not exclusively for writers, it is well worth a look for its wide range of freelance writing job openings alone!

So, there you have it! Ten great websites for helping you establish yourself as a freelance writer. We hope that all of you, regardless of writing strengths and expertize can find at least one match in this comprehensive list of websites to grow and develop as a freelance writer!

Some platforms, such as FlexJobs, Fiverr and Freelancer, offer opportunities for all kinds of freelance specialists, while others, such as Copify, Constant Content and Freelancewriting.com, focus on freelance writing exclusively. Others, such as WriterBay and Journalism.co.uk go even further, focusing on specific kinds of freelance writing, such as journalism or academic writing.

So, take time to think about what kind or kinds of writing you want to do and consider which websites are likely to best cater to your strengths. Also, don’t be afraid to sell yourself and post examples of your work online. It’s a competitive market out there, and you need to put yourself out there to get work.

These are some of the best websites out there to kickstart your freelance writing career. Happy writing!