Using a paid subscription freelance job board over free service sites often means you get higher paying, better quality assignments. Many times, your first assignment will more than cover the cost of joining a paid subscription site. The advantage to using paid job boards is less competition. The disadvantage is beginners often don’t have the income to pay for the services.

The top paid subscription sites include:

Freelanceswitch.com (www.freelanceswitch.com). The cost is $7 per month. It offers freelance listings for design, development, writing, illustration and flash.

Benefits: Less competition, community forum, blog covers advice, news and opinions, low monthly fee.

Drawbacks: Dated listings, slow assignments, more geared towards web designers.

Directfreelance.com (www.directfreelance.com). Freelancers pay a yearly fee of $99. Freelance agencies pay a yearly fee of $199. There is no charge for outsourcers looking for freelance services.

It offers listings for graphic design/multimedia, photography/videography, programming/database development, website design/marketing, writing/editing.

Benefits: New listings, plenty of open projects, online profile for your services.

Drawbacks: Yearly fee may seem steep for newcomers, limited projects for writers.

Hiremymom.com (www.hiremymom.com). The cost is $99 per year and is for listing your professional services.

Benefits: Good listing for professional career moms who want to leave the corporate world but still work. Services they cover include: administrative, writing, graphic design, accounting, bookkeeping, customer service, marketing, public relations, programming, web design, coaching, sales, desktop publishing, payroll, human resources, database development, medical billing, etc.) Does not accept MLM’s, home parties, or Network Marketing opportunites.

Drawbacks: Yearly fee may seem steep for newcomers, can only view a sample of the projects without joining. You can cancel at anytime but offers no money back guarantee.

Contractedwork.com (www.contractedwork.com). This site has several levels of membership. Gold Plus membership has a monthly cost of $34.95. Gold costs $24.95/month or $160.00/year. Basic costs $14.95/month or $100.00/year.

Benefits: Many opportunities for writers posted on the projects board, limited amount of bidding on projects (less competition).

Drawbacks: Cost of membership, but significant savings for yearly subscription on two levels of membership.

Freelancedaily.net (www.freelancedaily.net). First week is free. Jobs are sent out through email. After the free week is up, the costs is just $3.95 per month.

Benefits: The site sifts through and list over 250 job board sites daily, sift through over 400 ads daily. This saves you the time of sorting and sifting through these sites yourself.

Drawbacks: Does not post in-house, permanent or full-time projects.

After you’ve gotten a few notches under your belt and feel you are ready to use a paid subscription freelance job board, these are the ones I suggest. I tried to obtain several price ranges to fit anyone’s budget. Remember, writing good content lands you better paying jobs on these paid job boards.

More happy writing,
Patti Stafford