Comments on: How to Use Job Boards to Land Lucrative Gigs

By: Sarah

Sarah — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:38:07 +0000

One thing I realise about finding a freelance job on job boards is that, if you are lucky, once you have landed a suitable job, you have a higher chance to build a long term relationship with your client, i.e. you get work from the same clients over and over again for long term. Otherwise, you will have to keep looking for jobs from all over the places once you have completed your projects.

By: Ed Gandia, Editor

Ed Gandia, Editor — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:24:37 +0000

This is an excellent post, Jessica! Thanks for your contribution to TWF. We’re lucky to have you!

I’ve long said that there’s a way to make money on job boards. I’ve met many freelancers who have! But here’s the thing…you have to:

a) Realize that it’s but one of many different ways to land clients. If you do it, you should do it only as a part of a broader, integrated marketing strategy, not as your sole source of business building.

b) Do away with the “victim” mentality. The mindset that “ALL prospects who post work on the job boards want are cheap service providers” and “it’s a war out there!” That kind of thinking (and I know this sounds very new age, but I’m telling you it’s true) will yiesld exactly that — a cutthroat environment and projects and clients that drain you financially and emotionally.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:12:00 +0000

I just got an emailed question from Ann-Marie who wanted to know my job board favorites and how to find more and wanted to share my answer here.

Two of my favorites are problogger.com and smashingmagazine.com.

When I’m looking for new job boards, I look for those that are niched and that charge for postings–they tend to attract the better gigs. Industry specific boards can be very useful, especially when you use #3 in the article above.

Googling “Job board” + “Work Wanted” (or other keyword, like industry) will almost always turn up a wide variety, and the people who joined my audio call sent their favorites to the group so there’s a long list in the workbook.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:01:20 +0000

Victoria, that’s a great idea to use templates that you customize, but I think you’ll find that you’ll get even more lucrative results by writing each response individually. Sure, there are some parts that you probably say every time, but each client is different, and there are always words, approaches, and tones that better fit one situation than others. When you’re really well-niched in terms of both service (say you only write press releases) and industry, a template works more often, but even then, you’ll find yourself making a lot more money by taking a from-scratch approach.

By: Kevin Lossner

Kevin Lossner — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:59:45 +0000

I have a specific reason for going into some detail on work processes and qualifications in my case. For the past few years, many European translation clients have been concerned with the “new” standard DIN EN 15038, and although I have not self-declared compliance with that standard (for lack of complete, detailed process documentation at the present time), the methods described are very much compatible with the spirit of the standard. This tends to give prospects here more confidence.

By: Jessica

Jessica — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:02:23 +0000

I hear that a lot too, Kevin–that people “never” successfully win a bid, and I think it boils down to their approach. So many people just send a blanket one-size-fits-all reply and then complain that they didn’t get any response.

That’s fantastic that you find that going into greater detail about your process works–I’d imagine that depends a great deal on your niche and how familiar potential clients are with the typical working process. Thanks for sharing about your success!

By: Victoria Ipri

Victoria Ipri — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:15:35 +0000

I agree with Kevin. An individualized response to each post yields the best results. I haven’t had to use the job boards in quite some time, but when I did use them frequently, I created several templated responses (i.e. one for press release writing, one for ebook writing, one for product description writing) and custommized each response to my skills set. Then, when a job post looked interesting,I would go to the appropriate template, jazz it up even further based on the client’s job description, and send it off. This made the response process a bit faster, and still provided a customized response that never failed to get attention.

By: Kevin Lossner

Kevin Lossner — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:35:24 +0000

On the whole this correlates with my experience. As a freelance translator I haunt a few of the job fora often considered to be contributors to the alleged decline in rates. I often hear colleagues complain that in 5 or 10 years, they’ve never been successful with a single project bid. Yet for some reason our success rate with quotations has been quite good as I see it. I tend to go into more detail on my process than is recommended here, but each quotation is in fact an individual approach that emphasizes our unique selling points for that particular project. Anything else would seem to be a waste of time for all concerned.