Well – I’ve finally cut ties with Elance. I got kind of tired of paying monthly for something that was an afterthought and really not bringing in any sincere income. It’s not that it isn’t a good service, and there is certainly a place for it – but at this point in my career, I feel like my energies are best spent elsewhere.

Elance is a good place to find work, if you’re willing to work über-cheap. Being an American with 4 children and a wife to support, I can’t afford to give away logo design for $25 a pop. I’m a huge believer in ‘you get what you pay for’, and I think that Elance kind of bore that out. I would bid, get rejected, and have to move on to the next thing. And usually, the folks would go with the guy that has 45,000 “gigs” landed, and he’s made just slightly over $30,000 for those finished gigs. His stuff would be clipart, bad fonts, and strange effects.

That’s just not what I’m about, and I would wager that’s really just not what most freelance designers are about. Or, at least, not what they …

I garner a fair amount of work from online sources, and I’ve found that there are a couple of universal red flags when it comes to bidding on projects or quoting a job. I’ll go into some of the others later, but the big one is “Budget is a concern.”

While I understand that money is an issue in a lot of situations, if a person upfront about the budget being the primary concern, I’ve discovered that 99% of the time I don’t want that job.

If a prospective client makes it plain that budget is #1, then that’s precisely what the main concern is going to be. Not the design. Not the process. Not the thought that goes into the work. Not you. The money will be the main concern and will always be the main concern. And that’s really not a great way to start a relationship.

I don’t want my work to be all about the money. I want to make money. I want to be paid what I’m worth – but I also want the design and the art and the craft to …

I have had subscriptions to many (if not all) of the freelance job-finding websites. They all have good points, and I think the amount of work you actually glean from them has a lot to do with how much time and effort you put into the searches, the portfolios and the profiles.

Recently, I sat down and really considered the pros and cons of two of the heavy hitters – Guru.com and Elance.com. I’m only going to comment on the paid portion of the sites, since I think if you’re going to explore, you should go for a more premium package and be serious. You gotta spend money to make money, right?

First up, Elance:

$9.95 per month, includes 20 “connects” which are essentially bids. You can purchase more for around .50¢ each. Some jobs actually cost more “connects,” and you can have your bid appear higher in lists by spending more connects.
Reasonably slick interface.
Skill tests – lets employers see that you’re actually skilled in what you say you’re skilled in. You get 10 free with a paid membership, and you can buy more.
Not …

I’ve touched on it before, but there are some great resources out there for finding freelance work.

So, without further adieu, I give you another list of sites with jobs for freelance graphic designers:

37Signals: Cool listings – not a lot of them, but they pay pretty well. The competition is stiff, but that keeps the quality high.

SoloGig – again, not the biggest community, but the jobs are good and varied.

Aquent – Lots of jobs worldwide. Plus, it’s free – which is ALWAYS good.

SimplyHired this is sort of an odd bird. More of a search engine aggregating searches for freelance jobs. Nice!

Project4Hire – another reasonably small site, but with good jobs that pay fairly well.

JobPile – another aggregator. Lots of stuff, including some of the more high-end design sites.

So – that should keep you busy for 10 or 15 minutes, right?

I’ve found that a lot of freelancers out there (myself included) have fallen into a trap of working too hard to make too little. Some of that goes back panic (read a little on that in an older post) and some of that goes to picking the wrong clients.

But the fact remains that if you chase too many $100 projects, you will miss out on too many $1000 projects. If you sell your services cheaply, you will be in a hole – you’ll wind up too busy making money to make money.

Freelancing can be a feast-or-famine proposition, and weathering the famine will make you realize that you want the feast. One way to keep the feast going is to charge enough for what you do and pick up clients that will pay you what you’re worth. If your power bill is due, you need money – but will you take a $100 logo design job in order just to pay it, when you know you should be charging $500? I know the need for money NOW – but I also know that planning ahead will help you avoid having to take a million …

There are a lot of great services for freelance graphic designers out there – and a lot of junk. I’ve worked with some of the best, and I’ve even dipped my toe into the pool of piranhas. Be careful of the services you align with, as you can spend a lot of dough on something that just won’t work – or worse yet – take up a lot of your time and actuall cost you more money than you make.

I’ll outline a couple here, and when I get the rest of this little site actually done, I’ll have a page with many. I’ve done a lot of footwork on a lot of sites, and I’ve fallen flat on my face on some of them. Now, you can learn from my bumps and bruises.

By the way – I don’t make a penny from endorsing or slamming any of these.

First up – my favorite – Guru.com. Really nice system that’s not over-saturated like some of the big boys. They’ve got it broken down into nice categories like graphic design, illustration, web design, copy writing, etc, and they break those categories down even further, so you …