A reader who wants to get started on a freelance writing career asked if I can recommend any for-pay “job boards” for freelancers.

This is normally a tricky question to answer, since in a lot of instances, the person you ask will base his/her response on whether s/he got a job through the service or not.

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Hardly a fair assessment, considering the tons of factors that affect the outcome of every gig search. Well, that statement’s not completely fair either. This one is: How would we know whether the assessment is fair or not?

Exactly.

So, whenever I get wind of such a service, we can realistically check out only a couple of things:

1. See if it meets a standard level of service (in this case, provide a regular feed of gigs available).
   
2. See if there are multiple complaints about the service that consistently report the same problems or shady goings-on. Single isolated whines are hardly worth allowing to worm their way into your psyche, but it’s a completely different story if you start seeing or sensing a pattern.

With the first item, in most cases there’s usually not much you can do but shell out the bucks to try the service prior (if the service has a trial period, even better). But I wouldn’t do that until after doing the research for the second one. [TIP: Google is good for other things besides looking up your own name.]

Realize also that guys like me who occasionally write about these resources but don’t necessarily use them do check them out as I just described… but back when we wrote about them. If we don’t use the service regularly (or even at all) and if we don’t get a report of things changing in any negative fashion since, no news is good news as far as we’re concerned.

Which is why I like reader questions. They serve as reminders for me to check things I may not have checked in a while.

So, in answer to the question, “Is there a for-pay ‘job board’ for freelancers you can recommend?” I can say: Yes.

But I can only recommend one: eLance.

Try the others at your own risk. The only one I have absolutely no reservations recommending is eLance.

Another for-pay service I often recommend is Writer’s Market, but that generally covers open freelance markets and submission/query opportunities, not specific gigs/jobs/assignments like what you’ll find at eLance.

So, depending on your needs, I’d say getting accounts with both is likely an excellent idea.

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