With over 1.5 billion freelancers worldwide, representing around 35% of the global workforce and an estimated market size of $1.5 trillion in the US alone, the list of global freelance marketplaces is HUGE, and it’s getting bigger and bigger each year.
While the growth in freelancing has been expanding at a rapid pace for several years already, in the past year alone, whether out of redundancy or voluntarily choosing to, we’ve seen a new wave of workers transition to the more flexible form of work with 75% of freelancers claiming they wouldn’t trade their current work set up for any other type of work. Indeed, the trend is here and very, very clear: Freelancing is here to stay.
Reflecting this growth is the number of freelancing platforms available for a wide range of skill sets. Whether you’re a digital marketer, virtual assistant, graphic designer, translator, IT expert, engineer, teacher, academic, or even a surgeon, there’s likely to be a freelancing platform out there with potential clients for you to work with. And new freelancing marketplaces are cropping up all the time too.
Below is a quick overview of some of today’s best freelance marketplaces to showcase some of the most popular platforms, a large majority of which are integrated with Payoneer to help you get paid securely and efficiently from your clients wherever you, or they, are in the world.
METHODOLOGY: platforms included (as of March, 2021) were defined as those which offer the opportunity for freelancers to offer their digitally-based skills and services to those seeking such services.
Freelance Platforms for Marketing
While all freelancing platforms may look similar, they are not. Finding the right one for you may take a little time but considering that’s where you’ll find the majority of your clients, its important you understand how they are different to each other and how you can get the most out of them.
For starters, make sure to check the terms and conditions of each platform as each will differ. Some platforms will allow you direct contact with your clients whereas others may not. Second, check their fees so you know exactly how much of your earnings you’ll be entitled to keep. Some platforms can take fairly significant cuts and may pass on the costs to your customers, charge you directly, or sometimes even both.
While some platforms are more popular and have a larger number of projects available than others, this may mean more competition for you. For this reason, it’s important your profile page looks highly presentable and you have plenty of great customer reviews to show off. But hey, if you’re offering marketing services then you already know how important it is to be highly presentable 🙂
Freelance Translation Platforms
The freelance translation industry has been around since the beginning of the early 2000’s – and going by the look of some websites, haven’t been modernized since..! That said, there are new platforms popping up all the time with much more modern and easier to use user interfaces.
As the world has become more globalized and companies understand the need to talk to customers in their own language, so the need for good quality translators has increased. This is great news for freelance translators as platforms like Blend, Appen, Lionbridge, Tomedes and others have embraced their professional translator customers to provide a large number of clients and projects for them.
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If you are an online freelancing marketplace and would like to be included in the next edition of our freelance platform landscape overview, please send an email to freelancemap@payoneer.com, we’d be happy to hear from you.
If you’re a freelancer looking to get paid quickly and efficiently by international marketplaces and global clients, check out why Payoneer is truly the best solution.
