Why Craigslist Is a No-No for Freelance Jobs

Craigslist is a world famous advertisement board, visited on a daily basis by millions of people from all corners of the world. It has sections devoted to housing, personals, services, items for buy/sell and, of course, jobs aren’t left out. You can also find an extended forum section where people discuss the latest job trends and share their experiences.

Some people consider Craigslist such an important place that they identify it as the number one option for hunting freelance jobs, since it is a highly accessible marketplace where anything goes. Does this however mean that freelancers should also turn to Craigslist to score their next gig in building a freelancer career?

There are several things that make Craigslist the worst option for freelancers. For starters, the site is a huge job board, meaning you need to spend hours and hours each day just looking for new gigs with few suitable options to find just those freelance jobs within your field of expertise. In between the few serious freelance jobs you find on the site are hundreds of one-off low-paying jobs for students, temporary local jobs and other offerings that you need to wrestle through. The site is mostly the home of quick gigs, which is convenient – at first. But on the longer run you won’t be able to find long-standing partnerships for quality work over a longer period of time. Even if you find a well-playing job, once it’s finished, you are back to square one, and the tedious job searching starts again.

Unlike Craigslist, specialized freelance sites (such as Freelancer.com, Upwork, Toptal and Fiverr) are focusing solely on connecting employees to employers and vice versa, while offering several features that make them worth choosing over the better-known advertisement board. For example, there is as an in-depth profile page that displays a freelancer’s resume, skills and ratings from previous clients. Freelancers also receive notifications when a new gig appears that fits their expertise, so they never miss an opportunity. And the icing on the cake is the escrow payment system, which ensures that no employer gets away with your hard work without paying.