12 Best Freelance Websites (2023)
12 Best Freelance Websites (2023)
Freelancing has grown significantly in the past decade. More and more companies’ need for digital skills, the development of work communication tools, the benefits of this method for both sides of cooperation, and finally, the spread of the Coronavirus disease, have all had a great impact on the development of remote work culture and one of its subcategories, i.e., freelancing. Such development has caused the emergence of sites with the aim of online communication between the employer and the contractor.
This article will first introduce 12 of the best foreign freelance sites. In the following, we will review tips about registration and methods of collecting income from these platforms, and finally we will mention tips for success in this field. If you’re a freelancer or your skillset is such that you can work remotely, this article will open new doors to more income and career advancement.
Fiver: The most famous foreign freelance site
If you are a freelancer, you may not have heard of Fiverr. This platform is considered by many to be the best freelancing site in the world. If not the best of its kind, Fiver is certainly one of the biggest in the industry, with 3.42 million users. This US-based platform connects business owners from around the world with digital skills experts. The areas of activity and work in Fiver mainly include the following:
- Web Development or Web Development; including skills such as coding, UX and UI design, and application design
- Social Networks, including skills such as social network admin, modeling, and content production
- digital marketing, including skills such as content creation, SEO, and online advertising campaigns
How to work with Fiverr
In Fiver, like many other foreign freelance sites, the service provider, Seller, and receiver is called a buyer. After registering and creating a profile, the seller lists his skills, called gigs, and prices them.
When a buyer buys a gig or service package, 20% of the cost is automatically deducted as commission and the remaining 80% is credited to the freelancer’s account. Depending on the level of the seller’s profile or Seller Level, it takes up to 14 days for the amount deposited into his account to be released and withdrawn. To withdraw your earnings from Fiver, you will need accounts such as PayPal and Apple Pay or a Debit Card.
Advantages and disadvantages of Fiver
Among the advantages of Fiver, the following can be mentioned:
- Free registration
- Holding online courses
- Diverse and classified subject categories
- Simple user interface
- Having a mobile app
Among the disadvantages of this external freelance website are the following:
- Relatively high commission percentage
- Relatively long payment process
- There are many fake accounts due to not having to pay during registration
Upwork; The largest freelancing site
In terms of user volume, Upwork is the largest foreign freelancing site, with 18 million freelancers and five million clients or employers among foreign freelancing sites. Freelancing on this platform is possible in a wide range of services, the most important of which are:
- Web Design
- Branding
- customer services
- Accounting
- Programming
Upwork’s office is in San Francisco, USA. This company used to work under the name Elance-oDesk.
How to work with Upwork
As a freelancer, just register on this Upwork website for free and complete your profile by adding your skills, portfolio, work history, and personal details. On this website, you can apply for projects yourself. Employers can also purchase your predefined services with complete details like price etc. You can also put your portfolios up for sale.
Fees for projects on Upwork start at 20%, which, of course, decreases as you get more projects. Upwork, like most foreign freelance sites, has provided the possibility of payment directly to the freelancer account or via PayPal account.
Top Tel: A website for professional freelancers
While Fiver and Upwork focus more on digital and web marketing skills, TopTal is one of the best freelancing sites for people with more traditional skills. The focus areas of this website can be summarized as follows:
- Translation
- Web Design
- Web development
- Financial advice
- Product management
- Software design and development
- Project Management
How to work with TopTal
TopTel pays special attention to the level of English language skills of its users. To register on this site, you have a five-step process in front of you, which includes English tests, assessment of your skills, and even a test project. Because of this strictness, it is said that only about three percent of TopTel job applicants manage to open a user account there.
TopTel payments are also made using a dedicated service for time and financial tracking of bills called Top Tracker. Payments can also be made through systems such as PayPal, Payoneer, etc. In this service, pricing is project-based and negotiable. Its advantage is that you do not pay a commission for each project.
In TopTel, the freelancer must pay a registration fee to use this platform. The rate of this fee is hourly and includes three types of full-time (40 hours per week), part-time (20 hours per week) and hourly. In addition, the customer must pay an additional fee for each hour of using this platform.
Advantages and disadvantages of TopTel
In summary, the most important advantages of TopTal as one of the best foreign freelance sites are the following:
- No commission
- Low network traffic
- The possibility of working with the largest companies in the world
- The possibility of earning a great income up to 1000 dollars per day
- Providing free advice by one of TopTel’s employees to the freelancer in order to successfully attract the project
Disadvantages of this platform from the users’ point of view are the following:
- Need to pay the registration fee
- Long registration process
- The inability to compete for new freelancers without a strong portfolio
Freelancer.com
One of the best foreign freelance sites is Freelancer.com. The developer company of this website is Australian, and unlike American companies and many European companies. The main focus of the projects presented in this website is on the following areas:
- Translation
- Web development
- network marketing
- Programming
- Content production
Work with Freelancer.com
To use freelancer.com, just go through the short registration process and provide information about your education level, skills, work experience, etc. It is also necessary to specify your hourly wage. In addition to work projects, this website also provides the possibility of designing contests for employers. Accordingly, they determine the financial terms of their project and choose one of the freelancers.
Freelancer.com charges freelancers 10% for each project. You must also have a PayPal or similar account to receive the collected amounts in your account. The possibility of chatting with the employer and 24/7 support are other advantages of this foreign freelance website. However, its user interface is not as simple as previous websites and the process of project approval and delivery is also a bit complicated.
Jooble Freelancer search engine
Jooble is, in fact, a search engine for home jobs, where employment information is collected from more than 140,000 companies. These companies even include external freelance sites themselves. The important advantage of this platform is that by using it, you don’t have to check each and every foreign freelancing site. Jooble allows you to search for jobs in only one city or country.
Using the Jooble search engine
To use Jubilee, you don’t need to create an account; Rather, just like Google, you just need to enter your desired keyword or job and see the search results. In addition, there are a range of filters in front of you that you can use to refine your results. Examples of filters include salary range, work history, and posting date. Also, by registering in the email notification of this search engine, similar job opportunities will be sent to you.
Block Lancer; Freelance website with cryptocurrency payment
In terms of ease of access to income, the best foreign freelance sites are those that allow payment with cryptocurrency. Most of these sites, of course, cover crypto jobs and activities, ranging from crypto programming to watching ads and making money playing games. But among them there are also websites like Blocklancer that can advertise all kinds of freelance jobs.
Blocklancer is a platform built on the blockchain, whose native digital currency is also called LNC. While in most freelance sites, you need to authenticate and upload documents to use high user levels, You can work anonymously in Block Lancer.
All you need to do on Blocklancer is create an account, list your skills and work history, and then put your Bitcoin or Ethereum wallet address on the site. It is better not to use the wallet address of centralized exchanges Because there is a possibility of identifying them. Metamask, TrustWallet, and other decentralized software wallets are the best options for this purpose.
Another important advantage of Blocklancer is that it is free to use. No commission is charged on this website. Only when making transactions a three percent fee is charged for completing the transaction process in the blockchain.
Flex Jobs; A website for writers
If you are looking to earn money from freelancing on foreign sites with non-commercial writing skills, maybe Flexjobs is your best option. In the categories of this website, topics such as the following can be seen:
- journalism
- Education
- Blog and content writing
- Digital Marketing
- Translation and transliteration
One of the most important features of FlexJobs is that the registered jobs are legal. Therefore, there is no possibility that you will see fake ads or spam on this website. This company has been operating in Colorado, USA since 2007.
How to work with Flexjobs
FlexJobs is included in the category of foreign freelance sites with an initial charging fee. To use this website, as a contractor or service seller, after registering and providing personal and professional information, you must purchase one of its packages. Currently, the cheapest package on this site costs $6.95 per week. Among the features of this subscription are the following:
- Access to all ads and jobs
- Ability to upload a portfolio
- Career counseling
- Free skills test
Other advantages of FlexJobs include not displaying ads, high security, a one-month money-back guarantee, and PayPal support. The relatively high cost of registration and restriction to large and reputable companies are also disadvantages of this website.
Guru; A platform for training and work
Most of us know Guru platform as an educational website. This platform is one of the largest foreign freelancer sites with more than 1.5 million registered freelancer accounts. Careers categorized on Guru cover a wide range, the most important of which include programming, graphic design, content creation, and product management.
In Guru, in addition to being able to bid for your services and skills, you can also bid and price them. The methods of withdrawal from the account in Goro are diverse and include direct withdrawal to PayPal.
In order to guarantee the payment of wages by the employer, Guru has also launched a system called SafePay. Initial membership on this platform is free for freelancers; But to use more features, you need to buy its paid plans.
Behance; A social network for freelancers
Behance can be considered the best external freelance site with a social network model. On this website, freelancers have profiles like in social networks, but their content is actually the portfolios that they publish on their pages. Naturally, this website is the right place to find freelance projects in the fields of animation, photography, graphic design, and in short, text, image, and video content production. Of course, website designers also use it a lot.
Behance, like other freelancing sites, offers a list of jobs that you can include in your bio and categorize your profile. Based on your skills and categories of interest, the website offers you personalized career recommendations.
Creating an account on Behance is free, and one of its advantages is the possibility of networking with the community related to the field of work, advertising, and affiliate marketing. Keep in mind that you are facing a size limit of 50 MB to upload your files on the website or Android and iOS applications of this platform.
99 Designs; The best foreign freelance site for designers
In general, graphic design is one of the most important freelancing skills. In all the websites that we have introduced so far, this skill is considered one of the most popular, But 99designs can be considered the best foreign freelance site for professionals in this field. This platform is specially designed for this field of work and covers the following projects and their like:
- Front-end site design
- Website banner design
- Designing social media posts
- Logo design
- Box and packaging design
- Book cover design
- Layout
- Poster design
- product design
- cloth design
After registering with 99 Designs and completing your work history, portfolio and skills, the review team of this website will evaluate and rank your profile. The higher level you have, the more and more complex projects will be displayed for you.
99 Designs does not charge a registration fee, but its fee is 5-15% of the project cost. The deposited wages are also deposited into your account within three working days through methods such as PayPal and Payoneer.
Dribble Popular freelance platform for app designers
Dribbble is a familiar name for freelancers. This website claims that with more than 12 million active users, it has about 67.5% of the turnover of the freelancing field in America. The main areas of activity in Dribble include mobile application design, illustration and animation.
In Dribble, designers and companies have different possibilities to promote their works and brands. In this platform, you will also have tools for creating graphic portfolios, such as various templates, themes, and graphic elements.
The initial version of Dribble is free, and of course you will have more limited access to the tools and job list in this version. To use more features of this platform, you need to buy its premium version, which costs five to $15 per month. Premium accounts are prioritized on Dribbble’s recruitment search pages.
laborx; Freelance website with smart contract
Another external freelance website built on the blockchain platform is LaborX. This platform also allows its users to earn money with digital currency in exchange for doing freelance projects. However, the most important difference between this platform and similar websites is its use of smart contracts to secure and guarantee payments. This project has more than one hundred thousand active users and was established in Australia by Chrono.tech.
Most of the projects advertised on LaborX are crypto-related. Content production in this field, crypto programming, NFT and blockchain games are among these fields. However, with any skill you can register and earn. In the job category of this website, areas such as translation, sales, creative work, mobile application development, graphic design, IT, customer service and network are also seen.
The cost of using LaborX services is 10% of the total project value. However, by purchasing a premium account of this platform, you will no longer pay any fees. Your income is paid to your digital currency wallet account in a large number of so-called altcoins, the most famous of which are Ethereum, BNB, Tether and DAI.
Earning income from foreign freelance sites
One of the most important things that you should think about before accepting the project and even registering on foreign freelance sites is the method of collecting the income you have earned on these sites, you can be sure that your earnings will be saved in your account on the site forever. Several sites in Iran offer PayPal account opening services, gift cards, Master Card and similar cards as intermediaries. A service that, of course, has relatively high costs.
From this point of view, freelance sites with the possibility of cryptocurrency payment are more user-friendly. However, you should note that their credibility and facilities are usually less than traditional famous sites. In addition to the Blocklancer and LaborX websites that we reviewed in this article, there are other reputable sites in this field, such as CryptoGigs, CoinGigs, and CryptoGrind. Before working on these sites, it is better to research about their credibility, development team and account security.
Tips about freelancing on foreign sites
At the end of this article, we need to mention some important points about success as an international freelancer. The most important skill you need in addition to your specialized skills when working on a foreign freelance site is English. Especially, in almost all of them, the employer has the possibility to rate and comment about the freelancer. The better you communicate with the employer, the faster and more accurate you will be in completing the project. This skill is also important in fields such as producing textual content.
It is also necessary to have a global perspective in your field of work, especially in the field of graphic design, it is better to replace global taste and aesthetics and read about the styles and trends of the day. Finally, keep in mind to follow the copyright law when uploading a portfolio or doing projects. Otherwise, you may face fines from foreign freelance sites.
