Freelancing.com

The perils of freelancing are many, but none are uppermost in our minds more than that age-old question: Where and when is my next gig? A large body of well-placed friends is helpful, but not always feasible. An intricate network of contacts built up over the course of thirty years of contract work is also helpful. Yeah, right. In the past four years, though, the Internet has slowly changed the face of freelance positions - particularly creative-end freelance positions. Examining a few of these websites, and evaluating their relevance to the freelancer, should prove helpful in your next, frenzied job search. Monster.com, HotJobs.com, Ants.com, Guru.com and WorkExcahnge.com will all be evaluated below in a few different categories. These categories are: 1) Ease of navigation through the site 2) Amount of freelance jobs offered in a creative capacity and 3) The quality of the freelance postings.

Monster.com
Monster is one of the largest job-posting websites out there, and one of the most difficult to get through. All of these sites have a search engine that can narrow the fields between position, title, location, etc. but the layout at Monster is a little confusing, The color scheme is annoying and their pull-down menus tend to blend into the site's background. They are also limited in filtering your search. To find a job posting for a copywriter in Evanston, IL for example, you will have to view all of the postings for Creative/Media (or Advertising/Publishing) in the entire Chicagoland area. The major plus at Monster is the total amount of positions that are posted on the site. Blessed with an interesting domain name, most job-posters go to Monster first. Unfortunately, a majority of the Monster postings are either permanent positions or completely misleading garbage. Once again, looking for that copywriting position, you will hit 100 "Make Money at Home" postings and three ads for "Adult Actresses Needed." For the one or two interesting positions that you might find on Monster, the 98% of trash that you have to rifle through just doesn't make it worth it.