FreelanceSwitch

FreelanceSwitch has to be one of the best freelance job boards out there in terms of quality. All job listings posted go through a review process to assure each job meets a quality standard as well as the compensation provided to agreed contractors is rather reasonable. While the tab to apply for jobs is seven dollars a month, it is definitely worthwhile, as you will not find the same quality listings anywhere else.

Elance

Elance has to be one of the largest global freelancing services out. With countless opportunities for temporary or full time jobs, it is a great place to satisfy your needs. You can easily locate great high-paying and quality jobs without stressing over searching.

Guru

Guru is a great site for searching your design freelance needs. Many of its listings are of great quality with fair compensation. Additionally, it also contains a huge database of freelancer profiles for people to find you instead; a great medium to have more people reach you.

Krop

Krop is a service geared towards designers; however, it also covers other related categories. The great thing about Krop is that, while it may contain full time jobs rather than contracting jobs, it assures that quality listings are what you will be browsing through the entire time you are on the website, as posting a listing to Krop is quite expensive while free for those searching for jobs.

Authentic Jobs

Authentic Jobs is a great full-time, contracting, or easy freelance job listings website. You can easily browse the type of jobs you are looking for with its sleek and intuitive interface. Any listing you browse through is guaranteed quality with great compensations; definitely, a site to look at if you are searching for awesome work.

Fresh Web Jobs

While the website may still be growing, there is a great selection of quality listings. Its design and interface makes browsing about very easy, allowing you to find the types of jobs you want quickly.

Bixee

While Bixee is for a plethora of categories, you can find great jobs quickly that are clear and well laid out. Additionally, with its lightweight and easy to navigate through design, you will not have any troubles at all getting to where it matters.

CrowdSpring

CrowdSpring is a designer specific freelancing website with great quality job listings with more than fair compensation or payout. The entire website is really well laid out towards its targeted audience, making you easily feel at home.

GoFreelance

GoFreelance connects you with companies that need design or development work complete. While the website’s design may be a bit crowded, you can find great freelance jobs for reasonable compensation in all categories they offer, a good site to look at for reasonable work.

PeoplePerHour

PeoplePerHour is a great medium to post your profile or portfolio. Millions of people visit the site to find the perfect freelancer or job. Furthermore, because the medium is so widely used, it is definitely a great source to find work.

Website Designers List

Website Designers List is not as the others mentioned here. Instead of searching for jobs, you post your profile, expertise, as well as some contact information. One who is searching for designer will browse through the directory of profiles to find the best that suits their project. What this means to you is that you do not need to search for clientele as they will come to you.

ODesk

ODesk is a great service to finding the work you need. The layout of the website is sleek and simple, providing you the information you need to know while browsing through listings without the need of opening each listing up. The average compensation is quite low, however, a nice dollar icon besides each listing appears telling you whether the payout is reasonable or not, which is a big help to get around the low compensation listings.

Smashing Jobs

Smashing Magazine has a jobs listing service named Smashing Jobs. Like Authentic Jobs, it offers full time and freelance job sections that can be segregated from each other for easy browsing, making it another great place to frequent for jobs.

Simply Hired

Simply Hired is another great place to find jobs right in your alley. You can make your job search very specific to location, expertise, and experience. Saving you time from flipping through listings that are out of your range.

Behance

Behance is very intuitive Job listing service for full-time or freelance jobs. Its sleek design allows you to go through many job listings you do not care for with ease, saving your time for applying rather than searching.

Picture by G & A Scholiers

Browsing designs from within your niche

Other types of designs

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Portfolios

Tutorials

Videos

Picture by Emre Nacigil

Social Media

Look around you

Picture by Subirpal

Newspapers and magazines

Keep your mind open and dare to be different

Conclusion

All the inspiration you could possibly need is definitely out there! It’s all about thinking a bit different and going out there to look. If you just sit there feeling blue about your dry times, it’ll take you a lot longer to get back in the saddle. Check out these tips and go for it!

Finally, we’d love to hear your comments – and maybe you have some other great tips to share?

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How long does it take you to write a blog post? An hour? Does the time depend on miscellaneous distractions at the moment? Developing your own methods to write posts efficiently ultimately help you to write faster. The hardest part of maintaining any blog is posting consistency, so it’s beneficial to learn ways that encourage faster writing no matter the size of the article.

Ways To Get Posts Out Faster

I’ve been blogging for two years, and throughout those two years I’ve practiced different techniques to produce faster posts. Now that I’ve had success with those techniques it’s beneficial to share the information with new bloggers. Here are some of the methods I utilize when writing any article.

Write and Only Write

First things first, relieve yourself of any distractions before sitting down to write a blog post. Turn off the tv, close Facebook, and remove yourself from the latest conversations on Twitter. What should be a one hour writing session could turn into a four hour bout with procrastination. I would also recommend that when you have an idea for a blog post to try to write it as soon as possible. By nature we forget daily and by the time you sit down the idea may not be as clear.

Many bloggers admit to carrying a small notebook around to quickly jot down ideas. Personally, I have a list on my computer of over 100 (growing) blog post ideas at all times. Some ideas may, however, take longer to write about then others, so section off which ideas produce faster or shorter posts.

Outlines and Form

Start off each post with a standard Roman numeral outline. Include brief descriptions of the intro, body, and conclusion for reference. Writing an outline ultimately helps you to understand the direction you want to go with each article. I usually create my outline first, then write each section in under the titles.

The great thing about incorporating a “blog series” into your writing schedule is that readers know what to expect for the general content of those posts. Because of this, keep a form of writing specific to an article series. For instance, if you write a “Weekly Round Up of Articles Around the Web” you can essentially use the same titles or headers. Change out the dates for that week and make the descriptions unique for that content.

Maintaining blog series also allow you to pre-draft posts for when you write them later in the week. In fact, as you finish one weekly round up, start the structure for next week’s article.

Write The Intro Last

Many writers in general find it difficult to start at the beginning. An intro is understandably one of the hardest parts of any article because you want to draw readers in to make sure they continue reading. If an intro is not coming to you as quickly as you’d like, move onto the body of the article and even the conclusion. By the time you’ve finished the bulk of the article you’ll realize what works best for the intro.

You can also take this moment to begin adding tags to your posts. Efficient writing is all about making the most of your time, so when you’re stuck, simply move on to the next task for you can always come back and finish.

Keyboard Shortcuts and Codes By Heart

I can navigate around my entire computer only using my keyboard. This may seem odd, but it’s actually a very beneficial tip when writing posts. Just like when you’re designing in Photoshop, utilizing keyboard shortcuts save the time it takes to move your mouse. Something as simple as highlighting text to copy and paste becomes a pain because of my laptop mouse, so instead I frequent the shortcuts CTRL + C and CTRL + V (copy/paste) for ease.

Memorizing HTML codes also works to streamline blog posting. For instance, when I begin inserting images as a gallery, I copy one code and paste it over and over for the amount of images I want to include. Then all I have to do is go back and change name of the image source and the “alt” tag.

I always edit a post last because I feel each component of blog writing shouldn’t interfere with one another to maintain efficiency. If I edit the code as I write the post, it’ll take longer to finish the article. The same goes if I look for images while writing. Ultimately, the faster you write the post the faster it will get out, so don’t worry about the other details until the end.

Quickly Name Images

By the time I’m ready to insert images into a post, I’m probably most impatient to wanting to see the article go live. So, I always stick to a specific method of naming my images for faster insertion. For each article, the images are named with the date the article will go live, two letters related to the post, and one number for the numerical order of the images.

For instance, if I write about web design inspiration on June 28th 2010, then the images for that post will be named 62810di1.jpg. All images after will continue in numerical order (i.e. 62810di2,di3,etc). For the main header image, I name it differently (62810head.jpg) to distinguish it from the rest.

By maintaining this format I don’t have to spend countless minutes looking for images because of forgetting the different names for each picture.

What Are Your Tips For Faster Posts?

Streamlining your blog posts allows you create faster and more efficient articles for your readers. These have been some of my methods used throughout my two years of blogging, and I would love to hear what yours are. Are there methods different from the ones above that you use?