Awesome stats especially with what has been going on in the news. Thank you for a most useful resource and your helpful and inspiring newsletters.

I wish I could be the looky commenter! I´m a new reader and subscriber to this blog and, although I´m freelancing since 5 years til now and have a good experience, here a could find great tips and a important stimulus to continue working and, the most important, since I´m from Brazil, a place to try making contacts abroad. Thanks a lot!

Cool prize. Trying to dip my toes into the freelance pool and something’s holding me back. This would be a great opportunity though

Wonder why more readers haven’t caught on…?

That’s great to hear especially since I’m starting to look for some extra income. A key note is that filtering is not done on lots of job sites which saves time for everyone and produces a much better service. Insert bonus points here please.

Congratulations guys!

The best thing about the FreelanceSwitch Board is that both sides are offered protection – the freelancers are protected from exploitation via the board’s moderation team and the clients are protected by the subscription charge, which acts as a deterrent to the 10 pages for $20 crowd.

Roll on 500 concurrent!

I have recently lost a huge client (over 50% of my income) because they needed to “trim their sails.” On top of that, I broke my foot on Monday, so I have 12 weeks of recovery ahead of me. I have just started getting the FreelanceSwitch RSS feed and following on Twitter. I have not subscribed to the job board yet, but it sounds like it might be a big help. And I have much more time on my hands to explore it. Thanks for providing such a great service

Awesome.

Though I’ve yet to find that elusive job that will move me to NZ permanently…

Congratulations. This is exciting news for both Freelance Switch and your readers. I am preparing to make the plunge into full-time freelance work in the not too distant future. Freelance Switch and the other Envato properties have been extremely helpful resources for me as I plan how I will reach my personal and professional goals. I am very grateful for the information you all share including your readers comments.

While I have yet to use your job board, I hope to in the future!

I’ve been enjoying Freelance Switch for a while now. I actually got sucked in by the cartoon strip (because it is so dead-on) and then found myself browsing, subscribing to email updates and following links within those updates. To be honest, I hadn’t checked out the job board until now. From what I see, I like the approach taken and I definitely like the clean design and the user-friendliness in the functionality. As a freelancer of 10+ years, I’m excited to look into this in more detail and get involved. Good job. Get it? “Job”? Hahahaaa.

With the economy the in the shape it is now is a great time to be a Freelancer. The proof is in the increasing number of companies looking for Freelancers.

As for something meaningful:
“Don’t take life to serious, It’s not permanent”

Congratulations¡
I am following (via RSS) because you are giving in every post very useful advices.
Thank you, You are so darn useful.

That’s excellent news !
I’m looking to move into freelance development in the next few months, and I know this resource is going to be useful for when I do!!

Keep it up – I want to see more choice when I make the jump

Nice work! Envato has done an excellent job of raising the bar for online interactive/design resources since you guys have launched. Even with the paid options (like tutsplus), the quality of your free resources still outshines many of the other paid/free tutorial and resource sites online.

Keep up the good work!

Congratulations on your growth! As a new freelance copyeditor/proofreader (read: laid off), the job listings might be very valuable to me. I hope I win a subscription!

That’s really amazing! You all must be very excited about it! I’m sure not too long from now you will be celebrating an even bigger victory. You’re doing a great job, thank you!

P.S. Give the subscription to someone who deserves it. I have a full time job right now, and freelance work is just “bonus” for me, so I am grateful.

I read your posts daily and am thankful for the inspiration, sharpening, and insight that FreelanceSwitch provides. I’ve been interested in trying the Job Board and have told several of my friends about it … I should try it out myself

Congrats for the great stats!

I guess that moderation must be a lot of work, especially since posting a classified is free.

How do you handle the moderation process? Do you use checklists? Have you implemented any sort of automation into the process such as automatically sending a rejection email when a new posting is deemed inappropriate?

I don’t know if this will be meaningful, but at least it will be an honest comment: I’m a big fan of the FS blog, but the FS job board has nothing special about it. I’m a bit disappointed, because I was expecting an even better filtering and more quality postings. I’ve subscribed a couple of months ago, but nothing so far.

So growth is good! More jobs, more subscriptions… but how many postings turn into a deal? How many people are making good use of their subscriptions? This could even be a great idea for an article, is some people would be kind enough to share some insight.

I hope my comment can be seen as constructive! I’ll certainly keep my subscription, as it is still a great deal, but I’m curious how others are doing? Maybe my methods are wrong…

Excellent work on this blog and the whole Envato family.
The filtering on the job boards is appreciated and absolutely necessary. With allowing posters to place ads for free the amount of quality posts are limited. Unfortunately, I have to agree with Adrian, I would find the job boards much more useful with a more robust reporting system.

I have to say I’m impressed with the growth of the job board since the last time I peeked at it. I’m a print designer, so most online project postings, which tend to be for web work, aren’t relevant to me.

However, now I’m seeing a few print-oriented projects, so I’ll be looking at the board more often now. More often, that is, than when a post about it shows up in my RSS reader.

I have found the articles on Freelance switch to be invaluable. It’s great to be able to plug into a community of like minded people. I have not had the chance to use the job boards yet (every penny counts you know) but I would love to give them a try. Pick me!!!

I’d be interested to know, how many applications are submitted on average for each job. I guess there’s only one way to find out, post a job.

This really is amazing it wasn’t very long ago that I herd about the job broad. I know that the broad has helped many people and I know it could help me.

Hm, glad to see some kind of real alternative (hopefully) developing to combat the freelance-price-gougin’ likes of Odesk, Elance, etc. I’ll have to take a look around and maybe pass the word on to some of my freelancer friends! (Or maybe I oughta just keep this lil’ secret to myself. Muhaha.)

Congratulations for that numbers, The more jobs, the more opportunities. The numbers says our market is growing and this is good for all the people who is making their best effort.
Thanks to all the staff of F.S. for giving us the chance of find new clients in this competitive world and for watch our backs for that kind of clients (you know who you are!).
Keep doing the good job!

Okay, I’m not a recurring subscription person, so you need to put more detail in the signup info page. It says you can “cancel at any time,” but I also want to know what the procedure is for cancelling. I want to know on which day subscription renewal charges will be posted, i.e., is it the same day each month as your signup day?

Now I’m reminded why I didn’t sign up before. Even though it’s only $7/month, there isn’t enough information on the process to make the potential customer feel comfortable with it.

Also, the big, miscolored, pixelated “PayPal” logo that you have to click to sign up is…really not good. The page doesn’t say that you have to click the logo (it says you’ll be redirected to PayPal, which is not what happens). Also, it looks like the PayPal logo’s colors have been changed to match the Freelance Switch green color, which I’m sure PayPal would consider a big no-no. Respect the branding!

Wow, criticizing is fun. I could do this all day!

A years subscription eh. Not to come across as “sucking up” (especially after reading this post!) haha http://www.freelanceswitch.com/the-business-of-freelancing/oops-your-attitude-is-showing/

But I have been a fan of FreelanceSwitch for some time now. I am subscribed to the RSS feed and make good efforts to read all of the blog posts and listen to all of your podcasts. There is no other place I would rather go for my Freelance needs.

I think a free subscription to FLS job board would do me well! (And save me $84!)

Great job Envato Network! Keep up the amazing work!!!

Congrats! It is great to see such a great place for freelancers to go to get work. And it is great to have a wonderful website to come to! I check out the website daily and I’m very active in the forums and enjoy every moment!

Alot of freelancers are needed help getting clients these days and the fact that you help provide an area for them to look and apply for gigs is great! I hope that it continues to grow and to read the announcement when it hits 500 active jobs!

Great work guys!

Before I found Freelance Switch, I thought becoming my own boss would be an uphill struggle. After about 2 months of lurking, I decided to sign up and I am now happy to say that I’ve found two clients since joining. And those clients have been a joy to work with.

Its difficult to compete on job boards where the pay rates are insanely low, but I feel because of your policies and screening procedures, this job board is one of the better ones out there. So kudos to you guys!

I really love what you’re doing for the freelance community. This blog/newsletter is probably the most informative of any that currently pop into my inbox, and I also find the podcasts to be extremely helpful as well. I’m a new freelancer, and still learning good work habits, disciplines, etc. I’m currently struggling with maintaining a good balance time-wise of looking for new work and working on existing projects. It’s a struggle when the looking outweighs the working 90% to 10%, so any advice in making job searches easier would be great. I know the best jobs come from person-to-person connections, rather than virtual “cold calls”, but any tips to get the ball rolling in the first place would be great.

I’ve personally found Twitter to be a great way to find new jobs also – I use Tweetdeck, the free Adobe Air application, to have searches running constantly for phrases like “need an illustrator” or “need a designer” or “freelance illustrator”. I landed my first children’s book illustration job through a connection I made when answering someone’s search for an illustrator, so that’s been very valuable. You should try it too – if you want to catch any fish, you need to keep that lure in the water!

Sounds great! As a beginner freelancer, I am just trying to get my feet wet and start to figure out how to get new clients, so this job board sounds like an amazing place to start. I’ve been burned a few times in the past on some online job offers so it sounds like you take care to make sure this doesn’t happen here! Congrats on the stats and I hope to be one of the newest members of the board!

Congrats! I actually just celebrated my first year of full time freelancing (although I wrote on the side for several years before that), and it’s really important for freelancers to celebrate and share those milestones, whether it’s landing a lucrative client, beating your income goal, staying in business for a certain amount of time, or getting XXX jobs posted on the board. Since we don’t have coworkers, we can celebrate via blog post or Twitter. I also had a nice dinner last week to celebrate offline, so I encourage you to treat yourself to a beer or nice slab of cake. You’ve earned it!

great news for all freelancers, i am regular reader of all envato family websites, great resources for learning different things related to web designing and development.

quality of articles are awesome highly recommends anyone interested in designing and development visit regularly or subscribe all envato sites.

I haven’t used the job board to find a job, but I did post a job — about a year ago — for a client looking for a web designer.

My peeve at the time was that I put some pretty specific directions in the body of the post, asking that all resumes answer a few questions regarding experience and that the responses be sent to my email address since I knew I’d be more likely to review the resumes and that the client would be overwhelmed. Unfortunately, a bunch of people who don’t subscribe to the job board only saw the URL of the site, found a info@domain.com email, and sent their resumes to that. They were immediately disqualified since the client assumed they couldn’t follow directions, when in reality, they never saw the directions.

Just a quick rant. I do enjoy the site, just not that particular experience…

Rachel — unfortunately, while you can post jobs anonymously, if you chose to disclose your identity in the posting there is not much we can do to prevent the less savory leeches of the Internet finding ways around paying the subscription and contacting you. Before I worked with Envato I used the job board to find some people for various positions, and disqualified the same sort of applicants — but more because I felt they were being dishonest by circumventing the system than failing to follow instructions.

It’s nice to see at least one job board you can trust, sick of those bidding sites where people offer the next facebook for $25.

Good work

I’ve been debating whether or not to sign-up at the job board. Winning a membership would be a fantastic thing for my business, as I’m just starting up

I suspect even if I don’t win, I’ll still sign-up very shortly, I’ve always heard great things about the FreelanceSwitch job board

The job board here is a great tool for freelancers. I have gotten a wonderful design through it and it looks like a fantastic alternative to some of the other job boards out there.

Congrats guys! That’s a lot of work and a huge resource for us freelancers, thanks!

I’ve been skeptical about paying about paying for access to a job board, not because I think it’s unethical to ask me to do so, but simply because I am just starting out, and with 0 income so far, paying first and asking questions later doesn’t seem like a good business decision.

That said, I’ve wondered what value-add this model brings the job-seekers. Posting a job is free, encouraging more jobs to be posted, but this would also encourage more of the less-than-serious job posters. I’m glad to hear that you’re filtering them out.

I guess another potential advantage would be semi-exclusive access to job postings, i.e. if you’re one of the few that’s willing to pay, AND if the jobs posted are exclusively posted here and not on other job boards, then you would have the advantage of being one of only a few seekers applying for that job.

Maybe someday I’ll bite the bullet and test my theories. Till then, winning a free subscription would be nice.

Congratulations! Its nice to have job board you can trust!

That’s great! Congratulations guys! And yayyy(!) for the freelancers who’ll get those jobs.

What I’m interested in know is:

As the job board’s reputation has spread, have the number of jobs that aim to take advantage of freealancer’s increased or decreased?

Another thing that can be done to improve the quality of job seekers is have freelancers, who land a gig through your job board, write a review of the client – and vice versa. Both can use it as a testimonial for themselves. It will be helpful information for other freelancers as well and a standard would be set for both.

I love FreelanceSwitch! I not only follow on twitter (btw awesome content and consistency), but I am an avid listener to Freelance Radio/podcast. I would love a free subscription to the job board!

Freelance Switch… you complete me!

First of all, 300 concurrent jobs is incredible, congrats on that! I’m a huge fan of the envato marketplace and look forward to testing this site out in the near future. I’m in the mode to get serious about my freelance work and beef up my portfolio. I was just reading through some of the jobs on the board and it seems like they are right up my alley and it’s good to know that you filter the crap-jobs out so we don’t have to.

Just wanted to give a big thanks all the guys that work behind the scenes of envato, keep up the great work and keep pumping out the great sites!

Remember me in the membership vote.

Great prize. I’d love to win this one. I’ve been following freelance switch for a long time now, getting some great info from here.

Cheers

Great news! I am a suscribir for a while, I have always found interesting post to start and continue as a freelancer. I am doing it for a couple of months, and even it is not easy at start I am very confident about the future. Saludos desde Uruguay

I’m just getting into freelancing and have been reviewing the various job sites. Winning a free subscription would be a great way to test it out.

“Eagles may soar but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines”

Thank you!

Did you pick the 2 winners yet?

-rob

Rob — yes, we gave the free subscriptions out and the winners tell me they are enjoying their subscriptions.