Man-in-the-middle marketplaces like UpWork, Freelancer, and Fiverr aren’t the only places you can use to find remote work. There are other ways to find good remote freelance projects. They get posted all the time in places like Reddit, Slack Groups, social media sites, multiple job boards, and forums too.
In this post, I’m going to share with you how to find the best remote projects that are posted on Reddit and how to apply so that you land the project.
1) Search the right subreddits.
There are many subreddits that people post on when they want to hire someone for a job or project. One of my favorites to search is /r/forhire . The posts that you want to focus on are usually labeled with [HIRING].
Here are a few other subreddits that you can also check:
/r/railsjobs/r/gameDevClassifieds/r/DesignJobs/r/Jobopenings
Many programming languages have their own subreddits as well. Depending on the rules of the board, jobs and projects specific to those languages get posted on there frequently.
2) Skip commenting on the thread. Send a private message.
Many times, hiring threads are monitored by bots that automatically remove your comment if you don’t meet a quota of karma points or account age.
The best thing to do is skip commenting altogether and send a private message directly to the poster instead. This lets you put together a good cover letter and share more personal details about your work experience (with links) that will help you land the project.
3) Do your research before sending the message.
Clients get a lot of applications from people who didn’t do any research at all. Applicants will only link out to a PDF resume without any cover letter. Don’t be one of those applicants. Clients will ignore you.
That’s why you can easily stand out with an extra 10–15 minutes of focused research on the client and their project along with a good cover letter.
A lot of times though, Reddit posts don’t have a lot of context. Click through on the poster’s account and go through their older posts and comments and see if you can learn anything more about their project. Mention it in the message that you send.
4) Leave a value-packed message with links to your best projects.
The goal is to send a private message to the poster with a well-written cover letter that shows the client how you can help them with their project specifically.
Click here to learn more about how to write cover letters that win you remote freelance clients.
6) Your karma doesn’t matter.
I need to mention this. Your reddit karma doesn’t have any effect on whether you land a job or not. The bots might remove you if you leave a comment, but the human that will hire you is worried about one thing: If you can help them do the job.
7) It’s a numbers game
You won’t get every client that you contact. Many people won’t even respond to you. That’s a part of the process. Ultimately, it’s all about how many people you reach out to on a consistent basis.
Reddit is an open platform so you’ll also get a lot of people responding to the same lead you respond to, but if you follow the tips laid out above you can stand out from 95% of the people who reply with your professionalism.
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Reddit can be a good alternative source for finding remote freelance projects.
All it takes is searching for them and then reaching out to clients in the right way.
All of the advice of presenting yourself professionally doesn’t get thrown out the window just because it’s Reddit. The professionalism of the private message you send out to the client, along with linking to your portfolio, go a long way to helping you land more projects.
Thank you for reading and good luck on landing your next project!