After advertising Freelance Work Exchange for some time now, I decided it was time to do a review. I already knew that they were a good company, but I had not gone through the resources personally to see exactly what is offered.

Now, I’ve had some members complain about the cost of Freelance Work Exchange if you want the Pro membership. You hear so often about not paying for a work at home job that it’s just about a reflex for some people to complain. But when it comes to paying for quality resources to find a work at home jobs, that’s another story entirely.

Note that I say quality. Many of the job boards you see advertised that charge a fee are not quality… far from it in fact. They can be nothing more than rehashed versions of out of date work at home job lists, naming companies that have some sort of telecommuting program, even though the company may not offer such a program now, or may only offer it to established employees a day or two a week.

This is not what Freelance Work Exchange is about. Since finding real freelance jobs is what most people care about, the very first thing I clicked on was the Project Directory.

Jobs there are categorized by type, such as Writing, Editing and Proofreading, Design, Software Development and Technical, Photography and so forth. The job listings are dated, so you know how recently the job was posted - no worry about finding out that the job was filled months ago!

Now, you aren’t going to see new jobs in every category every day. Some of the categories even go a couple weeks without a new job. But there are new jobs added somewhere most days, especially in the Design and Illustration category and the Work at Home category. However, the Writing, Editing and Proofreading category rarely goes more than 2 days without new jobs, often getting daily postings, and often more than one job. The Programming, Software Development and Technical category also gets new jobs quite frequently, I would say several leads per week.

You don’t even have to log in to see what the newest jobs are. Freelance Work Exchange gives you two great options for keeping an eye on the available jobs with almost no effort.

The first is their Internet Explorer Toolbar. You install the toolbar (very easy!), and new jobs will simply appear on your browser. It’s a great way to keep up.

You can also add the RSS feed for the job to your My Yahoo page or other feed reader. This is my personal preference, mostly because I don’t use Internet Explorer as my browser.

Maybe it’s just a problem today, but clicking on individual jobs on either of these didn’t take me either to a job or a login page… I just got an error. So it’s not exactly trouble free.

And, of course, you can get the jobs by email. It’s all up to your personal preferences.

You don’t have to pay to take a look; that’s the one big benefit. Sign up and you can get access to their free resources; then you can decide if it’s worth it to YOU to pay for a membership. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. You have to be a member to apply for the jobs but not to see what kinds are being added.

Freelance Work Exchange also takes you to some great free software resources that may be quite useful in your freelance career. These aren’t developed by them or anything, so you can get them elsewhere, but you’d have to think of what you need yourself and then take the time to find them. There were a few that had me thinking about how useful they’d be, that I had never thought of before.

As I said, checking them out is free. You only pay if you decide it has something you want. Take the chance, sign up and make up your own mind. I know Freelance Work Exchange will be worth it to at least some of you.

Technorati Tags: , , ,