Here’s a quick little secret you can use to lower the bad search results when you’re hunting for freelance jobs. Ever notice how many crappy search returns you get when you search on the plural of your freelance specialty? Try Googling the phrase “freelance writers” in your favorite job board. When I do this kind of search, the results are absolutely POLLUTED with the content sites that have spammed the job board with every different kind of ad they can cram in there.

Aside from being totally annoying (and perhaps I’m not using the same kind of freelance job boards you are and you’re getting different results) this is very much a waste of time if you try to wade thru the crap to get to the actual freelance jobs themselves–the ones that pay more than a few bucks per article.

What I do instead is to search on the singular terms. “Freelance Job” or “freelance writing position” or “writer wanted”. Searching for “Writers wanted” gets me the results aimed at all comers. With a few minor tweaks to my search techniques I get MUCH more relevant (to me) search results. Funny how much difference a little tweak like that can make.