by Joe Wallace

Looking for freelance gigs? You’ve probably been all over the map in search of more steady work, but there are a few places that haven’t been beaten to death by the scraper sites..though they probably will be after we publish this. Best advice? Keep your BEST job resources to yourself as long as possible to avoid the bandwagon syndrome.

That said, here are a few that haven’t been ruined by scraper sites yet…and some that NEVER will be due to the nature of the job sourcing:

Reddit Jobs is pricey for editors to list gigs on–300 a day for 30 days–so you won’t be troubled by a bunch of spammy ads from the usual places offering you three bucks a post or “revenue sharing”. At press time, the problem with Reddit Jobs for freelancers is that some fields are underrepresented, but that obviously changes depending on supply and demand.

Artisan Creative. The reason why Artisan won’t be scraped out of usefulness for a busy freelancer? They have a screening process for candidates. This isn’t an “all-comers” source of freelance jobs, it’s a situation where talent actually matters. Artisan is a creative staffing agency that places writers, coders, designers, and many other freelance specialties. The jobs are heavy-hitting, too. Major companies, household names. I have personal experience with Artisan Creative and am very happy with them.

Indeed.com isn’t exactly a secret, but many of the scraper sites use Indeed as well as SimplyHired. You may as well go to the source for these gigs and save yourself some time.

JournalismJobs also falls into the open secret category, but there are more new media gigs there than ever before and it’s worth looking at for much more than just the job search–the headlines are also quite valuable.

Here’s a secret–LinkedIn communities are GREAT places to find work. The trick is, you have to join the communities and get active in them for this to be effective. Yes, it takes some effort to do, which is why it doesn’t appeal to some, but if you get in there and start being social chances are good you’ll find opportunities perfect for your specialty. The trick is to choose your communities well.