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If you’re a freelancer or a full-timer looking for additional income, there’s a variety of places you can go to seek for project-based work.

There’s a ton of websites geared specifically for freelance workers, such as All Freelance Directory and Guru.com. Many of these sites do, however, charge you a subscription fee to access their job listings.

Typically, a lot of work comes from referrals, advertising in your local area, or through your website.

But if projects are running thin or you’re seeking to expand your project search, check out these 5 places you might not have considered before.

1) Google Advanced Search

Google Advanced Search screenshotThere’s a ton of sites you can visit to find project-based work, but it’s not efficient to go to each of these places and wade through outdated job listings.

If you want a speedier way, try out Google Advanced Search. You can customize how your search terms are used, extend the number of results per page, and limit the publish dates.

Here’s a few examples you can try (limited to “this week” dates):

    * “looking for web designer“
    * “freelance programmer job“
    * “freelance web developer required“
    * “seeking rails developer“
    * “craigslist web design needed“
    * “craigslist web freelance needed“

2) eBay

ebay logo screenshotSo you’re really desperate, right? No one’s going to your website or responding to your local paper ads. No better way to get people to buy your stuff than on eBay.

If sellers can find people willing to buy a Wizards & Dragons musical snow globe (it’s nice, I’m going to get one), there’s a good possibility that you can get some jobs from there.

Here’s some categories you may want to list in:

    * Web & Computer Services
    * Graphic & Logo Design
    * Media Editing & Duplication

3) Job Boards of Popular Blogs

technorati top 100 blogs screenshotThere’s a recent trend where top blogs are beginning to include a job listing section where readers can post and find jobs. It gives their audience – who probably have the same interests – a chance to meet and collaborate with other like-minded individuals.

Here’s a few job listing sections of some popular weblogs.

    * FreelanceSwitch Job listings
    * Smashing Jobs
    * Read/WriteWeb Jobs
    * 43 Folders Jobs

To help you find other blogs, here’s Technorati’s Top 100 blogs.
4) Classified Listings

Craigslist screenshotYes, craigslist isn’t only for finding dirt-cheap furniture and late night hook-up’s (or searching for your soul mate); you can also find web projects listed in your local area, as well as other geographical locations. Since it’s web work, many seekers don’t mind if you work remotely.

Aside from craigslist, check out these other online classifieds:

    * edgeio
    * facebook Marketplace
    * realpeoplerealstuff.com
    * Yahoo! Classifieds

5) Websites That Need Work

Iceman Technologies screenshotIf you’re a web worker, chances are, you encounter lots of websites everyday.

Almost instinctively, whenever I see a website that I think needs a bit of work, I automatically check out the page source and reach for some Firefox Web Developer extension options like “Display Div Order“, “View CSS” and “View JavaScript“, looking for traces of Frontpage mark-up, or silly JavaScript code that can be harmful to a website’s security.

If you find a website that you think will benefit from a re-design, or if you find flaws that need immediate attention, shoot the administrator a polite email about the issues you find, and include your proposed fixes.

Contact them in a professional way, and they may hire you to remedy the issue. At the very least, you can feel good about not letting a poorly-developed site go on without doing something about it.

And yes, I am aware of the lack of padding on the left side of Six Revisions which affects people with smaller screen resolutions… and I’m doing something about it real soon. So, please, do exclude it from your list of “websites that need work”, thank you