The days of a 40-year career and company pension are gone. Nearly half of the global workforce is now self-employed, 46.6% to be precise. Freelancing is on the rise, and it’s no surprise after the remote work movement and creator economy boom.

Web3 signifies a fundamental change in the way people communicate, build, work, and transact online. The industry relies heavily on freelancers to respond quickly with innovation and draft in talent as projects require. Web3 is still an industry in the foothills of growth, but with such huge potential, there is incredible investment being thrown at exciting startups. As a freelancer, that means a new world of opportunity.

If you’re looking to build a web3 freelancing business, then the best place to start is with the best job and freelancing sites. Below, we’ve collated and reviewed the top options to get you started.

Web3 goes hand-in-hand with freelancing, but there’s one tip everybody forgets when they start…

The most important web3 freelancing tip

Before we get to the top web3 freelance platforms, there’s one important thing you can do to boost your chances of landing new clients.

Do you want to know the biggest secret to freelancing success? Personal branding. In the words of personal branding expert Amelia Sordell, “It’s not enough to be the best; you have to be the BEST KNOWN.”

You can’t start building your reputation soon enough. As web3 is still in its infancy, being a well-known member of the community will pay dividends in future years. Crypto is a tight-knit community, a double-edged sword you can wield to your advantage. Start engaging with the community, and you’ll have a far easier time finding freelance positions. Plus, start reading the news so you can add helpful insight to conversations, further showcasing your knowledge. 

Without any experience or contacts in the industry, it’ll be hard for you to pick up much regular work. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to this strategy; it will take a little time. If you show up regularly over a few weeks, you’ll be surprised how much your reputation will rise. Not only will you have an edge over others when pitching for work, but you might also see leads and requests hitting your inbox.

X, Telegram, and YouTube are the most popular places for crypto users to hang out. So start building your profile and joining communities there. You might also join some smaller crypto-specific social networks to stand out faster. Lens and Farcaster are good options for this approach.

The final tip is to use crypto and web3 applications. Your industry knowledge will increase 10x by funding a wallet from an exchange, swapping some tokens, collecting NFTs, and exploring DeFi with stablecoins. This extra experience is going to help you speak with great confidence and authority to prospective clients.

The best web3 freelancing sites

Web3 Jobs

Web3 Jobs does exactly as you expect; it helps you find blockchain, crypto, and DeFi jobs. While it’s not exclusively for freelancers, most of the positions are completely remote. At any one time, there are tens of thousands of jobs available. You can filter them based on salary, location, and skills or subscribe to new job alerts.

The company was established with a simple mission in mind - to connect talent with blockchain projects. It’s now grown to be one of the leading web3 employment platforms.

With its simple and user-friendly approach, it’s quick to find high-paying jobs to pitch for in seconds. There are developer roles, customer support, design, sales, and a host of other non-tech job postings. It allows anyone to start finding work in web3, even if it’s a non-technical entry-level role.

You can also give your networking a quick boost by joining the Web3 Jobs Discord. There’s heaps of helpful information, and they often run AMAs with experts in the web3 scene.

Bountycaster

Bountycaster has a unique style of web3 freelance jobs. If you joined Farcaster or X to build your personal brand, then you’ll love Bountycaseter. The platforms enable users on these social media networks to post and find bounties, jobs, and services. Job posters can tag @bountybot with the work details; it then gets collated on the main platform.

So, when you’re hunting for work, you don’t need to painstakingly trawl social media. You can see all the opportunities on the Bountycaster feed. There are even in-built leaderboards and a ‘wall of thanks’ for the best workers to grow their reputation. An awesome way to get paid and become the best-known simultaneously. Another unique feature is the bounty section. It avoids the need for interviews and hiring. Freelancers can just work to complete specific tasks first to be rewarded for their work.

laborX

laborX gives you the freedom to find web3 freelance and permanent job opportunities. The platform was built for on-demand work by an Australian blockchain company, Chrono.tech. Interestingly, the job marketplace runs on the Ethereum blockchain. It connects businesses and freelancers using smart contracts for efficient payments and robust protections. Smart contracts are self-executing to make sure everyone fulfills their work and payment obligations. An innovative way to build a truly global freelance job market to suit the modern gig economy and crypto adoption.

You‘ll find jobs of all shapes and sizes here, from dev contracts to architecture design to gaming. Job mining is a new feature that gives extra rewards to freelancers who get paid in TIME tokens. Collect these crypto tokens as an added incentive, plus start staking them in the TimeWarp feature to compound the bonus.

Cryptocurrency Jobs

If you’re looking specifically for freelance crypto jobs, then keep a close eye on Cryptocurrencyjobs.co. It enables ‘talented humans’ to make a positive contribution to the world while building a decentralized future. Thousands of people have found work in the crypto ecosystem through its community-focused approach. It’s one of the older players in the space after being launched in 2017 and now has 20,000+ jobs at a time. There’s everything you can imagine, including jobs that pay in crypto!

It’s worth joining their ‘Talent Collective.’ You can create a free profile, and your information is used to connect you with opportunities. It’s a useful way to leverage the huge network and have your profile shared with recruiters across the world. A handy section is the list of 1000 crypto startups where you can browse jobs or prospects for potential freelance clients.

CryptoJobsList

CryptoJobsList boasts the biggest list of crypto, web3, and blockchain freelance jobs. It recently celebrated its 7th year in operation, having helped thousands to find work in the crypto space. The platform has been a hiring resource for the industry’s most notable projects, including Ethereum Foundation, Consensys (MetaMask), OKx, and even Paypal! So, if you’re looking to add some impressive names to your resume, then this is a leading platform.

Their podcast has a wealth of helpful knowledge and episodes to help you on your journey. The ‘Web3 Career Without A Degree’ episode is a great listen for every aspiring freelancer. If you’re a Meme coin degen, then you might like to know they have partnered with Meme.Jobs where you can “turn your CAT obSEsSion INTo A CAREer.” This is another useful job board if you’re a social media crypto expert.

Thirdwork

Right, on to something altogether more serious - Fintech. Thirdwork is a platform to deliver vetted talent to Fintech startups. It’s an invite-only platform for the top 1% of tech startups in Fintech, AI, and Blockchain. Hiring startups can work with pre-vetted freelancers, hire full-time roles, and tap into expert knowledge.

You have to be hot on this one, as they don’t always actively onboard new freelancers. So you’ll have to wait until spots on the waitlist open up. You can do this by filling out the basic application form and waiting to be notified. You might not find work immediately here, but if you can get on the talent list, it could kick start a whole new set of opportunities. Getting your name out there and building your personal brand might go a long way to getting access to this elite community.

DeWork

DeWork is an innovative approach to work with its web browser dApp that allows people and businesses to collaborate, connect, and discover grants and bounties. DeWork simplifies the task of finding bounties. It collates bounties and grants from over 500 DAOs into one platform. This makes it a top web3 freelancing platform for developers who want to reap lucrative rewards from bounty hunting.

It makes it easy for projects to get specialist help with their workflows and offer them to their community. As a freelancer, you can build a profile and work history on DeWork to help increase your chances of being assigned work. Again, it’s useful to engage and become known in these communities to attract regular freelance work. You should start getting used to using Discord, where tasks are posted, and understand how you get paid in DAO tokens or other on-chain methods.

Bepro

Bepro is all about task-based work. The web3 freelance marketplace enables organizations to launch tasks for builders to work on easily. Plus, you’ll get paid in crypto to help in efficiency and transparent working relationships.

This is another dApp where the community plays a strong role. Companies engage with their community to attract workers who will deliver high-quality results for projects. So, as a freelancer, it’s important to engage for yourself. In addition, it forces you to start actively using crypto wallets, tokens, and blockchains to fulfill work. So, you get the added bonus of professionally using web3 technology.

Recognition of your work and experience has been taken to a new level. All contributors to a successful task receive an NFT. Freelancers can build provable profiles to boost their credentials when looking for new tasks. No need for reference checks or trials; your experience is undeniably (and non-fungible) added to the blockchain. Get started by joining the Discord server to access exclusive community channels.

Upwork

Upwork is the biggest name in freelance hiring. You can find pretty much any type of job here, including web3, blockchain, and crypto freelance work. It’s easy to set up a profile and start searching for roles, most of which are freelance. It goes further than offering work opportunities. The whole freelance experience is managed on the platform. That means you can pitch for jobs, agree on contracts, fulfill work, and get paid on Upwork.

It takes time to grow your profile, as you’ll need to complete work and build strong reviews as you go successfully. The more success you have, the more opportunities come your way as you start being featured as a highly-rated freelancer in your industry. This even leads to inbound leads from hiring companies. A handy feature is the ability to set up multiple portfolios. So you can create a web3-specific portfolio while also having other areas of expertise to pitch for.

And if you’re looking to get paid in crypto via your Upwork virtual USD account? Acctual can help!

Getting paid as a freelancer with Acctual

There’s one thing all web3 freelance platforms have in common:

They’re global.

One day, you could work with a client in the US. The next day, it could be Vietnam.

While these seamless cross-border payments are convenient, it can be tough to keep track of everything, especially when you throw crypto into the mix.

It’s why Acctual created a free crypto invoice generator for freelancers to try out without committing to expensive bookkeeping software. It’s the perfect tool to complement our full-fledged crypto invoicing platform that tracks invoices, sends reminders, and more.

You can instantly invoice, track, and get paid in crypto, stablecoins, or fiat money. It’s easy for your clients, too. They pay using their preferred payment method. Then the payment is automatically converted and paid into your crypto wallet or bank account.

For example, if your web3 client wants to pay in USDC stablecoins, but you want to get paid in fiat US dollars, you can use our crypto-to-fiat wallet feature to have the payment sent directly to your normal bank account. You don’t even need a crypto wallet!

The same works for scenarios where you want to receive crypto, but a client can only pay in fiat. Acctual can even bridge payment tokens across multiple blockchains for you. Need USDC on Ethereum transferred to Base for payment? No problem.

It’s complete flexibility.

You can even connect your ERP system to take the frustration out of tracking payments. Try Acctual now to simplify web3 freelancing.