Seek or Upwork? Where to Look for Remote Work Before Your Big Lap
You’ve got your list of everyday skills written down. Now comes the part where you find out whether anyone actually pays for them, and that’s a much less scary job than it sounds.
The next step in this whole sequence is to have a look and see what skills you can take from the first bucket we were looking at, and put them onto your online bucket. There are two places we use for that, and they work in quite different ways.
– For planning the route once the work side is sorted: Hema Maps
– For the camping and van gear you’ll be saving towards: Snowys
– For somewhere to stay while you’re still getting set up: Booking.com
Seek: Where You Get Employed by Someone Else
Go to something like seek.com.au. On Seek you can have a look at things called remote work or work online. It’s in one of their search options. Start scrolling.
With Seek you’re generally employed by a different company. That’s the familiar shape for anybody who has had a 9 to 5 their whole working life: an employer, a contract, set hours, a pay cycle you can actually put in a budget.
Upwork: A Marketplace for Freelancers
Upwork.com works very similarly, but it’s a bit like a marketplace for freelancers. It’s the same sort of deal as Seek, however it’s more from the self employed point of view. So you’re freelancing, rather than being on somebody’s payroll.
Either is fine. Either has its pros and cons. It’s completely up to you which one you start with, and there’s nothing stopping you having a look at both on the same afternoon.
Scroll First, Decide Later
For now, I just want you to stop, have a bit of a look, scroll down and see, does anything just remotely catch your attention. That’s the whole job at this stage. You’re not applying yet and you’re not deciding on a career.
Jot down anything that attracts your attention. A few listings is plenty. What you’re really building is a picture of what these jobs are called and what they keep asking for.
Match It Even Remotely
Now take that first bucket that you had, and the skills that you started brainstorming, and see, can any of these be applied. Even remotely. Even just like, well, I was answering emails but I haven’t actually done this particular software before.
Great. That’s a really, really good start. A partial match is still a match at this stage, and the gap you just spotted is the thing bucket three is for.
Those are the main two platforms that I use, that I find work from, and there are a lot of other platforms like that which are very similar. Start with the two, and add others later if you want to.
- Forget Your Resume: The Everyday Skills You Can Actually Take Online
- How to Upskill for Free and Actually Prove You Can Do the Job
Related reading
- FIFO Work or Taking Your Job Remote: Another Way to Fund Your Big Lap
- How to Find Casual Work While You Travel Australia
Our Thoughts
Seek and Upwork answer two different questions. Seek asks who will employ you, Upwork asks who will hire you for a job at a time. Both of them pay for the same trip in the end, so pick whichever one your skills list looks most at home in.
Have a scroll, write down what catches your eye, and leave it there for today. That’s enough for one sitting.
Have you had a look at either platform yet? We’d love to know which one felt more like you, and what job titles keep popping up for your line of work.
👉Working out how much you actually need to earn before you go? Our Big Lap budget calculator and planner is right here 🙂
