In his “State of the Word” addresses at recent WordCamps, it is my understanding that Matt Mullenweg (the co-founder of WordPress) has often made mention of the growth of WordPress and the growing number of professionals and businesses which are earning a full time income using WordPress.    As someone who makes a majority of his income online, this is something that I’ve spent some time working towards as well.

I’m sure upon hearing about these numbers, many people’s initial reactions may be that Matt is referring to the many premium theme authors who earn their livings creating professional themes which are in turn sold to the WordPress community, but what people may not know is that there is also a huge market for WordPress freelance work that designers and developers are making a large income from.   These freelance jobs can range from building a custom plugin for someone, custom coding work, or even completely custom theme designs!

I know we have a lot of readers who are very talented developers and designers.  If you are looking for freelance work as a WordPress designer or developer, here are a couple of great places to find potential clients:

1. WordPress Jobs – This is the official job board and includes a feed so you can easily keep updated on what jobs are needed.
2. eLance – eLance is a website which is used by all types of freelance designers and coders, but includes a very busy WordPress section where people can post their needs and freelancers can bid on them.  You can also review rankings, earnings, and other information about the freelancers.

These sites were designed specifically with the intention of helping freelancers find clients, and I’m sure there are many others available as well.  To our readers that do commissioned freelance work professionally, what have you found are the best ways to find work?

Are you someone who enjoys crawling and participating on forums?   Based upon feedback from our readers, many of you are.   To tell you the truth, if it is a topic I am passionate about (like WordPress), I am too!

With that said, it is my pleasure to announce that the WordPress Forums are now live.  WPForums.com was built to be an unofficial WordPress forum and to support the WordPress community in a variety of ways.   There is a little of everything!

As of launch, here are the forums we already have available:

• WordPress Discussions – Here we have forums setup to discuss WordPress News, beta releases and release candidates.
• WordPress Support – I often get support questions on old posts in our archives and find it difficult to keep up.   Now people can post their questions in the appropriate forum here and solicit input from the WordPress community!   When you ask a question, the post is moved to the top, making it easier and much quicker to get feedback from other WPForums.com users!   Current forums include getting setup on WordPress, troubleshooting WordPress, WordPress hacks and tutorials, and a discussion of other WordPress resources.
• WordPress Themes – Here we’ve got a separate forum for sharing and discussing free WordPress themes, premium WordPress themes, and we even have a forum dedicated to showcasing your WordPress theme.  I can see these forums being a good way for theme authors to get more exposure for their theme releases as well.
• WordPress Plugins – Like the themes, we wanted a place where people can discuss both free and premium WordPress plugins.   You can promote your plugin or publish a review of an existing plugin.
• WordPress Employment – Whether you are looking to hire someone for some WordPress-related work (coding/design) or you are looking for work, we’ve got you both covered.   The WordPress Employment section is designed to bring buyers together with sellers.  One forum allows freelancers to post their resumes.   The other forum is a great place for people to post what they need and get connected to someone that can do help.

Going forward, we are open to adding additional forums which may be in demand, so let me know if you’d like to see something added.   I also have plans to upgrade the design at some point soon, so keep an eye out for that.

Any questions or comments?  Leave those below.   Otherwise, go check out WordPress Forums already! 

Update: One reader has mentioned problems registering.  If you are having problems, please post the details below and I’ll get it looked into right away.  With that said, I just attempted to register and it worked fine so I don’t anticipate any problems.

If you consider yourself a WordPress freelancer or at least have good enough hacking skills to do some paid work with WordPress, you may be wondering what the best ways are to find work?  

Over at the Planet Ozh blog, Ozh recently gave some great tips on how to find WordPress work.   The first tip?  Subscribe to the WP-Pro mailing list, where job offers are regularly available.   These jobs can range from theme design, coding help, or even basics like installing WordPress. 

Other places he mentions to look:

• Official WordPress jobs board - These boards look pretty busy
• WordPress Job – Aggregates job offers from several freelancers

Your other option is of course to do some work up front and then charge for it, which is how premium theme authors and premium plugin authors make their money.   This way people come to you and they know what they are getting ahead of time. 

Any other good places to find WordPress work?