Besides craigslist...

Referrals are my main source of work. I try a number of sites such as CL and Mandy, but have not found any secret website that really gets me work like networking.


J
 
I got one gig because I was listed on Google. The law firm that hired me said my company listing came up at the top of Google when they searched 'video production'. They were in an adjacent state, yet for some reason, my listing came up on top.

BTW, I've had an ad up on Mandy.com for some time now, but apparently it's not very effective in the US. Probably aimed at UK markets mostly.
 
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Craigslist is no place to find gigs. It's a place to find garage sales and hookers.
Mandy is by far the most commonly known job site for us. I have picked up everything from nice one day freelance gigs there to six figure staff jobs with relocation. You'll not find that on craigslist.
Also surf productionhub.com. Every now and then, a decent job pops up on monster.
 
Thanks for the tip about productionhub. I just signed up for a free listing.
I'm on Mandy.com too, but have not received a single call from them. Oddly, most of the web traffic on my site is coming from China, Africa and some eastern block nations lately. I get about 2-3 hits a day, mostly foreign.

Tried signing up on media-match.com, but after entering all my info five times, I got the error:
"Registration failed
You did not correctly enter the characters shown in the image. Please try again.

If you have any difficulties using this site please contact us at 323 284 5589. " five times.

Having a Google listing helped definately in one instance--a law firm that had a videographer cancel at the last minute hired me on short notice to shoot a panel discussion--they found me on Google.

Anyone have experience with Google AdWords?
How about Facebook advertising?

I'm thinking of trying those. Spending 29 days of the month looking for work and 1 day out of the month actually working is not a good ratio for profit.
 
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Mandy.com has yielded nothing for me. There are composer jobs listed all the time, but maybe 1 in 25 actually offer financial compensation.

Media-Match or ProductionHub haven't yielded anything for me either ...

I got my very first scoring gig on CraigsList. But it's been a dud since then.
 
It appears that Craigslist has has a tremendous surge in spam 'responses' in the past 45 days or so. Prior to that, nearly 2/3 of the responses I got were legitimate, interested buyers. Now, virtually 100% of the responses I get are "do you neen help/job" spam. If CL doesn't do something fast to block overseas IP addresses, they're going to lose all their legit traffic and it will become a cesspool of spam.
 
It's no secret that from gettin a girl to gettin a job to pitchin' a show, it's best to have em come to you. You just have to be top of mind.
By that, I have found value in subscribing to movers and shakers on tvtracker. This monthly update let's ya know who's who and in what position. You can go through the list, find names that apply to what you are marketing, google em then add em as a friend on facebook, follow em on twitter and add em as a connection on linkedin.
Of course you have to keep your accounts on these sites active but don't just tweet anything. Post your best clips. You are just throwing bait in a big river here but the more lines you have in the water the easier it is to get a bite.
Also, don't forget about creativecow.net. We're not just your best friend for tutorials and helpful tips on any software under the sun, there are two job listings forums, a job seeker's forum and a forum dedicated to demo reels. You can even upload your demo onto creativecow.net.
Come say hi to me in the Art of the Edit forum, the Broadcast Design forum and the Avid Editing forum.
 
In my experience, no one comes TO you, unless you're in the desert and you've got the only watering hole for hundreds of miles around! :) In reality, I frequently did door to door sales, back when I had my typesetting business 25 years ago, and even then, annual gross sales were only $1200--less than a tenth of what I earned on my full time job the year before. One peculiar thing I have always found is that while the customers don't seem to find me, the tax man always does!

That said, I recently and reluctantly--at the advice of a friend and owner of a string of FM stations here in the northeast--signed up for FaceBook. It's a time-consumer, but overall, it hasn't been a bad experience. I don't know that it's going to get me any gigs either.

I USED to be a member of CreativeCow, but they, without warning and quite dishonestly, claimed to have warned me about my posting information about the poor audio response on the Sony V1U. They terminated my account and later e-mailed me, pretending they were just then issuing me a warning. Highly-irrational admins over there--never saw anything like it, except, well, at AV home theater forums, another place which booted me on trumped-up charges. Apparently, it's not politically-correct to post frequency response test data on a forum, when the forum's sponsors include the company whose product didn't produce favorable test results. Google "CreativeCow.net bans me over Sony's flawed product" if you want to know the sordid details.
 
I've been banned from numerous forums because of peoples' egos. They are a lot of nonsense most of the time. The best forum is one barely moderated whatsoever, which is just like the best government -- pretty much the least intervention possible without total chaos. The problem with most forums is that they are moderated by people. The problem, then, is the same as with most people -- they are ego-driven, irrational, and usually stupid. Just because they are a mod on a forum means nothing about their character as a person. I got banned from the Yankees forum for saying I thought Wang was a good pitcher, and that a pitcher's strikeout ratio per 9 innings was not really the whole story on how good they would be. This was when he first started. He went on to win 19 games twice and become our ace pitcher for some time, so I was obviously vindicated by being 100% correct. I also got told I was a n00b and knew nothing about baseball because I said I didn't understand what was so great about Eric Duncan, who was our top minor league prospect. I didn't say he was bad, I just said I didn't understand what the hype was about and I even asked for someone to explain it to be so I could be excited about him too, because clearly I must not be getting something (the stats were not impressive), and apparently everyone else did get it. Instead of one person explaining this to me, I had everyone from moderators to forum regulars tell me if I didn't get why Eric Duncan was a great baseball player in the making then I clearly was a total idiot who knew nothing about baseball and should find a new hobby. Now, of course, this was just the problem -- anyone who wasn't a fanboy could see the guy was batting .245 in AA and that isn't getting the job done. That's crap. If you can't hit .300 in AA you are going nowhere fast, because the Major Leagues are a lot tougher and the best players up there DO bat .300, against much, much better pitching! None of his stats were whatsoever impressive, the guy was going nowhere. And now years later, guess who is still in AA (or whatever, I think he's not any lower than that, LOL), going nowhere, and is now not considered much of a prospect? That's right, so I was 100% correct again. But through arguments like this, the moderators didn't like me, and pretty soon I got banned for writing in a thread titled "Tony Womack is killing this team" that "Tony Womack sucks, we should get rid of him" and I was, you know, about the 47th person to write that. Everyone else was in agreement. But in the TOS it says, "No player bashing," and somehow that was player bashing by saying a guy hitting .219 sucks. I think that's pretty much the textbook definition of "sucking," but they just wanted an excuse to ban me because they disagreed with me. I feel, however, very vindicated in being a much bigger Yankees fan than any of them, and being proven absolutely right in every argument we ever have, in fact. That's because I was paying attention to the numbers, not mindless fanboy emotionalism.

You get used to this type of behavior on forums, however. The rules are enforced according to how much the person enforcing them likes you. They are bent for people who are liked, and they are enforced strictly or bent the other way for people who are not liked by the person enforcing the rules. It's human nature, sure, but it's also a terrible way to moderate a forum.

And any forum that discourages freedom of speech is a bad forum. Also most people, as I said, are idiots, so they can't understand the difference between a personal attack and a valid debate. Unless seriously provoked, I never personally attack anyone, but I will absolutely say, "That's the stupidest idea I have ever heard" or "That is a really dumb thing to say," and sure, it's not the nicest way to put things, but the fact is you should have a tough enough skin to deal with it if you're posting online -- that is attacking the IDEA not the person. But people are so sensitive that they think their ideas ARE them, so they think any attack on their ideas is an attack on them. You cannot have a forum or a debate with this type of attitude. It means if you debate about anything whatsoever, then when disagreements arise, it becomes personal, which it shouldn't be.

Just because I think you have a terrible idea of how to make a film doesn't mean that I don't want to go have a beer with you and talk about the economy or the state of sports in America or some other random thing. I don't hold grudges like that. Other people apparently have the mental energy to do so. I frankly cannot remember having an argument with one person or another on a forum, because it's simply not worth my time to remember, "Oh right that guy disagreed with me two months ago on some thread." And yet I'm amazed how many people remember some disagreement I had with them months ago, that means nothing to me, and shouldn't be taken personally. I blame it on lack of experience posting on forums for them. I've been online on forums for about 15 years now, since the Internet was young. There was no moderation of many forums back in the day, so you had to have a tough skin. Now nobody can take anyone else pointing out a fact they don't like, or disagreeing with their opinions. It's obnoxious.

And I'm blunt online, not at all like that in person, I'm a diplomat in person. But online if I think your idea sucks I'm just going to tell you so. I don't really care to beat around the bush because I find it liberating to be honest ;)
 
I don't want to say that it's 'nice to see others have been banned for irrational reasons too', but I'll say that I feel a sense of comfort in knowing that I'm not alone in suffering the consequences of being rational in an irrational world. It's a hard world, online, especially if you're the "Jack Bauer of the internet". :beer:
 
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