Welcome to the wonderful world of Slack groups. We’ve scoured the net on your behalf so you can navigate with ease the five best Slack groups for freelancers out there to join. However, beware, in doing our thorough research for this article, we found a fair few dubious links. Highly ranked sites and blog posts in google promote groups that have links that ultimately lead nowhere or ask you for payment to join spaces that don’t exist. We’ve navigated the Slack group minefield to bring you to the best Slack groups for a freelancer! Below, I have outlined where and how particular groups have beenlea tried, tested or validated and why these five made it into my top recommendations.
So WTF is Slack anyway?
Slack is essentially a new form of chat room used by companies and or by disparate members who form communities. Slack groups can be highly effective as a means ofpo making new connections, asking for specific help, knowledge sharing including jobs, advice and more. Slack’s “workspaces” allow you to organise communications by channels for group discussions and allow for private messages to share information and files all in one place.
Othership
Clearly we think the Othership Slack group is number 1 but we have listed 5 others below. We pride ourselves at Othership for having a community where people meet not only in Slack but also at events and in our free workspaces. One of our community members referred to us as “a team, even though we’re not all working on the same thing”. Let’s see how it compares!
We moderate the Slack group with good etiquette,helpful suggestions and top tips for freelancing. Our channels include, “i-need-help” where members are invited to ask for help and “I-can-offer” to advertise their skills. We are running 1 on 1 networking through the group to facilitate new friendships and connections amongst our members (most of them meet at our regular networking events). Access to our Slack group comes included with premium membership at £15 a month, which also has the added benefits of discounts to our (sold-out) events, exclusive meeting room offers and for our physical workspaces with lots of other additional member perks!
My top five best Slack groups for freelancers
1. Tech London (not just for Londoners)
If you are interested in the tech scene, you might want to join Tech London, a Slack group where you can chat with other tech enthusiasts. Tech London is a community of creatives, freelancers, startups, investors, design agencies, internet marketers and entrepreneurs who share their insights, experiences and opportunities.
Whether you are looking for a job, a co-founder, a mentor or a client, Tech London can help you connect with the right people and stay updated on the latest trends and events in the tech industry. You can also find Tech London, like many other communities, on Othership’s Workplace Scheduler.
2. Creative tribes
Creative Tribe comes in at number 5 with over 1,500 members and 22 different channels. It requires a one-time sign up fee of $27. It seems to be one of the longest standing groups, going for over 5 years. It’s a real jungle-yard of people from SEO, dynamic entrepreneurs from innovative startups, strategists, marketers, developers, designers, writers, remote workers and other creatives. With functionality of channels including “AMA” which stands for “ask me anything,” It’s long standing, reputable, live and well worth a visit.
3. Designer hangout
Seems to all be in the name! Designer hangout is a group of 18,000+ UX practitioners. It’s invite only, so you need to humbly appeal to become a member! It’s specifically intended to support the careers of UX designers, with the sharing of advice, best practice, know how and career advice amongst its members. Not being a UX designer itself, I can’t join myself, however it has the endorsement of some pretty reputable service providers such as Wired Magazine and Adobe. They run regular events too and don’t appear to charge for the service, well worth checking it out if this is your field of expertise!
4. Hack productivity
With Hack productivity, you need to ask to join and you will thereafter get an invite from “Selena”. This group isn’t moderated and the most popular channels in this group are ‘General’ with 1,612 contributors and ‘Random’ at 1,597 members. What I will point out is although this group is large and free to join, it’s hard to measure true engagement. Posts seem to get little to no interaction from other members. However, it’s sizeable and free to try and therefore is on my recommended list. We will have to see how it performs over time. If you like general announcements, knowledge sharing, it serves as an active space for this, for upcoming events too and water-cooler conversation. It just makes it in as one of the best Slack groups for freelancers.
5. Online Geniuses
Online Geniuses is a Slack community for SEO and digital marketing professionals. It has thousands of members who share their knowledge, insights and opportunities in the online marketing industry. Online Geniuses also offers a Pro community, an online marketplace and a talent network for its members. It’s one of the largest and most active marketing Slack communities in the world.
Bonus. The Portfolio Collective (aka TPC)
Not quite a Slack group but well worth a check! We met Fiona Chorlton-Voong, one of the co-founders of The Portfolio Collective back in 2021 through Othership member Nicola Twiston-Davis. As someone with a portfolio career myself, and in fact, many Othershippers do too, we could see the benefits of the friendships and partnerships they were creating. Since then we have cohosted Community Networking, with the amazing and completely lovable Lexi Radcliffe-Hart as host.
So what is a portfolio career?
Chances are you’re familiar with the concept, but the phrase may be a bit new to you. Portfolio careers have had many names over the years – gig work, entrepreneurship, and freelancing. In the simplest terms, a portfolio career allows you to earn money in a variety of different ways – and there’s nothing that says those money-making ventures can’t be wildly different.
You could be a lawyer and a circus performer; a helicopter pilot and a beekeeper; a shoe designer and a startup mentor (which are all real examples of portfolio professionals from TPCs community). You can even keep your day job and launch a side hustle based on something you’re passionate about. There are no limits and no rules. You are in complete control.
It’s all about finding your ikigai – that sweet spot between what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs and what you can get paid to do. In other words, you can do work you’re passionate about, and make a living at the same time. It’s never been so easy to take control of your career, which is why 58% of people who started freelancing during the pandemic have no plans to go back to the way things were. You can learn more in our article from TPC’s co-founder over here.
How to join?
Well, we thought of that already and went and joined ourselves, collecting a partner offer along the way.
Leapers – NO MORE!
Why was this my top recommendation for years? Because Matthew Knight, the founder is a mental health advocate and set up the group with clear intentions, to mitigate against the difficulties of being a freelancer. It had very useful channels including approximately 500 people in its ‘marketplace’ channel, where you were invited to advertise your skills.
It’s ‘little wins’ channel was one of my favourite aspects, where you are encouraged to share your victories of the day. I can happily validate this was a genuinely helpful, holistic and strong community group. It’s was also free to join in with it’s 2,000 members. Sadly you can no longer disagree with me! Plus it’s was a general freelancer group (non-sector specific) so it’s inclusive for ALL freelancers.
What did live on was the ethos of Leapers, it lived on in Others. So we kindly invite you to pop along and a take a look at what we are doing.
