Finding Editing Clients on Discord Servers
Finding clients as a video editor can be challenging, but the platform of Discord can be a great place to start. From my personal experience, there are many Discord servers where people, creators, businesses, streamers, and professionals network, work together, and hire freelancers. Every server can have various channels and roles dedicated to a certain topic or purpose, and some even have special channels where people post job offers and look for editors. According to the company, Discord’s servers are “communities with topic-based channels for sharing, growing, and supporting one another,” and roles “help organize a community and its members.
From my personal experience there are many possible clients to be found on Discord, and I managed to find my first freelance client there. I believe it can be a great opportunity for a beginning freelancer, as a lot of job posts tend to be more direct and less competitive. However, I do not think that you will find a client on any server immediately, and it is worth spending time looking for the right person. According to my personal experience, you may also want to find a server or channel that somehow specifically suits you, as not every job offer there will match your requirements.
Scams on discord
Unfortunately, any place where people post job offers and look for freelancers is filled with scammers, and Discord is not an exception. From my personal experience, there are several types of people on Discord who are not actually interested in hiring somebody. Some job posters pretend to be clients and then disappear after an initial contact. Others may ask for some samples of your work for free, send you suspicious links, or try to get your personal information somehow. In general, people on Discord tend to be even more suspicious than ones on job boards, as hiring through social networks often involves many risks. For example, Discord itself warns the users of employment scams, phishing, malicious files, and suspicious links.
I personally encountered issues with communication when trying to contact some clients. Sometimes they turned out to be not real at all after initial talks, and sometimes people simply ignored my messages. It was hard to determine if a certain job poster wanted to actually work or just waste my time. In addition, there were also some cases where a client turned out to be an irrelevant person, a communication problem occurred, and I could not continue working.
Payment issues are also a thing in the freelancing industry, and working with people directly is much more difficult than, say, Upwork or another established platform with all necessary guarantees. It is normal to feel insecure about the entire process, but I personally made sure that everything works if you do everything right. People usually turn out to be trustworthy if you choose the necessary client carefully and double-check all information.
How I Recommend Using Discord for Freelancing
In general, I think that Discord is a good platform for networking and finding clients, but it is worth understanding how to use it properly. As I mentioned before, it is better not to treat it as a marketplace and look for job offers immediately. Instead, spend time finding relevant servers and channels and get to know their rules and requirements. After that, you can browse job posts and see if something suits your needs. I personally managed to find my first client thanks to Discord, but it is not the only place where I looked for them. Always keep your portfolio ready, contact people as professionals, get all necessary information, and define your boundaries.
The most important thing is to make sure that a certain person actually wants to work with you and is not trying to scam you in any way. Never click any suspicious links or allow a stranger to view your personal information in any way, and always double-check everything before actually starting to work. I personally recommend adding a two-factor authorization to your account and avoiding all kinds of questionable attachments and messages. Besides, always define payment conditions clearly and, if possible, choose a reliable payment method with all guarantees.
Final Thought
In general, I think that Discord is a good platform for finding clients as a video editor. In some ways, it is easier than traditional job boards, as I personally found my first client there. However, it is not a reliable source of clients as well, and you may also come across some scammers and problems with communication and payments. Treat this platform as a helpful tool and double-check everything before actually starting to work with a person.
