What's new for freelancers

Your profile is the part that did not change. Your name, photo, bio, roles, languages, kit, work history and every rating you earned came across from the old site exactly as they were. If you have been on Sustainalists for years, that history is still yours, and it still counts.

What changed is everything that happens after a company finds you.

A brief now arrives with the job in it

On the old site, finding out what the job was about was messy - Now a company sends a brief. It is a form, and it has fields, which means it arrives with the things you need in order to answer:

• where the shoot is — down to a street address when that matters, not just a city
• the dates
• what they expect delivered

You can read it and decide, without three days of clarifying emails.

You quote. You do not accept a rate

This is the change worth reading twice.

You write the quote, in your own currency, from your own rate. VAT is handled per job rather than assumed — you say whether it applies, and the numbers recalculate.

Our fee is added on top of your quote and paid by the company. It is not deducted from you. If you quote 8,000, you are owed 8,000; the company sees the fee as a separate line and pays it separately. Nothing comes off your side.

One production board, both of you editing it

Once a company goes ahead with you, the job gets a production board: shoot days, notes, a checklist, contacts. Both sides edit it and both sides see the same thing. It replaces the schedule that used to live in a chain of forwarded emails, where the only way to know whether you had the current version was to ask.

Handing the work over, and being paid for it

The delivery step sits at the end of the job, next to the payment step, so approving the work and paying for it are the same two clicks rather than two different weeks.

How the files themselves move depends on the company. Some collect them through Sustainalists; others use their own FTP or a link service, and put that in the brief. Either way the record of the handover — that you delivered, when, and what they approved — lives in the job.

Payment is released by the company once they approve the delivery. We do not sit on the money and release it on a timetable of our own; it goes from them to you.

Get set up to be paid before you need to be

Add your payout details once, now, rather than on the day a job lands. It takes a couple of minutes to fill out the form of our payment facilitator Stripe. Completing it earns a Payment verified badge that companies see on your profile and in search results — which matters, because a producer choosing between two people in the same city will pick the one they know they can pay.

If you are somewhere our payment provider does not reach, say so — we will help you sort it out rather than leaving you off the platform.

Ratings that mean something

Only a real, paid job through the platform can be rated. Neither side sees the other's review until both are in, so nobody is writing a reply rather than a review.

Your rating follows you into every search result and lifts you in the ranking. It is the single strongest thing on your profile, and it is the one part of it you cannot write yourself.

Being found is still the whole job

Companies search by city and role. Being genuinely local is your advantage — a producer looking for someone in Milan sees the people in Milan first.

So the highest-value hour you can spend on this site is on your own profile:

• make sure your city is right, and specific
• list every role you can actually cover, not just your main one
• add your languages — they decide who you appear for on international shoots
• list your kit
• add photos that show how you work
• add your mobile number, so you get a text when a message lands. It is never shown publicly.

What to do first

1. Claim your account, if you have not — your profile is waiting, not lost.
2. Check your city and roles.
3. Set up payouts.
4. Take the tour from your dashboard. It walks the real screens, and it includes an example job you can step through end to end before a real one arrives.

Secret Bonus:

Recommend fellow freelancers you know and have worked with.