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Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?

152 points by 10dpd 13y ago

Having unsuccessfully attempted to use Freelancer.com to complete a relatively simple job (I could do it myself but don't have time at the moment), I was wondering if HN could suggest a good freelancer sourcing site for relatively straight-forward work? Unfortunately the freelancer marketplace sites seem to be dominated by weak PHP developers.

checker659 13y ago
What kind of job are we talking about?
thibaut_barrere 13y ago
Best freelancer site for me: twitter. Make sure you regularly post useful links related to your craft (using eg: buffer).
wusatiuk 13y ago
finding a good freelancer takes some time and you have to learn first how to deal with freelancers. usually, especially when you are hiring low-priced freelancers, you have to define the tasks very much in detail, which sometimes takes more time than doing it yourself. try odesk.com - i made the best experience there until now.
dsirijus 13y ago
Well, I'd suggest looking no further than oDesk. Assemble your profile profesionally, check the new deals daily (first comers to deal have some advantage, in my experience), and be generous with tags. Helps being specific about work what you do. I did sort of a "hack" of oDesk when I was only starting - I've requested few tags to be added that were non-existant, but demanded by clients ("augmented-reality", in particular), in which I was good, and that lead some clients to me without me browsing. I'd bet my profile was only search result for many queries during that short period of time. EDIT: Ah, you're on the "other side of the fence". Sorry, misunderstood you.
- lingben 13y ago
  "new deals"?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- moondowner 13y ago
  I have few close friends who are pretty happy with oDesk too, so I'd recommend it to people who want to freelance.
- mathiasrw 13y ago
  I agree. oDesk is smooth, slick and help you connect to people who can provide man hours.
- dj-wonk 13y ago
  oDesk rejected two job postings of mine, with no explanation. I double checked their TOS and saw no conflict. Customer service never replied. They won't be getting my business.
  - bobx11 13y ago
    I have been posting on oDesk for years and never got rejected... what were you posting?
HyprMusic 13y ago
Every month there is a post on HN with the opportunity to post that you're seeking a freelancer, and likewise freelancers will advertise themselves. You might have more luck finding good freelancers on there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5637667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5637667
- Udo 13y ago
  I would second that. Why not just source from within the community?
  - namdnay 13y ago
    OP: "to complete a relatively simple job" I'm guessing the average HN freelancer will be overkill for the stuff he has in mind. Some tasks are incompressible, however good you may be, so there's no point hiring Michaelangelo to repaint your bathroom ceiling. EDIT: after making this comment I can no longer "reply". Is this a ban?
    - Udo 13y ago
      I don't think so. Say you have a relatively simple website that you would like to have implemented. Would you like to hire an unskilled $10/h web worker, or would you rather pay a $100/h dev to do it in a fraction of the time, and do it right? The OP was complaining about quality, wasn't he? And why wouldn't someone advertising their services in the HN Freelance thread not do a small project?
      - namdnay 13y ago
        What I meant was that the scale is not linear. Certain tasks take nearly the same amount of time whether you're a rockstar or a standard developer. Would there be any point hiring Ferrari F1's lead pit stop technician to change the tyres on your Prius? Maybe you can get someone to do it good enough for three days at 10/h, whereas the other guy would have taken "only" an afternoon at 100/h. 240 vs 400 total.
d0m 13y ago
I've been using elance exclusively for years. I usually ask for a very specific job with detailed requirements. For instance, I'd manage the overall project but could hire someone to transform the psd to html, one to tweak that html and adding missing pages, etc. But that's because I'm a programmer myself, I could do all these parts and thus write very specific specs/requirements/realistic-expectation.. I wouldn't recommend that approach to a friend without technical background.
mgiglesias 13y ago
I've been the top #1 provider for years and up until vWorker got sold to freelancer. I honestly think that was an awful move, since what made vWorker different from the rest is that it had less number of providers (and clients), but with a much better quality. This, and the fact that being a freelancer for years helped me identify lots of things that were poorly done on sites such as freelancer, made me realize that we needed something new. I joined other fellow freelancers and long time remote working clients, together with highly successful entrepreneurs (founders of a +55 millions users social network, Google managers, DMGT as a strategic and finance partner) and we launched www.workana.com We initially built it to let other markets (particularly Latin America including Brazil) join and benefit from the freelancer way of life. Shortly after launching, though, we realized we had something much bigger than what we thought: we were making top quality professionals be available for clients that did not know they were even there, since this talent was not a part of any other platform. I invite you to try Workana, where you will not only find awesome professionals (and in your time zone) but we will also, personally, help you identify the best candidate, and guide you through the whole process.
- white_devil 13y ago
  Is Workana only meant for people from the Americas?
  - mgiglesias 13y ago
    Nop. It's wide open :) We have been focusing our marketing on Latin America but every day we see considerable growth in the number of users that come from Europe and Asia
- Dove 13y ago
  I was a veteran of vWorker, too. I found the site quirky and ugly, but deeply functional. Freelancer seems to be the opposite -- very pretty, professionally aggravating. I jumped ship (to my own network) pretty quickly after the transition, and if I needed to find work again through a site, it probably wouldn't be that one.
mikescoffield 13y ago
I use both odesk and elance a lot. I find that the former is better for work that's more commoditized. E.g., For PR work, I'd go to elance. For SEO work, I'd go to odesk. For a mobile app, I'd go to elance. For wordpress customization, I'd go to odesk.
riklomas 13y ago
A friend of mine is currently trying to sort this problem by creating OnSite (http://onsite.io/ http://onsite.io/), it's not live yet but it's one to keep an eye on for the future.
- OnSite 13y ago
  Thanks Rik. OnSite aims to eliminate the race to the bottom by removing project bidding from the process. Results returned are based on skills, location and availability (among other metrics). Rates can be entered by the hirer, but act simply as a guide, don't exclude results and aren't visible to the matched freelancers. In addition all freelancers are manually approved and profiles need to be 100% complete before becoming visible on the system. Doors open in a couple of weeks as we start to roll out invites. Currently we are only accepting applications from verifiable agencies / studios / start-ups, not individuals looking for extra help. http://onsite.io/apply/agency http://onsite.io/apply/agency. If you are a freelancer, you can apply here: http://onsite.io/apply/freelancer http://onsite.io/apply/freelancer (you will again need to be verifiable with online examples of your work to be considered). Cheers.
wilfra 13y ago
elance is good and the only site i use for this - mostly because i'm used to it and i find new sites confusing to get used to, more than that i consider it 'best'. it's dominated by the weak php developers you speak of, but if you just filter everybody out who charges less than $20 per hour[1], you'll get rid of most of them and be left with some good people. after you've gotten a few hundred proposals on elance it will be tempting to just ignore everybody from certain countries. i urge you not to do that though. instead filter by hourly rate. an indian or pakistani developer charging $25+/hour is either delusional or really, really good (i.e. $150+/hour if they were in san francisco). a quick skype chat is usually sufficient to figure out which. [1]do this yourself, don't set the terms to $20/hour, or all of the bad devs will just try to charge you $20/hour. by setting it to 'not sure' it's a race to the bottom and all those guys will be competing with each other for the lowest hourly rate. you then just ignore all of them.
- maratd 13y ago
  > it's dominated by the weak php developers you speak of, but if you just filter everybody out who charges less than $20 per hour[1], you'll get rid of most of them and be left with some good people. As a freelancer who picks up quite a bit of work on Elance, I can vouch for this, from my end of things. The key to success, both on the client side and on the freelance side, is absolutely brutal filtering. There are many opportunities there, but you need to dig for them. Some tips for success looking for talent on Elance: 1. Be sure to invite well performing freelancers from the geographical area where you reside to your project. There's really no need to go abroad, there's plenty of talent available wherever you happen to live. You skip any cultural and communication issues that might crop up if you go with somebody abroad. 2. Again, be sure to invite the right freelancers to your project. In fact, make the project invite only. Anybody who is worth their salt on Elance doesn't search for work. They only reply to work they are interested in when they are invited to it. I get several invites every day and for whatever reason, on weekends, I can get over a dozen a day. Weekend warriors? 3. Always do fixed price projects. With a fixed price project, you'll know exactly how much you'll pay and can reduce the cost of the project intelligently by pairing down the features. With an hourly project, I'll just throw a number I charge per hour at you and you're nowhere closer to knowing how much you'll pay. One guy can get the job done in 10 hours, another in 2, you have no idea which is which ... stick to fixed price. 4. Be sure to provide as much technical detail into the project as possible. Try to break things down into achievable milestones. Clearly specify the features you need and the work that you want done. I ignore projects which simply specify what qualifications you want me to have. Let's assume I already know how to do the work or I wouldn't be looking at it. Tell me what the work is and be specific. 5. Reject proposals. If you're not going to go with a proposal, reject it. I do not like submitting proposals in a crowded space. It tells me the client isn't involved in the process. There's no way in hell you're entertaining a dozen proposals or more. More than likely, you'll pair it down to 3 or 4. Do the pairing from the very beginning. If you wait until the end, many quality freelances will choose not to even submit anything because they do not want to deal with the crowd. 6. Include your name in the project description. Just the first name is fine. I need to know what to call you, right? 7. Immediately reject proposals that don't include your project specifics. If you took the time to write a details project description, expect me to read it and to respond to it in kind.
joelhooks 13y ago
http://gun.io/ http://gun.io/ shows a lot of promise.
seyz 13y ago
If you are interested, I am a freelancer and I develop MVP in two weeks. http://munda.me http://munda.me for more information
mattbarrie 13y ago
Hi there, I'm the CEO of Freelancer.com. I'd be interested to know what problem you ran into?
- kawsper 13y ago
  I recently recieved a lot of messages from you. http://i.imgur.com/6kpLIHl.png http://i.imgur.com/6kpLIHl.png 91 emails in the course of 13 days is not acceptable, and it just suddenly started. I figured out how to disable it, but you might want to look into it.
  - mattbarrie 13y ago
    You were subscribed to new project notifications. We did fix a bug where only a fraction of new projects were being sent out to freelancers- we had a lot of complaints that we weren't notifying freelancers of all matching opportunities. We're working on both some settings to adjust how many you receive and smarter targeting.
    - 23andwalnut 13y ago
      Without having experienced the issue myself, it seems like an easy solution would be to send out a daily digest containing all new projects. Or allow users to select how often they would like to receive new project emails with options like: 1. As they are posted 2. Every x hours 3. Once per day.
      - mattbarrie 13y ago
        He was complaining about the daily digests :) We have thousands of projects per day posted. We need probably better fine grained control over the timing of these emails, I can tell you that if we send less emails we get complaints, if we send more we get complaints! We have to perhaps let the user decide the frequency.
    - qarioz 13y ago
      Actually it's very useful, it's just receiving 6 daily mail is a little bit too much. The special notification on the other hand is very useful, it should be sent more.
philfrasty 13y ago
Wrote a post on this a week ago: „The Ultimate-Guide to Hiring a Freelancer“ (http://franzisk.us/2013/05/08/the-ultimate-guide-to-hiring-a-freelancer/ http://franzisk.us/2013/05/08/the-ultimate-guide-to-hiring-a...). I usually go for oDesk but you better apply some filters to your search or select candidates by hand to apply to your job. I think your main problem is what Trevor McKendrick called “(you) Pay them to Code, not Think“ (http://www.trevormckendrick.com/contracting-developers/ http://www.trevormckendrick.com/contracting-developers/). Other great option is Reddit's „for hire“ subreddit. Good luck!
- rebelde 13y ago
  "Code, not think". This is my current problem with the freelancers I find. They need an awful lot of guidance, even the good ones. Any recommendations on how to find freelancers who do much more of the thinking? (I plan on trying with some HN freelancers soon.)
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - mrich 13y ago
    Depending on what you want to have developed, they just might need that much guidance, otherwise the end result will be a surprise for you :) When looking for a freelancer consider people who have done things that you personally like and think would be a good fit for you too. E.g. contact the developer of a website you like or the contributor to an open source project which is well-respected.
    - rebelde 13y ago
      Thanks. I haven't tried suggesting freelance projects to people not actively looking. My feeling is that they would probably say that they are too busy, or worse, say "yes" and not find time to get it done.
kawsper 13y ago
Does anyone have experience with finding good Ruby freelancers for smaller tasks within these sites?
- Buzaga 13y ago
  I'm an awesome Ruby dev and I'm on oDesk, I live in a city with basically no market for rubyists but I've stuck with it out of passion(I'd have to find something else to do with my life if I had to keep with Java and government/bureaucracy software), I've got perfect english and I'm 1 hour away from EST, I've got no doubt I'd be making nice figures if I lived in any hot startup/private sector spot. oDesk allows me to work and get paid doing what I'm good at.
driverdan 13y ago
None of them. Their rep is that they're great for hiring low to mid level offshore devs for $10-20/h. If this describes you then great, get on all of them. But if you're charging $100+/h you do yourself a disservice by associating with them and are unlikely to find clients looking to pay that much. It may be an unfair stereotype but it's mostly true. Network instead. Get yourself out there. Go to local events where you can meet potential clients. Get active on Twitter and interact with people in the industry. Put open source stuff up on github. Increase your exposure so when people come looking they find you.
- guru_shastry 13y ago
  +1. And get one of these : http://freelancersticker.com http://freelancersticker.com
- ssharp 13y ago
  You can get higher paying gigs on oDesk if you're willing to do more than carpet bomb categories. Finding good gigs on their takes some time and effort, but it's possible. I did a gig on their that paid a fair amount below what my rate would normally be, but was still above the $10-20 range and I was able to make some good connections from that for more work outside of oDesk. It came at a time when I was trying to pivot from developer to more of a marketing / marketing-dev role and it also provided me some exposure to tools, problems, and tactics that I wasn't familiar with.
Brajeshwar 13y ago
We are relatively new but I think I'll have to plug in our new effort of curating good developers and designers for clients/customers willing to pay a premium for quality work. "My Startup, LxiDD[1], is a curated network of the best indie designers, developers, and creatives on the web, with exclusive access to top shelf clients looking for the best talent." http://lxidd.com/ http://lxidd.com/
jbobes 13y ago
I'm sort of desperately looking for a gig, and I consider myself hacker (unfortunately not a marketing guy). http://linkedin.com/in/jparicka http://linkedin.com/in/jparicka jparicka@gmail.com How can I be of an assistance?
truetaurus 13y ago
Twago
tejay 13y ago
I really hate being so self-aggrandizing, but at gun.io, this is exactly the problem we're trying to solve. Open and extremely easy to use, while not sucking in terms of quality. I think we're doing an OK job, but this is more complex than it sounds, and quite obviously, there's always room to do better. (If anyone strongly feels that we just suck, PLEASE email me). Thanks for allowing us the self-promotional spot, haha - but seriously, if you do want to try us out, just email me and we'll give you a post for free. I am sure our devs are itchin' for (well-compensated) work.
- tehwebguy 13y ago
  Sorry to hijack, but what's with the compensation estimates on gun.io? It seems like there is some good work on the site but everything seems to be < $500 or > $10k, but there is no basis for the price (is it project pricing, is it per week, did the client estimate it or did you?) I'm interested in using the site, I guess I just don't know how.
  - tejay 13y ago
    Hey man - awesome, thanks for the question. we clearly have a self-interest in talking about this publicly, but I don't wanna derail the ongoing conversation!! I'd track you down but maybe that'd be a bit weird! Just drop me a line at teja@gun.io and let's chat! Although, just so it's not like I'm dodging your question for any onlookers, fixed price estimates are the way to go for a number of reasons (alignment of incentives, doesn't penalize high productivity, etc). The clients do the pricing, generally, but if something looks silly, we try to step in.
    - tehwebguy 13y ago
      I think my main confusion was that there are a few things that appear to be full-time jobs but only list $250 - $500
- geal 13y ago
  From the point of view of the freelance worker, gun.io has been amazing. Interesting work and very nice clients!
rk0567 13y ago
I tried to solve it by creating http://railyo.com http://railyo.com for Rails Freelancers!
tehwebguy 13y ago
I'm interested! Info & contact @ http://kevin.fm http://kevin.fm
Nux 13y ago
"the freelancer marketplace sites seem to be dominated by weak PHP developers" - all the "non-weak" PHP devs I know are in well paid positions already and hardly have time to be on freelancer.com or similar, maybe that's the reason you haven't found one. :-)
willbill 13y ago
None, just meet people. You'll get better jobs and introductions through clients who like your work.
- dylangs1030 13y ago
  Clarification - the OP is asking for good places to hire, not to find work.
dcaranda 13y ago
Anybody have feedback on Fiverr.com?
- jonathanjaeger 13y ago
  If you want to artificially boost your Facebook likes or Twitter followers, that's the place to go.
personlurking 13y ago
peopleperhour.com is a UK-based site akin to oDesk. I take issue with any such site, though, since the number of bidders is huge and low-bidders are omnipresent.
jonathanjaeger 13y ago
I used Elance back in the day (before I even knew what "PHP" was.. I know). This time around I searched Google for keywords and looked in the Hacker News freelancer threads, and my leads were really good and ended up hiring someone that way. Takes a lot more time and effort than going on a freelancer site, but for a simple job Elance/ODesk could be the way to go.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
orangethirty 13y ago
The HN freelancers thread is gold. Use it.
guillermovs 13y ago
All online freelance marketplaces suffer from some variation of this problem. Either unskilled workers, generic bids, unverified skills, spam.. As @wilfra and others say you can try to filter by hourly rate or target freelancers in certain countries and you're bound to find someone good. And when you do it's a good idea to keep them on speed dial. You should also definitely look at the monthly threads here on HN of people looking for freelance work. We've had the same problem you're in and decided to do something about it by creating http://socialance.com http://socialance.com - A site that aims to fix online freelancing. If anyone wants to help us shape the future of freelancing, please get in touch!
rosstamicah 13y ago
Having used a handful of sites like freelancer.com and elance.com with varying results, I'd say the best results I've seen were from postings I put up on freelanceswitch.com job board (jobs.freelanceswitch.com/jobs)
BigBalli 13y ago
I have the feeling that all the time you're putting to find a dev and even communicating here is more than what it would take "you" to execute. However, I heard peopleperhour.com is good (very big in the UK). Also, last week I met the founder of coworks.com Still in beta but good concept: your connection share their freelancers and refer them. Good considering the overload of freelancers and high risk.
nodesocket 13y ago
Check out https://coworks.com https://coworks.com, they are just starting up, but building a freelancing site based exclusively on recommendations and your social graph. Really awesome technology.
Silverreven 13y ago
Hey guys, got this thread from a friend (Nodesocket). I am usually cautious about promoting myself in threads like this since it is almost impossible not to sound spammy. BUT with that said I will do it anyway for a simple reason; a bunch of you have pointed out the challenge with quality, vetting, good vs cheap freelancers. I started Coworks because I had such a huge need of great freelancers, and couldn't find a good way to find and manage quality people. (This is my 4th startup, so I bought a lot of freelancing work over the years) And I do think we have solved a bunch of these issues with Coworks. We are entirely built on social recommendations, manual curation and are explicitly not targeting "cheap" freelancers. It is still early days, but our first customers seems to like us. (This is how it works https://coworks.com/works https://coworks.com/works)
- Kliment 13y ago
  Looks like you're more focused on "fluffy" fields. What do I click if I do hardware, robotics and embedded software projects? The only options are "writing/editing", "design/illustration", "photo/video", and "web/apps". Or are you not interested in that market at all? (shameless plug, if you need any hardware, electronics, automation, or firmware work done, poke me at kliment@0xfb.com )
tharshan09 13y ago
I am keen to try out freelancing. I am still a student, so I can only do part-time but I already have a year of industry experience (django), and projects I have done that are live now (that people actually use!). I just need someone to give me that first chance to really prove myself and start building up my portfolio of real clients, rather than just projects I did for fun. I have been keen to try it out, but I was never sure when was the right time to dip my foot in the water. I did freelancing with someone for a short time (PHP MVC, Wordpress) but I always kinda felt I was getting the short end of the stick in regards to the pay and work. I guess I always thought it was always a bit risky and afraid of being takin advantage of so I never really went for it. Anyone have any advice? I would appreciate it.
level09 13y ago
I've used ODesk and Freelancer.com (still use ODESK occasionally), in my experience, It was very difficult to find really good programmers/designers and if there are any, their hourly rate would be really high. on the other hand, I found some excellent and cheap rates for things like translation, data-entry, office-related tasks ..
ilaksh 13y ago
If its so simple yet even after trying to find a good developer and failing you still haven't done it yourself, then its actually not that simple. The problem is you, not the developers on that site. When you say its simple what that really means is that you cannot or will not pay more than a very small amount of money, and/or even worse, you are unable to comprehend the complexities of the task. When you post a project and say "its simple", good developers know to avoid you because you are unrealistic and have very little money. Maybe you even put a number on the project (like $50) or something) advertising just how cheap you are. One other thing that people say is that freelancers "can't think". What a bunch of horseshit. People who put projects on freelance sites do so because they cannot or will not pay a market rate in the US. That means that the projects were underfunded. Which means that the schedule is inadequate from day one. Which translates into constant pressure on developers to deliver. Because of the nature of those sites, developers have no choice but to deliver the minimum set of unpolished work that meets only exactly the requirements specified. The number one reason this is necessary is because any attempts by the developer to clarify various issues unforeseen by the client will generally not be comprehended and will simply be assumed to be 'delaying tactics' preventing the completion of their 'simple task'. So in order for the client to see how complex the task really is and actually come up with new designs, a working system is required. If a freelancer were to try to make his own decisions for the client in regards to application design, the client is very likely to demand the work scrapped and another approach taken. I am a freelancer. I live in the US. And I have dealt with my share of cheap bastards on sites like odesk and vworker. I have been extremely selective in choosing clients, and still run into all of the issues I mentioned. I feel very bad for all of the Indian programmers who are stuck with assholes who are even cheaper and stupider than the ones I ran into. You get what you pay for.
- DenisM 13y ago
  That's a lot of jumping to conclusions there.
kephra 13y ago
I would suggest the relevant IRC channel. First ask a smart question that is on topic, next PM those who answered, if they are for hire.
- panabee 13y ago
  sorry if this is a dumb question, but how do you find the relevant IRC channel? i googled the issue and found a few search engines like this http://searchirc.com/ http://searchirc.com/. is this the best search engine for IRC? or what do you recommend? thanks!
  - kephra 13y ago
    Most technical computer topics have an IRC channel on freenode. Often google shows up a page for the active channels. The searchirc.com sometimes shows dead channel.
    - panabee 13y ago
      thanks!
nedwin 13y ago
We started Tweaky.com to help with this exact problem. We only tackle small projects but we've built a system which makes this work for both customers and developers. Our project managers break a project down into "tweaks" where each one is well defined and $39. We then curate the developers in the marketplace to ensure that only quality people are in there. Once the tweaks are paid for the developers pick up the jobs they want to work on and get started.
boyanpro 13y ago
Try this German site https://www.freelancermap.com/profil/BojanNisevic/1 https://www.freelancermap.com/profil/BojanNisevic/1
ilaksh 13y ago
Just for curiosity's sake 10dpd, what exactly was the task, the description, and the rate or fixed fee you advertised for it to be completed? And what happened during that implementation process? Were there any new requirements or wrinkles discovered? What was the final amount the developer received or was to receive? And how long ago was it that you started unsuccessfully trying to get this task completed on a freelance site?
- mattbarrie 13y ago
  This would be good to know, at least I will be able to respond to the initial issue that spawned this thread. Regards Matt
mguillech 13y ago
I work for toptal (http://www.toptal.com http://www.toptal.com) and we're proud of having a very well selected network of developers (top-notch devs screening each other, our "let through" ratio is 1:10 approximately), that solely will rule out inexperienced devs so our customers are given nothing but the best. I'm open if you want to reach out.
startupstella 13y ago
Check out matchist.com We've got top developers from around the US (many, many from this community) and we match you to developers who fit the skillset, timeframe, and budget you're looking for. Instead of a million bids, we match you to three top notch devs who can get the job done (any of the three can do your project, we just assume you'll like get along with one more than others) DISCLAIMER: I'm a founder of matchist, but started the company because I was sick of freelancer outsourcing sites not being able to match my talented dev friends and entrepreneur friends.

mgiglesias 13y ago

Amazing how there's no single ex-vWorker that's out there saying how happy they are about the no-heads-up-whatsoever acquisition. The could've done a much better job.

Dove 13y ago
They could have. More remarkable to me, though, is that no one's criticizing the transition itself. Everyone is saying, "I liked vWorker better." I guess it isn't that surprising, when I think about it, though. I knew Freelancer existed. If I'd wanted an account there, I would have already had one. Still, I'd think there would be more people who said, "Oh well, the new site's nice, too." Judging from this comment thread, people have mostly just . . . left. It's a shame. I liked vWorker.
- mattbarrie 13y ago
  Hi Dove, I agree there were some nice features there. We're going to implement the best ones.
- mattbarrie 13y ago
  It's an incorrect statement. vWorker user earnings are well up, around 50% higher than before. vWorker did have some great freelancers and some really nice features. However it was an incredibly difficult site to use, this is why they did not survive as an independent business. Ironically, this is what those people that were left on the site at the end were high quality. To post a project took something like 3 pages of complicated forms in a 3 point font in order to just get it live. Around 70% of people dropped out of the post project funnel. So of course, if you laboured on to complete those three pages then you are probably a pretty dedicated employer. Likewise if you were a freelancer and put up with horrendous interface, you were probably pretty dedicated. vWorker's UI was franking shocking, and so was its UX. It was right out of 1995. We imported 100% of the feedback into our reputation system, so the big freelancers on vWorker are also at the top of the leaderboards at Freelancer - and there are significantly more projects on Freelancer than vWorker ever had. Also a vast majority of employers have come across and are active on Freelancer. I am not sure what sort of projects you are going for, or what categories you are working in- I am happy to have a look at your account if you private message or email me to provide some feedback to you. Regards Matt
  - mgiglesias 13y ago
    You do have a point. All of us ex-vWorker users had to "put up" with the UI. Of course Freelancer is way better in that aspect. In terms of UX you have a better product than vWorker. However so do pretty much all other platforms. It isn't hard to offer something better than a "horrendous interface" Regarding the feedback transition it indeed went smoothly, minor some glitches (for example one of our ongoing vWorker projects took two months to appear on Freelancer) The reputation, though, was greatly destroyed. To move from a long lasting #1 ranking to be in Level 10 (or whatever, can't remember which one) and from within that level to be placed in the 10s of thousands is not a fair move. This is purely coming as a vWorker user, it has nothing to do with my business. I do understand that were existing users with an ongoing reputation on Freelancer, so displacing them because of an acquisition is also unfair. But to offer "a badge" and "one month free membership", after which you have to pay monthly to keep your subscription is the reason why I personally know the majority of the top 100 workers from vWorker moved away from the forced switch. They, and I, felt aggravated by a sudden and very harsh shutdown. Now this is not freelancer fault, I'd guess, but vWorker. They should have given a more friendly approach to the whole process, other than a "Goodbye folks I'm happy with the acquisition" and a "Email support at freelancer" from now on. Most of the people I know (including me) from vWorker took our business INTO vWorker. I did not get most of my work through the platform, but I did move my clients into it. We did that because despite the awful UX there was a feeling of being a part of something that worked. You obviously have the numbers so you can probably see that was the case. And I can go as far as saying that probably 80% of vWorker business was handled by the top 20% of workers. So helping that 20% be happy about the transition would probably have helped the process. This is, once again, my personal feeling as an ex vWorker. I do hope all those ex vWorker users that are part of Freelancer stay there and are happy with their decision. And kudos to you matt for nerding it up and answer all these comments.
    - mattbarrie 13y ago
      You don't have to pay for membership. Free accounts have a 10% commission, versus 15% for vworker. Our paid commissions drop this as far as 3%. You were happy moving your clients in to pay 15%?
mattbarrie 13y ago
That's actually incorrect. In fact, vWorkers in aggregate are now earning 50% more than prior, and if you check the directory, many are top of the reputation list now.

rajjalan 13y ago

Why gamification if I am only posting jobs? It might make sense to people who are bidding for projects, but it is just too many unwanted features for posting a project.

mattbarrie 13y ago
Well you can always ignore it? There are something things you might like to earn with the credits, for example the phone number for the head of support, a chat with me over skype with a cup of tea, or a t-shirt? It's not like you have to do anything extra.
- rajjalan 13y ago
  Well, we ignore it by using freelancer less now. I just posted thinking you were interested in feedback :)
- ximeng 13y ago
  Also didn't see the point in the gamification, interface is already complicated enough when putting up projects that I almost gave up a couple of times. And echo the earlier comment about excess emails - getting 50emails after having a discussion on the chat system is not a sensible default. Did get a good job done tho gave up on finding rails guys and went php.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  I think the issue is that it changes the "feel" of the place and therefor the type of people likely to be attracted it. It kind of says "we are for the sort of people who will jump through hoops to get a free article of clothing"
- lotharbot 13y ago
  I wish I could ignore it, but the problem is that it's something my clients have to see too, and it's very prominent. They want to hire me, I want to deliver quality software to them, but in between us is "level up to earn a free T-shirt". Perks and rewards are OK, but the prominence the XP/Badge/level system is given presents a very unprofessional image to potential clients. It's a distraction, a sideshow that's given center stage. I'd love to do enough professional-grade work on freelancer to earn a quick chat/consult with you (or even something like a free t-shirt), but I don't want the site inundating me and my clients with bullshit that doesn't add to either of our bottom lines. Our business relationship is not a game, but Freelancer surrounds it with excessive of game terminology and game mechanics, which gives off an air of "this place isn't for serious developers".
  - mattbarrie 13y ago
    Clients do not see anything related to your internal freelancer rewards level.
    - lotharbot 13y ago
      But they see their own level. We had a client with us on vWorker. When we all transitioned to Freelancer, we thought "great -- lower fees and an easier to use website!" Their first login, they saw all the XP-level stuff and bailed. They simply weren't willing to conduct business on a website that seemed to treat everything like a game. When you're running a serious business, perception matters. As you can see from this HN thread, some people who made the transition have a negative perception of the confusing, distracting sideshow of the XP system. It wouldn't be so bad if it was phrased in a more neutral way, like "Freelancer rewards". But giving something phrased in game terminology so much prominence is a big turnoff for some of us. Of course, I don't have access to your internal metrics or split tests. Maybe the terminology works out as a net positive; maybe the people who like it engage enough more to make up for those who left because of it. I can't speak for your entire client base, only my little corner of it. And my little corner of it would be doing more business through Freelancer if the gamey stuff wasn't so prominently featured.
  - mattbarrie 13y ago
    The only badges they see are exam badges with your score.
Dove 13y ago
It doesn't make sense for people who are bidding for projects, either -- at least, it doesn't make sense for me. It's a childish system, completely out of tune with how I want to present myself professionally. I don't want to Like You On Facebook or Follow You On Twitter, I don't want to Level Up For More Bids, I certainly don't want to bid on 200 projects a month, and I certainly, CERTAINLY don't want to see my clients spammed with similar requests. I really liked vWorker, but I actively avoid freelancer, and the gamification is the biggest reason.
- mattbarrie 13y ago
  This system is only exposed to you personally, it is not exposed to employers and has no effect on your on-site rating whatsoever (which we call reputation, a metric)
  - Dove 13y ago
    I appreciate that! It wasn't clear to me how public my own level was. My bad reaction is actually from a conversation I had with a couple clients I had sent to the site -- they saw their own "level", I guess, and were rather put off by the whole thing. Not that I blame them; I find it pretty tacky, too. Hence I've been avoiding bringing new clients to the site.

octopus 13y ago

A few problems with Freelancer from a buyer perspective: * If you post a project on something like C++, Android, iOS or web design you get about 10 generic bids in the first minute. I suspect some coders use bots to bid on certain categories. This should be strictly prohibited. * Not sure how you can stop the coders to bid so low, when a guy bids $30 for 2 - 3 days of work the quality of his work can't be that great. Maybe enforcing some minimum bid limit ? I know this is a hard problem to solve. * Another problem that seems to keep the prices and quality down: coders that take a project and repost it with a much lower price. * A buyer should be forced to describe what he needs in the project description. Generic projects like Easy work, it can be done by an expert in a few hours. Details after you bid. should also be prohibited. These kind of projects keep the prices and the quality of the work down for everyone.

mattbarrie 13y ago
Hi Octopus Thanks for the feedback 1) Yes we are trying to crack down on the bid spam. However the marketplace is very liquid you will also almost always find that there is actually someone at the other end, so when you get 10 bids in 60 seconds if you start to chat there is a human at the other end. We get almost 1 million bids per month now. No other marketplace on the Internet comes close to liquidity (about 950k/mo now). This is great for finding people quickly and getting the right price for your project. 2) Well 5 billion people on this planet live on $8 day or less, I think you can't say just because someone is willing to work for 2-3 days for $30 they are automatically "bad". 3) Labour arbitrage is something we are looking at. It usually does not result in lower quality, quite the contrary, because the guys doing the arbitrage (flipping projects) need to retain a high reputation score or they will blow their accounts up and the business model will stop working. Right now they are acting as quality and customer service managers so they actually enhance the result for the end user. 4) Yes I absolutely agree, and we are looking into how this can be done better. Regards Matt

Dove 13y ago

I was a pretty regular worker on vWorker -- in the top several hundred in terms of income -- and I've been very unhappy with the transition to freelancer. The major issues I've encountered are: * Extreme difficulty communicating with clients on the site during the bidding process. If there's a way to discuss terms and details on a prospective project, I haven't found it yet. * Getting paid, in the US, is difficult, expensive, slow, and impossible to automate. (It was none of those things on vWorker). * The vibe of the site is incompatible with high quality, professional contracting. If I send clients to your site, they don't hear about cost and schedule and deliverables. They get asked to follow you on twitter so they can level up and win a free t-shirt. * No sub-accounts. I can't give an administrative assistant or subcontractor partial access to my account; it's either cut and paste or give out the master password. * The whole setup seems geared toward people with a very different business philosophy than me -- hundreds of bids per month, dozens of skills on your profile, tens of client relationships. And if I work hard, I could get more of all of those things! That actively drives me away. I have dozens of skills, but I only want to list one or two. I want to make one or two bids per month. I want to work with one client at a time. Overall, the system says to me, "This is a place for spammy contractors to take tiny jobs," not, "This is a place for serious professionals to do quality work."

octopus 13y ago
I'm a not a big Freelancer fan, as you can see from my other comment. However, I think Freelancer does a better job at sorting the low spam bidders than ever did vWorker. On vWorker I've seen $1 - $3 bids on certain projects.
lotharbot 13y ago
[context: I am Dove's husband and acted as her administrative assistant on vWorker] Really, what it comes down to from my perspective is that freelancer is not geared toward the type of freelancing we're trying to do: making a living as professionals in a first-world country. As professionals, we have reason to want to grant limited account access to a secretary, accountant, or sub-contractor. This feature existed on vWorker, but not Freelancer. As professionals, we want to be rated and visible based on delivering quality work on time and on budget and making our clients happy. On vWorker, ranking/visibility was based entirely on revenue x client rating, with a bonus "top worker" designation for never missing a deadline or having a bad rating. On Freelancer, we level up by following you on social media, get badges for logging in every day for a year, and generally get ranked according to tangential criteria. It's distracting, and appears unprofessional to clients who are being asked to "level up" and "earn badges" themselves when all they want to do is hire us. As professionals, we don't bid until we've already come to terms with the client. On vWorker, we'd regularly have dozens of messages with clients establishing the details of a project, discussing timelines, etc. and then we'd put in a bid with that full understanding. Freelancer seems geared toward submitting a large number of bids without having ever really discussed terms -- the sort of thing that might work for "transcribe a 10 minute audio clip", but not for projects measured in months and costing $x0,000 to complete. As professionals, we want to pay our $50 monthly fee and our 2% per-contract cut, use the site to connect with clients with real large-scale contracts, and get paid on a reasonable timescale. Trying to do that on freelancer is an exercise in frustration.
- mattbarrie 13y ago
  Hi Dove/lotharbot, Thanks for your feedback. Some of the vWorker freelancers I agree were exceptional - this is why they are now at the top of the leaderboard in many categories. vWorker users earnings are, on a whole, up about 50% post acquisition from what they were before. If you send me an email I can look into your accounts and see if I can make a recommendation for you, if you like (my email is easy to guess @freelancer.com). Re/ sub-accounts, we are looking at this, the actual use on vWorker was very low (less than ~500 users out of 2.5m). This is why we haven't implemented yet. We are looking at it, however. You are mixing up the Freelancer leveling system with reputation. Reputation is completely distinct. Reputation is simply volume (dollar) weighted ratings on a per category basis. Thus the highest rated, most paid freelancers are at the top of reputation for a given skill. The gamification system is completely distinct and has no influence on the bid list, this is purely like a frequently flyer program in giving back perks to users who are good on the site (as distinct to those good at work). Yes, we are a much bigger marketplace than vWorker. So there are more bidders, but also substantially more projects. We do have projects that are well over $250,000 on an ongoing basis. No platform charges 2%. vWorker charged 15% flat. You can get down to 3% on Freelancer, the lowest commission in the industry for $49.95. If you get in contact with me, I will see how I can help. Regards Matt
  - lotharbot 13y ago
    > "You are mixing up the Freelancer leveling system with reputation." This sort of confusion suggests the leveling system is far more prominent, and therefore distracting, than it needs to be.