I really wanted to like Moonlight, but I think it has some issue right now.
If you're looking to be featured more prominently - shoot me an email (philip at moonlightwork.com) and we'll feature you on the next issue of Orbit [2] going out to clients on Monday.
Now as they've transitioned into a slack community a few months ago, I know that they are nice and well-meaning guys, but they just weren't able to stand up for their (you can say partly implicit) promises. And you can do quite a bit of harm and be a prick by simply not being attentive enough. For example in their case, they have like 10k(!) developers signed up. And to sign up, every one of them (us) had to fill a profile (there go 30-60 minutes, times 10k!) and do a sample proposal (which wasn't clear was just an entry test - maybe it wasn't). Now in the new slack community you can see all the gigs being posted and it's like 1/month or so. For the thousands signed up. Even if they keep working with the same freelancers as much as possible.
This is not the only example, I've seen the same with a few other companies/services, but went into the details with this one, because with them I could see behind the curtains. (With the usual website they just never get back to you, or your proposals just never get answered.) Another similar one is codementor.io, which started out as a programmer-to-programmer mentoring platform (which I do use as such) and who figured out a while ago, that they have quite a few knowledgeable developers, so they could just feed us with projects. Same thing happens: very low deal flow, quite often no feedback after submitting a proposal. (Which is just shitty customer service, of course.) Even though in their case, I do quite a bit of emailing with them (e.g. reporting bugs, suggesting usability fixes, and also sometimes they explicitly reached out for me to help with specific projects/clients in the beginning).
So this shows to me that while there is a huge unserved demand for developers, there isn't such a big demand for freelancers. Which, if I'm honest to myself, kind of makes sense. Most companies will want to keep accumulated knowledge in-house.
But despite the market situation, I'm still a bit angry with all these mediator portals. They should rob the time of everyone and sign them up in bulk. It would be a lot more responsible to say that we have enough developers for now, come back later or leave your email address and maybe a few tags and we'll ping you when there is a substantial chance that we can give actually you some work.
Thus, the excess of developers on Moonlight maybe partly my responsibility. I have made a mental note to look for opportunities to promote them to people who need someone to code for them to try to balance that out a bit.
I do freelance writing through a portal. It is a well designed, well run system and some people genuinely support themselves. Due to my medical situation, I only work very part time and I don't yet make the kind of money I want, but it is trending in the right direction. So I think a well done portal can work. The fact that there are lots of busted ones out there in no way proves this one is also busted or that a portal is hopeless.
I have seen some articles that suggest that gig work is the future and that up to 40% of work will be done in this fashion by 2020. I think the trend is unavoidable. So, the question here becomes "How do we do this in a way that works well for all parties?" I am interested in promoting platforms that work well for all parties, including the worker.
So, I am sorry you have had negative experiences, but I see zero to believe that the existence of multiple terrible platforms in any way suggests this particular platform is doomed to failure. Hopefully the remarks in this discussion will help the founders to focus on upping their game on finding folks looking to hire programmers, since that is currently a weakness.
However, and that's the thing I tried to point out, the market seems to be aligned against this model. AND these sites should at least be aware of that and not take advantage of that. Don't play the martyr :), I didn't mean to blame you, of course, it's not your responsibility to be aware how much deals they can bring in. I just wanted to remind you, that it's not as easy as "they are just too new".
I know that everyone talks about the gig economy and how it keeps growing. But it doesn't mean that ALL kinds of jobs will be 'gigified' at the same rate. Also, the gig economy is not necessarily good for the freelancers/gig workers as long as it's a form of cost saving for the companies.
And that's exactly the reason I think that software development is just not as valuable (on average and in general) when done by freelancers as opposed to in-house devs. Because if it was, then it was just as easy to find gigs as a freelancer as easy it is to find a job as an employee (again, as a developer). But while I get regular contact requests on LI from potential employers and head hunters, it's still not trivial to land a gig as a freelancer. Even if you look through the opportunities, you'll see that there are a lot less serious ones (disregarding the competition).
There is, of course, an opportunity in this, just like any problem, so I'm not complaining, just analyzing the market.
Edit: added a smiley
I fundamentally disagree. I've given some of the reasons why.
No real need to waste more time on this, I think.