Freelancing on the Internet Sucks | Hacker News Reader

Freelancing on the Internet Sucks

saturn.work

11 pointsujjwalt9 comments

Good luck, there is a new “we are fixing freelancing” startup coming out every week. Unless you’ve actually been freelancing for years on multiple platforms + actually worked in Core Ops within those networks + worked in traditional recruitment - you’re clueless about what the actual problems are.

This shit is HARD. Getting clients and devs to sign up for yet another service is HARD. Having a shitty landing page expecting people will sign up with NO clear USP to the talent is just a waste of time.

This is coming from someone who has built and sold several of these services in the past 5 years.

Thank you for the luck. We truly have a new model and the landing page is intentionally vague at this point of time. We'll slowly add more concrete content that explains what we are doing differently and why. I hope you will keep a tab. Could I have a look at some of the services you've built and sold?

First of all, it doesn't suck.

As someone who started the Software Dev career in the freelancing websites you mention, I can tell you that the customers who are looking for the cheapest way to do things are getting that. Those who are looking for reliable work can look at reviews, past work portfolio, interviews and milestones... to make sure they're getting better workers or at least minimize the risks.

There are providers of much more reliable workers, which do the vetting for you... but those are limited to narrow domains. You need to hire experts to vet freelancers and this does not scale. In traditional freelancing platforms, this vetting is crowd sourced to previous customers, so it's automatically scalable.

Another thing is, you don't even mention what your approach to solving the problem is. Yes, there are some problems inherent to freelancing on the internet, but that's true for anything. What is your selling point that will solve the existing problems and make it that much better than the competition while not losing the value existing platforms provide to your customers?

Specific features and ideas will be put up very soon. The landing page is intentionally vague to paint the broader picture. It will evolve with specifics and screenshots as we get ready to launch. Do keep a tab.

echoing other sentiments here,

I fail to see what you guys are doing differently. I freelanced for several years on different platforms and I would see the same issues.

1. no vetting -> race to the bottom and clients who think $17 /hr is an appropriate salary for a senior engineer

2. vetting -> great at first. clients are coming in but over time the new jobs go to new people coming in at lower salaries. My previous clients and success on the platform never seems to make a difference getting new work. In the end I'm stuck charging $50-55 at best.

In the end, I found a colleague who didn't want to write software so much anymore and preferred networking. He'd hook me up clients for 10% and that worked great for me. The last one he referred to me became business partners and I'm CTO of our startup.

That said. Instead of vague promises about solving freelancing. how about a few explicit problems that you guys have solved that demonstrate that this isn't just more marketing.

We have addressed both your points. We truly have a new model and the landing page is intentionally vague at this point of time. We'll slowly add more concrete content that explains what we are doing differently and why. We're launching a manifesto with some product screenshots soon that goes into the explicit details of what we have built and how it solves the problems of existing platforms. I hope you will keep a tab.

It doesn't.

Freelancing works pretty good, just the companies suck.

Luckily, we don't need the middle man as freelancers.

Yes! Let's get rid of the middlemen!

"Don't forget to drink your ovaltine"

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