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.
This, this and a thousand times this.
After the switch, i've had to run around and argue with their 1st-Level support-monkeys to merge 2 accounts so i could withdraw what was left over in my vWorker account.
Took 2 months and you can be sure i'll never ever again visit that site >:(
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.
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
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.
You were happy moving your clients in to pay 15%?
Free accounts on Freelancer do pay 10% commission. But that's not the only difference. According to your own page (http://www.freelancer.com/membership/) free accounts only offer you 10 bids PER MONTH, 20 skills, 5 portfolio entries (why would you limit a freelancer ability to showcase his quality?)
So yes, I was happy. I personally feel I rather have someone charging me more and provide me a personal service, than pay less and have to pay more to be able to bid. Meritocracy is what should drive your limits upwards, not money.
vWorker worked well, and the quality of users was better. Good luck with your Workana, it looks good.
Why not just source from within the community?
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?
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.
Again, the OP was complaining about quality. The difference is not just that the better developer gets it done in less time, it's also a better product in the end. Even on simple tasks, the better developer can serve as a consultant and help the customer make sound decisions about the project, whereas the stereotypical el-cheapo web dude will be struggling just to keep up with the customer's requirements.
>Would there be any point hiring Ferrari F1's lead pit stop technician to change the tyres on your Prius?
If the F1 pro explicitly advertises that he would like to change Prius tires, I'd rather hire that guy. Besides, this is about building stuff, not performing repetitive maintenance tasks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I honestly wish we could get you guys and gals better jobs more frequently tho, haha. Sometimes we do not such a good job
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.
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.
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.
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.
The special notification on the other hand is very useful, it should be sent more.
It kind of says "we are for the sort of people who will jump through hoops to get a free article of clothing"
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".
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.
I really liked vWorker, but I actively avoid freelancer, and the gamification is the biggest reason.
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.
* 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.
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
Never used your service, but I did use 99designs to design and build a site recently. And I can tell you that as soon as I got my design, I told the designer to email me and then I payed him through paypal for the design and for the website work. I was out some money to 99designs, but I was happier that random Indian dude got most of the money.
I think I have an account with freelancer.com, but the site comes off as so bloated to me that you need to be a regular to really navigate through it.
* 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."
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.
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
This sort of confusion suggests the leveling system is far more prominent, and therefore distracting, than it needs to be.
Regards Matt
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)
(shameless plug, if you need any hardware, electronics, automation, or firmware work done, poke me at kliment@0xfb.com )
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 - A site that aims to fix online freelancing.
If anyone wants to help us shape the future of freelancing, please get in touch!
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.
"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."
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.
If you are a freelancer, you can apply here: http://onsite.io/apply/freelancer (you will again need to be verifiable with online examples of your work to be considered).
Cheers.
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.
Anyone have any advice? I would appreciate it.
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.
And how long ago was it that you started unsuccessfully trying to get this task completed on a freelance site?
Regards Matt
First ask a smart question that is on topic, next PM those who answered, if they are for hire.
Often google shows up a page for the active channels. The searchirc.com sometimes shows dead channel.
Any recommendations on how to find freelancers who do much more of the thinking? (I plan on trying with some HN freelancers soon.)
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.
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.
try odesk.com - i made the best experience there until now.
Make sure you regularly post useful links related to your craft (using eg: buffer).
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.
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.
Also what do you mean about number 5, rejecting proposals?
The client has the ability to reject a proposal and move it to the declined pile, where it is hidden from view. The client should exercise that ability at every possible turn to keep the current proposals on the project page to a minimum. Nobody likes dealing with a crowd.
I have tripled that rate and the quality of projects and clients has improved considerably.
ps do give a rough range of budget on elance but never an absolute number, if someone invites me to a project offering 20$/hr I run the other way.
disclaimer: I run marketlytics and generally participate on these sites as a consultant so this maybe more to my benefit.
Indeed, game theory dictates that if everybody did what I suggested the bad devs would eventually figure it out and it would no longer work.