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Comment by marcomassaro | Hacker News Reader

Somebody needs to make an elance, odesk, freelance competitor that is private - contractors or companies need to apply and be pre-vetted to be on the site for design/dev and projects posted are above a minimum budget threshold.

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A country specific version of freelancer was an idea after I couldn't get a gig against every other third world country bidding on what seemed to be the same project with multiple accounts. Since it seems there were few and far American accounts bidding compared to other countries, "American only" struck me as something that would be useful as a developer. Though, I'm pretty sure people go there to pay insanely cheap prices. If they want to pay $100+ hour for experience and high quality, they would find a local company and meet with them. It's not like Angie's list where you're going to pay more or less the same price and you can filter out who you want to chose.

Good point. I'd say it would be very easy to find the talent and harder to attract the high paying projects.

I disagree with your $100+ hour statement. Sure, some people with $$ will try to hire locally, but we've gotten plenty of remote projects with high budgets.

I couldn't get a gig against every Indian and other third world country scamming the system with 10 accounts a piece

I'm not Indian, but some HN readers may find offensive that you equate Indian with scammer.

Edited. I didn't intend to be offensive. I feel the system is flawed and can be manipulated by anyone. The vast majority of bidders seems to be outside of America.

I feel the system is flawed and can be manipulated by anyone.

This is, unfortunately, true. You can however make some money on Freelancer if you offer quality and keep your prices at a medium level.

I've noticed that there is a big "can do" factor in Indian culture - until you find out there it's more like "never done it before but willing to try and you'll have to pay me for my time writing spaghetti-surprise code"

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