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Comment by j4pe | Hacker News Reader

I've been thinking about forming a co-op for a trusted network of freelancers, to handle the crummy parts of the job (sourcing, selling, collecting) while encouraging the good parts (building, branding, partnering with quality colleagues). I had similar experiences being left with fake jobs/bad credit through freelance markets.

Thanks for sharing! I generally take longer-term gigs, so consistent dealflow isn't as big an of an issue for me. OP, what are you planning to do to fix your offline-network problem?

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Hi, I have started investing time in trying to identify local businesses and niche market segments via other methods including advertising. I am also planning on trying to get some tie ups with startups which want prototyping services. It is too early to comment on how effective it is but I definitely feel that it is a much better approach in the long term.

I think gun.io has pretty decent projects although I've never actually worked through them. They seem more properly screened and to hold their talent to higher standards. At least that's the impression I've received.

I don't know anyone that actually were able to work on projects advertised on gun.io. These were freelancers with a high hourly rate to lower hourly rates. The experience of gun.io is frustrating because you send out a proposal and you often have no idea what is happening to it. Let alone that the given set of requirements are esoteric enough, there just doesn't seem to be any available jobs that end up happening through the website.

I've unsubscribed from gun.io and can't really recommend it because you won't find any work on it. The experience has been consistent across many freelancers and it's not at all what it is advertised to be.

I tried getting projects on gun.io and never heard back from a client. Perhaps I need a better opensourcing profile - https://github.com/flipflopapp . Did anyone ever hearback from a gun.io client?

Yep, a friend of mine applied to 3 jobs on there and never heard a peep back. One job was only 20 miles away from him too so they could have had a great collaborative experience.

So I think if you're going through the trouble of curating the freelancers you allow to bid on jobs, then one of your rules should be that job posters must reply to proposals.

It might make sense to limit proposals to one at a time,so the job poster must reject a proposal before he can see another one.

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