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Comment by Kurtz79 | Hacker News Reader

Are there valid alternatives ?

What is the preferred platform for freelances looking for remote work at decent rates, today ?

I'd recommend PPH: http://www.peopleperhour.com/

It used to be pretty popular in the UK. I don't work freelance anymore but I still check the site out once in a while, it's fairly high quality and I've had several high-paying clients from there.

Just so people know they also send an ungodly amount of spam so don't sign up with your main email address.

Do you mean they sell their customers' emails or are you just talking about their own marketing emails? Because they do send a lot of crap but I opted out of those and haven't had issues since.

Their own marketing emails, I opted out but they still send a fair amount to me.

I was in oDesk trap many years ago and got out of it just by applying directly to prospective clients. Since then, I always recommend to look for remote jobs/clients directly, rather than through these kinds of mediums. It works. HN remote jobs, and many other sites.

I am in that same trap, any advice for someone to break the shackles? especially for someone located in Pakistan?

Just as I said above - find gigs on HN who is hiring thread, weworkremotely.com, stackoverflow remote jobs, wfh.io etc... just talk to clients directly. Oh, and needless to say - double/triple your rate, seriously - all it takes is to just ask.

Also, I was after more or less niche remote jobs (C++). In case of web or mobile dev - there are literally tons of jobs out there.

I've been decently happy with Toptal.com, which really works hard to carve out only the high end of the market (devs and clients both). Email's in my profile if anyone has questions or would like an intro.

Pick Crew is the only one I know of: https://pickcrew.com/

Gun.io is another.

To be honest I have not had great experiences with them (slow response time, lower number and quality of devs). I compared them side by side with Crew + Toptal, and would recommend either, but ended up going with the latter.

I don't know about Crew but Toptal seems just like remote body shopping. Seems the freelancer gets locked in working for toptal. Not a real freelancing scheme like odesk and such.

Not really, you have full control over your availability. You can dial it up or down however you like. A lot of people start with hourly jobs on Toptal while keeping another gig or a day job and then switch to full time on Toptal when they're ready.

Disclaimer - I work for Toptal

Toptal? No race to the bottom, highly skilled developers, awesome clients.

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