Platforms for Freelancers to Find the Perfect Work | Hacker News Reader

Platforms for Freelancers to Find the Perfect Work

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24 pointssimeondd16 comments

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28 places to find the worst freelance jobs.

Seriously, I've looked at all these over the past 3 months but all those sites provide me with is mild amusement and a growing library of screenshots of ridiculous projects.

Most recent but illustrative one: https://www.dropbox.com/s/04jtax1gozu9heg/2015-06-28%20at%20... — An AirBnB clone in Rails, payments in UK & India, "one small tweak" (oh, I love mystery!) and a project budget of $250-750

I created a profile in freelancer dot com about 3 years ago and one in nubelo dot com, never had a single job, the sites recommended me to make tests to increase my reputation, but the tests where not free, I paid like 30USD to be able to show some useless badges.

Waste of time, the best freelance projects and customers where by recommendation. Instead of these 28 sites, I suggest to focus in connecting people.

I'd argue that none of these are a way to get decent work. The best way to get the best kind of work is to find it locally. Go to local meetups, do some talks, talk about the things you know about and have done and educate others on it. You'll soon get your name out there and be approached by people for help.

Do things, tell people.

Do you mention that you're available for freelancing when giving talks or going to meetups? Any particular etiquette I should be aware of?

i work for a company that helps people find freelance work, and i agree 100%.

i always say think about our site as the equivalent of a BATNA: always find work via referral, but we're here when you can't :)

How is there 28 freelance websites and https://gun.io/ wasn't mentioned? I would have thought that to be one of the more popular sources for freelance work.

28 interminable profile forms to fill

The fundamental issue with these sites is that they attract a global labor pool to openly compete with one another for extremely price sensitive clients without the protection of artificial price controls.

You know what they say - "Pay peanuts, get monkeys".

Sums up my experiences with freelancers pretty well. Although we all have to start somewhere...

Edit: My experiences being that the cheaper ones are monkeys, not all freelancers ;)

I'd say the fundamental issue is that they are solving the Yellow Pages problem, i.e. "how do I find a list of people who say they do what I need" or "… need what I do". That's not been a valuable problem to solve since, well, the Yellow Pages.

A valuable, related problem to solve is "how do I find a few people I could rationally believe will help me get positive return on my investment." And, so far as I know, no one has figured out how to convey the information we humans need to arrive at that belief or trust via web pages (or printed yellow ones)—notions like "we only register l33t with GitHub cred" and Ebay-esque star ratings not withstanding.

>these sites ... attract a global labor pool to openly compete with one another for extremely price sensitive clients without the protection of artificial price controls.

True, but why let that be an issue? No one's being forced to be either an 'extremely price sensitive client' nor a freelancer competing to work for one.

I'd like more information about how small law partnerships are formed and managed internally. That seems like the best organisational strategy for talented developers to emulate.

Any well produced X-Y-Z-llp site should be able to generate as much business opportunity as these freelancer operations, but with the added mutual benefit of being able to create lasting business relationships.

Freelances live on contacts. If you don't have contacts you're out of luck.

They left out the best one: Meetup.com

Remote Work resources like WeWorkRemotely.com definitely will gain more and more popularity during time.

I see more and more companies hiring remotely. It's big cultural change, and that's cool!

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