Having unsuccessfully attempted to use Freelancer.com to complete a relatively simple job (I could do it myself but don't have time at the moment), I was wondering if HN could suggest a good freelancer sourcing site for relatively straight-forward work? Unfortunately the freelancer marketplace sites seem to be dominated by weak PHP developers.
Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?
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Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?
#2What kind of job are we talking about?
Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?
#3Best freelancer site for me: twitter.
Make sure you regularly post useful links related to your craft (using eg: buffer).
Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?
#4finding a good freelancer takes some time and you have to learn first how to deal with freelancers. usually, especially when you are hiring low-priced freelancers, you have to define the tasks very much in detail, which sometimes takes more time than doing it yourself.
try odesk.com - i made the best experience there until now.
Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?
#5Well, I'd suggest looking no further than oDesk.
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.
Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?
#6Every month there is a post on HN with the opportunity to post that you're seeking a freelancer, and likewise freelancers will advertise themselves. You might have more luck finding good freelancers on there:
Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?
#7I've been using elance exclusively for years. I usually ask for a very specific job with detailed requirements. For instance, I'd manage the overall project but could hire someone to transform the psd to html, one to tweak that html and adding missing pages, etc. But that's because I'm a programmer myself, I could do all these parts and thus write very specific specs/requirements/realistic-expectation.. I wouldn't recommend that approach to a friend without technical background.
Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?
#8I've been the top #1 provider for years and up until vWorker got sold to freelancer. I honestly think that was an awful move, since what made vWorker different from the rest is that it had less number of providers (and clients), but with a much better quality.
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.
Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?
#9I use both odesk and elance a lot. I find that the former is better for work that's more commoditized.
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.
Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?
#10A friend of mine is currently trying to sort this problem by creating OnSite (http://onsite.io/), it's not live yet but it's one to keep an eye on for the future.