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Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?

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Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?

#61

Post by ams6110 »

namdnay wrote: post #32
Udo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would second that. Why not just source from within the community?

OP: "to complete a relatively simple job" I'm guessing the average HN freelancer will be overkill for the stuff he has in mind. Some tasks are incompressible, however good you may be, so there's no point hiring Michaelangelo to repaint your bathroom ceiling. EDIT: after making this comment I can no longer "reply". Is this a ban?

I'm not sure I see any reason to think that the "average HN freelancer" would be overkill. There are recurring posts here from people asking about how to get started in freelancing, such people will need a few low-risk small projects to get their feet wet.

Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?

#62

Post by ximeng »

mattbarrie wrote: post #37
rajjalan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why gamification if I am only posting jobs? It might make sense to people who are bidding for projects, but it is just too many unwanted features for posting a project.

Well you can always ignore it? There are something things you might like to earn with the credits, for example the phone number for the head of support, a chat with me over skype with a cup of tea, or a t-shirt? It's not like you have to do anything extra.

Also didn't see the point in the gamification, interface is already complicated enough when putting up projects that I almost gave up a couple of times. And echo the earlier comment about excess emails - getting 50emails after having a discussion on the chat system is not a sensible default. Did get a good job done tho gave up on finding rails guys and went php.

Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?

#63

Post by jonathanjaeger »

I used Elance back in the day (before I even knew what "PHP" was.. I know). This time around I searched Google for keywords and looked in the Hacker News freelancer threads, and my leads were really good and ended up hiring someone that way. Takes a lot more time and effort than going on a freelancer site, but for a simple job Elance/ODesk could be the way to go.

Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?

#64

Post by dj-wonk »

dsirijus wrote: post #5

Well, 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 partic…

oDesk rejected two job postings of mine, with no explanation. I double checked their TOS and saw no conflict. Customer service never replied. They won't be getting my business.

Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?

#65

Post by Dove »

mattbarrie wrote: post #14

Hi there, I'm the CEO of Freelancer.com. I'd be interested to know what problem you ran into?

I was a pretty regular worker on vWorker -- in the top several hundred in terms of income -- and I've been very unhappy with the transition to freelancer. The major issues I've encountered are:

* Extreme difficulty communicating with clients on the site during the bidding process. If there's a way to discuss terms and details on a prospective project, I haven't found it yet.

* Getting paid, in the US, is difficult, expensive, slow, and impossible to automate. (It was none of those things on vWorker).

* The vibe of the site is incompatible with high quality, professional contracting. If I send clients to your site, they don't hear about cost and schedule and deliverables. They get asked to follow you on twitter so they can level up and win a free t-shirt.

* No sub-accounts. I can't give an administrative assistant or subcontractor partial access to my account; it's either cut and paste or give out the master password.

* The whole setup seems geared toward people with a very different business philosophy than me -- hundreds of bids per month, dozens of skills on your profile, tens of client relationships. And if I work hard, I could get more of all of those things! That actively drives me away. I have dozens of skills, but I only want to list one or two. I want to make one or two bids per month. I want to work with one client at a time. Overall, the system says to me, "This is a place for spammy contractors to take tiny jobs," not, "This is a place for serious professionals to do quality work."

Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?

#67

Post by moepstar »

Dove wrote: post #52
mgiglesias wrote: post #8

I'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…

I was a veteran of vWorker, too. I found the site quirky and ugly, but deeply functional. Freelancer seems to be the opposite -- very pretty, professionally aggravating. I jumped ship (to my own network) pretty quickly after the transition, and if I needed to find work again through a site, it probably wouldn't be that one.

>>> I was a veteran of vWorker, too. I found the site quirky and ugly, but deeply functional.

This, this and a thousand times this.

After the switch, i've had to run around and argue with their 1st-Level support-monkeys to merge 2 accounts so i could withdraw what was left over in my vWorker account.

Took 2 months and you can be sure i'll never ever again visit that site >:(

Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?

#68

Post by harrjj »

mattbarrie wrote: post #14

Hi there, I'm the CEO of Freelancer.com. I'd be interested to know what problem you ran into?

I'm another ex-vworker person. I had spent over $20k in the year before it was acquired by Freelancer and haven't done a single job since (moved to Elance). It started out with Freelancer failing to move my account. Once I went through a fairly painful process to get it migrated, I found that the tools to search for freelancers were terrible. I think they've improved a little, but to start with, you could only search by keyword and you'd get like 1000 results with no way to filter them. As of now, I'm happy with Elance and have no reason to move back.

Re: Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?

#70

Post by bobx11 »

dj-wonk wrote: post #64
dsirijus wrote: post #5

Well, 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 partic…

oDesk rejected two job postings of mine, with no explanation. I double checked their TOS and saw no conflict. Customer service never replied. They won't be getting my business.

I have been posting on oDesk for years and never got rejected... what were you posting?
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