Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 137 posts

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

#111

Post by Dove »

mgiglesias wrote: post #105
Dove wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amazing how there's no single ex-vWorker that's out there saying how happy they are about the no-heads-up-whatsoever acquisition. The could've done a much better job.

They could have. More remarkable to me, though, is that no one's criticizing the transition itself. Everyone is saying, "I liked vWorker better."

I guess it isn't that surprising, when I think about it, though. I knew Freelancer existed. If I'd wanted an account there, I would have already had one. Still, I'd think there would be more people who said, "Oh well, the new site's nice, too."

Judging from this comment thread, people have mostly just . . . left. It's a shame. I liked vWorker.

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

#112

Post by mattbarrie »

mgiglesias wrote: post #105
Dove wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amazing how there's no single ex-vWorker that's out there saying how happy they are about the no-heads-up-whatsoever acquisition. The could've done a much better job.

That's actually incorrect. In fact, vWorkers in aggregate are now earning 50% more than prior, and if you check the directory, many are top of the reputation list now.

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

#113

Post by mattbarrie »

Dove wrote: post #111
mgiglesias wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing how there's no single ex-vWorker that's out there saying how happy they are about the no-heads-up-whatsoever acquisition. The could've done a much better job.

They could have. More remarkable to me, though, is that no one's criticizing the transition itself. Everyone is saying, "I liked vWorker better." I guess it isn't that surprising, when I think about it, though. I knew Freelancer existed. If I'd wanted an account there, I would have already had one. Still, I'd think there would be more people who said, "Oh well, the new site's nice, too." Judging from this comment thr…

Hi Dove, I agree there were some nice features there. We're going to implement the best ones.

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

#114

Post by mattbarrie »

lotharbot wrote: post #85
Dove wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, e…

[context: I am Dove's husband and acted as her administrative assistant on vWorker] Really, what it comes down to from my perspective is that freelancer is not geared toward the type of freelancing we're trying to do: making a living as professionals in a first-world country. As professionals, we have reason to want to grant limited account access to a secretary, accountant, or sub-contractor. This feature existed on…

Hi Dove/lotharbot,

Thanks for your feedback. Some of the vWorker freelancers I agree were exceptional - this is why they are now at the top of the leaderboard in many categories. vWorker users earnings are, on a whole, up about 50% post acquisition from what they were before. If you send me an email I can look into your accounts and see if I can make a recommendation for you, if you like (my email is easy to guess @freelancer.com).

Re/ sub-accounts, we are looking at this, the actual use on vWorker was very low (less than ~500 users out of 2.5m). This is why we haven't implemented yet. We are looking at it, however.

You are mixing up the Freelancer leveling system with reputation. Reputation is completely distinct. Reputation is simply volume (dollar) weighted ratings on a per category basis. Thus the highest rated, most paid freelancers are at the top of reputation for a given skill. The gamification system is completely distinct and has no influence on the bid list, this is purely like a frequently flyer program in giving back perks to users who are good on the site (as distinct to those good at work).

Yes, we are a much bigger marketplace than vWorker. So there are more bidders, but also substantially more projects. We do have projects that are well over $250,000 on an ongoing basis.

No platform charges 2%. vWorker charged 15% flat. You can get down to 3% on Freelancer, the lowest commission in the industry for $49.95.

If you get in contact with me, I will see how I can help.

Regards Matt

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

#115

Post by mattbarrie »

octopus wrote: post #51
mattbarrie wrote: post #14

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

A few problems with Freelancer from a buyer perspective: * If you post a project on something like C++, Android, iOS or web design you get about 10 generic bids in the first minute. I suspect some coders use bots to bid on certain categories. This should be strictly prohibited. * Not sure how you can stop the coders to bid so low, when a guy bids $30 for 2 - 3 days of work the quality of his work can't be that great.…

Hi Octopus

Thanks for the feedback

1) Yes we are trying to crack down on the bid spam. However the marketplace is very liquid you will also almost always find that there is actually someone at the other end, so when you get 10 bids in 60 seconds if you start to chat there is a human at the other end. We get almost 1 million bids per month now. No other marketplace on the Internet comes close to liquidity (about 950k/mo now). This is great for finding people quickly and getting the right price for your project.

2) Well 5 billion people on this planet live on $8 day or less, I think you can't say just because someone is willing to work for 2-3 days for $30 they are automatically "bad".

3) Labour arbitrage is something we are looking at. It usually does not result in lower quality, quite the contrary, because the guys doing the arbitrage (flipping projects) need to retain a high reputation score or they will blow their accounts up and the business model will stop working. Right now they are acting as quality and customer service managers so they actually enhance the result for the end user.

4) Yes I absolutely agree, and we are looking into how this can be done better.

Regards Matt

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

#116

Post by mattbarrie »

23andwalnut wrote: post #28
mattbarrie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were subscribed to new project notifications. We did fix a bug where only a fraction of new projects were being sent out to freelancers- we had a lot of complaints that we weren't notifying freelancers of all matching opportunities. We're working on both some settings to adjust how many you receive and smarter targeting.

Without having experienced the issue myself, it seems like an easy solution would be to send out a daily digest containing all new projects. Or allow users to select how often they would like to receive new project emails with options like: 1. As they are posted 2. Every x hours 3. Once per day.

He was complaining about the daily digests :)

We have thousands of projects per day posted. We need probably better fine grained control over the timing of these emails, I can tell you that if we send less emails we get complaints, if we send more we get complaints! We have to perhaps let the user decide the frequency.

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

#117

Post by mattbarrie »

qarioz wrote: post #30
mattbarrie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were subscribed to new project notifications. We did fix a bug where only a fraction of new projects were being sent out to freelancers- we had a lot of complaints that we weren't notifying freelancers of all matching opportunities. We're working on both some settings to adjust how many you receive and smarter targeting.

Actually it's very useful, it's just receiving 6 daily mail is a little bit too much. The special notification on the other hand is very useful, it should be sent more.

Agree as I said about we will look at fine grained control over how many digests a user wants to receive. Some people do not browse the site at all but want INSTANT emails when a new project comes on. Some people want 1 email a day.

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

#118

Post by mattbarrie »

Dove wrote: post #59
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.

It doesn't make sense for people who are bidding for projects, either -- at least, it doesn't make sense for me. It's a childish system, completely out of tune with how I want to present myself professionally. I don't want to Like You On Facebook or Follow You On Twitter, I don't want to Level Up For More Bids, I certainly don't want to bid on 200 projects a month, and I certainly , CERTAINLY don't want to see my cli…

This system is only exposed to you personally, it is not exposed to employers and has no effect on your on-site rating whatsoever (which we call reputation, a metric)

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

#119

Post by mattbarrie »

rickdale wrote: post #56
mattbarrie wrote: post #14

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

Good on your for being here and looking for suggestions. Never used your service, but I did use 99designs to design and build a site recently. And I can tell you that as soon as I got my design, I told the designer to email me and then I payed him through paypal for the design and for the website work. I was out some money to 99designs, but I was happier that random Indian dude got most of the money. I think I have a…

I don't think it's that difficult to use, but I certainly welcome any feedback once you try it.

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

#120

Post by mattbarrie »

harrjj wrote: post #68
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 searc…

Hi Harrjj, if you have any specific feedback on features or issues I'm happy to look at them.

Regards Matt

Post reply on HN