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oDesk to merge with Elance

odesk.com

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Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#121

Post by nikolak »

brc wrote: post #104
sergiotapia wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live, a software engineer makes about $500/month. That's $3/hour and some change, I know software developers who make even less. Freelancing for me is basically a no-brainer as I will not work for those wages if I can help it. I have the incredible fortune of being able to speak and write at a native level, that gives me and a few others an edge but most people suffer a lot. If you land a job making $5/hour,…

I'm curious. At that sort of rate, buying hardware to work on sounds very expensive compared to your income. What sort of machine do you use, and how much did you pay? I'm guessing you don't have a $3k MacBook. Seems like there would be an opportunity for developers to donate laptops/hardware to people in developing countries who could use them to make money. I have at least 5 sitting around my office, only 2 of whic…

Not OP. But someone who's also in a country where an average salary would be around 3 USD per hour. If you work and charge local rates you're pretty much restricted to either saving longer time for new average, not high end, laptop or shorter time for used one. Ordering used hardware online is much cheaper because prices are much lower, but there's about 50% chance that it will be "caught" by customs and then you have to pay ~27% (tax+customs) of the purchase price, additionally. Prices of new stuff locally is pretty much the same as in other countries in my experience. For reference I'm in Bosnia right now and prices are same or very similar to those in Italy,Germany and Austria.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#122

Post by irlib »

leknarf wrote: post #19
davidjgraph wrote: post #7

With vworker first being absorbed by freelancer and now this, there's a decided lack of competition developing in this market. I think these guys know that a startup will struggle to compete, getting the critical mass of devs and employers is the same problem as starting a social network. I share the view that ODesk quality is an order of magnitude better than elance, I think only those using elance will being thinki…

Our startup Lambda ( http://getlambda.com ) competes with both, but we're not the least bit concerned. I already thought of elance/odesk as being effectively the same, in the sense that they're both known as places to find cheap, off-shore labor. I don't know any devs in NYC who've seriously considered working through either site and don't expect that to change. Likewise, I don't know many hiring companies that have…

> We have a few other competitors targeting the high-end of the freelancer market, but that's still open territory.

Could you please name a few?

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#123

Post by krapp »

brianwawok wrote: post #115
memracom wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that your minimum rate is too high. A lot of developers would like to branch out and get experience with new technology but with a minimum rate of $100/hr you really can only offer your most familiar language/platform. Someone with 10 years of building Java apps, could build pretty good Android or iOS apps, if they could find a customer who would accept that career history at a lower rate. Honestly, I think t…

There are already tons of websites for cheap consultants. Why would they create 1 more? I think it is good they have a differentiating feature.

There is a strata between "cheap" and "elite" which doesn't seem to be served by either.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#124

Post by lingben »

finnw wrote: post #116
lingben wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is with hiring technical freelancers: design, network, security, development, etc. It is entirely possible that elance is great for non-technical jobs. The issues I ran into were providers who have great ratings but who can't do the job! Later I found out that elance has a loophole where buyers who disputed or cancelled projects are not able to leave feedback. So you're not getting the full story when y…

> Later I found out that elance has a loophole where buyers who disputed or cancelled projects are not able to leave feedback. The mistake many clients make is to request "cancellation". You should request a refund instead (and in the common case where a contractor goes silent, you will get back 100%.) Then mark the job as "complete" and leave feedback, which will be visible in their history (though it will not affec…

Requesting a refund and getting a refund closes the job as not completed, without the ability to leave feedback. The only way to leave feedback is to pay them either full amount or at least for 1 milestone.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#125

Post by mattbarrie »

weland wrote: post #99
lingben wrote: post #3

As long as oDesk does not change at all, I'm happy. The only reason I hire on oDesk is because it is NOT elance - have had horrible experience with elance both with providers and the company itself and how it conducts business (or what it calls business). Although this is called a merger, it is only that in name. It seems elance's CEO will call the shots. https://www.odesk.com/blog/2013/12/mergerfaq/ "Who will lead t…

> There's a huge wave of consolidation in the industry in the past 5 years. Just last year freelancer bought vworker. I really hope oDesk - Elance won't go the same way freelancer - vworker went. I used to have an account of RentACode, a long time ago. It was mostly a good experience, considering the state of freelancing back then. When my significant otter got fired, I dug the account and handed it over to her -- it…

Hi Weland, I'm the CEO of Freelancer.com. I thought I would reply to your comment, and I'm also happy to get someone to look into your account if you get send me your username.

A few comments- we do have escrows by default- called Milestone Payments. We don't however force people to use them if the two parties decide to come to an arrangement where they don't want to use them. The vast majority of projects do. Also you have a chance to not accept the project as a freelancer if Milestone payments have not been created after you've been awarded. So I can't see the issue here.

Rounding of fees? I have no idea what you are talking about here. We round project commissions to the cent, like everyone else.

Automated bidding- we changed our system some time ago to dramatically stop bid spam. I'm not sure how recently you have used the site. We have removed "public" bids entirely. Now you can only leave one private bid, this has got rid of the problem you talk about.

I would have to disagree with you for disputes and support. We have the largest support team in the entire industry with 250 people in our own facility that operate 24x7x365 and speak 10 languages. We have a paralegal team doing disputes that I believe is the most sophisticated in the industry as well in terms of how it resolves issues.

Our business is going from strength to strength and we are the only company that is publicly listed, so our financials are transparent. Our revenue is growing at almost double the growth rate of our nearest competitors, so I would have also disagree about your comments about the state of the site.

Happy to answer any other questions you may have or you can email me directly at matt@freelancer.com. Also if you shoot me your account username I will have someone take a look at it.

Regards Matt

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#126

Post by mattbarrie »

adamzski wrote: post #107
weland wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's a huge wave of consolidation in the industry in the past 5 years. Just last year freelancer bought vworker. I really hope oDesk - Elance won't go the same way freelancer - vworker went. I used to have an account of RentACode, a long time ago. It was mostly a good experience, considering the state of freelancing back then. When my significant otter got fired, I dug the account and handed it over to her -- it…

lol yes a very similar situation for me but from the other side.. I employed people on rentacoder and it was not too bad just had to be very careful but then freelancer LOL it seems like an army of people who are only in the business of scamming, also the actual freelacer company looks really shady themselves! I only posted a few jobs on freelancer many many years ago but that was enough.. I logged in recently to fre…

Hi Adam

I'm the CEO of Freelancer.com. How did the RAC escrow system differ? We don't have "expert guarantees" or reverse escrow, where the freelancer is required to put an escrow in the opposite direction, if that is what you mean? Other than that we have the same functionality.

Regards Matt

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#127

Post by mattbarrie »

uladzislau wrote: post #33

Just recently when Freelancer.com acquired vWorker I expected the overall quality improvement at Freelancer. However despite any logic it became worse. I have the same expectations for this merger/acquisition. Elance won't become any better and Odesk will cease to exist very soon after transferring all users to Elance. Sadly this merger is dictated by nothing else but increasing market share of Freelancer.com.

Hi Ulad

I'm the CEO of Freelancer.com. Since the vWorker acquisition actually all the quality metrics are up. The vWorker user base was also a very high quality workforce and today dominate highly our freelancer rankings and awarded projects. This is reflected in our financials- we are growing revenue at almost twice the rate of our competitors. We're also publicly listed (ASX: FLN) so our financials are transparent.

If you have any other questions, I'm happy to answer them or shoot me a note at matt@freelancer.com.

Regards Matt

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#128

Post by mattbarrie »

dongsheng wrote: post #87
jboy wrote: post #16

It would seem that the two main incumbents in this market (founded in 2005 and 1998, respectively) are getting nervous about Freelancer.com's (founded in 2009) rapid growth (predicting ~73% in 2013) and recent IPO [1]. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/au/freelancer-more-than-triples-first-d...

It dropped rapidly in the first few days too http://www.asx.com.au/asx/research/companyInfo.do?by=asxCode...

Hello Dong

I'm the CEO of Freelancer.com (Freelancer Limited ASX:FLN).

Our share price dropped rapidly in the first few days because the issue price was 50 cents and it was the biggest opening on the ASX every (so I was told by the exchange). The share price opened at $2.50.

A month later we are at $1.40, almost three times our issue price. I think that's pretty good. You would expect a bit of a pullback from such a strong opening (5x !).

Regards Matt

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#129

Post by pmorici »

karnajani wrote: post #69
pmorici wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you consider a solid income? It seems like the majority of the jobs posted on oDesk are asking for a lot and only willing to pay very little. I wonder how even someone willing to work for 2 bucks an hour could possibly make reasonable money on there.

I've been living completely off of my oDesk earnings for the last year. My rates are usually between 35-50 dollars/hr I'm pretty sure there are tons of folks out there just like me living comfortable lives with their oDesk earnings.

Right, so I've seen this assertion repeated a few times but how do you find these 35-50 an hour jobs on oDesk because I've not really seen them except for very rare occasions.

Re: oDesk to merge with Elance

#130

Post by anthony_barker »

weland wrote: post #99
lingben wrote: post #3

As long as oDesk does not change at all, I'm happy. The only reason I hire on oDesk is because it is NOT elance - have had horrible experience with elance both with providers and the company itself and how it conducts business (or what it calls business). Although this is called a merger, it is only that in name. It seems elance's CEO will call the shots. https://www.odesk.com/blog/2013/12/mergerfaq/ "Who will lead t…

> There's a huge wave of consolidation in the industry in the past 5 years. Just last year freelancer bought vworker. I really hope oDesk - Elance won't go the same way freelancer - vworker went. I used to have an account of RentACode, a long time ago. It was mostly a good experience, considering the state of freelancing back then. When my significant otter got fired, I dug the account and handed it over to her -- it…

same experience on the hiring side with freelancer - basically an awful waste of time.
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