
Why you should think twice about Freelancer.com - Bigdognec
Freelancer.com has given me several projects and some very good relationships. I manage to have a very good reputation and charge much more than the average bids for the quality of work provided. So this is to explain why I suggest killing a stead stream of revenue!<p>I first noticed several projects involving money exchange posted on Freelancer.com and opened tickets having noticed this to be strange. This indicated a strong message - There is a major security issue that a set of people are exploiting. While I reported it in vain and felt sad for those who were going to fall for this one but didn&#x27;t realize I would be the one to be scammed very soon.<p>I had several projects (all web development) I was invited to and paid for which were suddenly reversed without any intimation. The reason provided was that the payments were made using stolen credit cards which they somehow expected me to be aware of!<p>When I planned to move out of it is when I realized a bigger problem. I had grown as a freelancer and earned a reputation that warranted paying the fees that I did. I had built a level of trust that does not come with portfolios of hundreds of projects or testimonials from people on your website. Because, well, there is no authenticity.<p>But by growing within freelancer, I had neglected forming my offline network. I did have a good client base I had got from there but not enough to sustain without new ones as the work was never regular. I had missed a very important step : creating a brand for myself outside of a third-party platform. Ensuring a good client base outside and ensuring that you use these platforms to only supplement you.<p>After raising the issue of multiple reversals, I was contacted by senior staff and compensated with a subscription and promised that I could always check with support team to find if a user was genuine. Shockingly, I was no longer allowed to withdraw funds and the support team do not respond to any questions regarding the same!
======
zwetan
I wasted some time testing those sites: freelancer, odesk and elance

here is my conclusion: whatever you do, you will always end up having problems
with those kind of site.

Either the escrow can be reverted, or the site side with the "employer", how
about installing that odesk thing that take a screenshot of your desktop every
few minutes ? and on, and on, etc.

I worked as a freelancer without such web sites for 10+ years (both in France
and UK), either solo by networking etc. or via an agent that was finding
clients for me in exchange of a 20% commission (yes that's not a typo) and
this was 10 times better that any freelancer web site.

So what is the real problem ?

you (the freelancer) are actually the product

so called "employers" can play the game "let's find the cheapest product" (eg.
let's hire a freelancer that can work for $8/hour in some other country)

you can not do any margin with a competition toward "cheap" either you invoice
per hour, so even if you do the job faster than someone else you just invoice
the actual hours, or you bid on a fixed price which is also a race to lowest
amount of money.

It is absolutely a no-win situation

as an individual or a company wether you're building web sites, applications,
mobile apps, etc. all those things have high values it is absolutely OK to
invoice more that the time it took you to do it eg. make a margin to make a
living

also those sites tend to concentrate "bad clients" eg. the one who don't
understand technology, why it cost so much to do this, why you can not build
something complicated in 10 minutes, etc. exactly the kind of clients you try
to avoid at all cost

~~~
krisgenre
odesk's time tracking app seems extremely scary ( watches keystrokes and takes
screenshots ). Can't believe people actually install that thing.

~~~
clooney
I occasionally hire on Odesk and never require or even ask that the contractor
use it. I refuse to use that feature. It's degrading for the worker. Digital
slavery in a way.

------
gregthompsonjr
I try to stay away from sites like that in the first place, because I see
wasting a lot of time building a reputation before getting actual work. It
just never made sense to me.

The sites like Freelancer and oDesk are saturated with highly competitive,
cheap developers from Asia anyway. It's annoying. Nothing against Asians, but
I wouldn't try to dive into a pool of them to get work. It's unrealistic in
most cases, because they eat up opportunity like machines -- in large numbers.

Better off just cold calling.

~~~
billmalarky
How do you cold call? Who do you cold call?

~~~
manarth
I worked for a medium-size web agency who used a third-party marketing
company. That marketing company cold-called companies on their database, kept
track of things like when they last had their website rebuilt, what technology
they used, the features, the name of the decision-maker or person responsible
for procurement, etc.

I believe the marketing company were on retainer by a number of web agencies,
and when they found a lead, they referred it to the most appropriate agency
(for a percentage commission) - the agency then continued the sales process
(e.g. with a pitch, an RFP response, etc).

I suspect there are a few reasons this model worked:

* The marketing company maintained their database over the long term, so they could discuss previous developments, plans the customer was making, etc.

* Providing leads to a number of web agencies (rather than each agency having a small in-house telemarketing team) gave the marketing company a greater economy of scale, which meant they could afford to invest in tools and training that were specific to telemarketing.

* Providing leads to a number of web agencies allowed the marketing company to generate revenue (commission) from a more diverse set of needs, e.g. sharepoint projects to one agency, wordpress projects to a different agency, etc. If a small agency were doing their own telemarketing, their conversion rate would generally be lower, because they would end up missing out on potentials leads, from not having a particular specialisation.

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k-mcgrady
Freelancer is awful. In fact all of those sites are. I made my living off
Freelancer for a few years and I can't count the number of times they severely
screwed me. I move to Elance which, although much better, has it's own issues.
I try to find long-term clients on those sites and move the business away from
them as quick as possible and that seems to work well.

~~~
flavor8
ODesk is the least bad of the general sites. There are a few niche networks
that are decent also, e.g. TopTal.com.

~~~
scottydelta
I have worked with both elance and odesk. I shifted to Odesk after some issue
with elance and never looked back.

~~~
MrBra
What went wrong with Elance?

------
gedrap
When I was freelancing, I tried similar sites and stayed away. It is largely a
race to the bottom in terms of prices, and writing unique cover letters
consumes a lot of time.

I had much much better results with a monthly 'looking for a freelancer'
thread on HN, and instead of writing the cover letters there, I spent time on
studying and improving my skills.

------
deathtrader666
This is Rishi, and I am the Co-Founder at
[http://dreamlance.io/](http://dreamlance.io/)

We are starting Dreamlance, a curated marketplace for projects and
professionals.

Here are 3 ways how Dreamlance is different from all other “curated”
marketplaces:

1\. The Dreamlance Team actually vets each project that gets posted on our
boards

\- We make sure the project description is complete \- We make sure the
project deliverables are crystal clear \- We make sure the project cost
matches the effort required

We put in all this effort so that you don’t have to spend a third of your time
qualifying leads. We qualify, prepare and polish them for you.

2\. We provide a hassle-free & secure payments platform via escrow

\- You begin work only when the project owner funds the agreed upon milestone
\- Once the conditions for the milestone completion are met, we release the
funds to you

This way you don’t have to worry about chasing down unpaid invoices

3\. We provide highly qualified assistance in resolving conflicts \- In the
event of a conflict of opinion between you and the project owner, we step in
and provide unbiased arbitration \- We ourselves have seen sticky situations
in the middle of a project, and we believe our arbitration expertise will be
of immense value to you

For these premium services, we would be charging you only 7.5% of the project
cost, an industry low.

I strongly believe Dreamlance will soon become your preferred platform for
professional freelancing.

To sign up with us, please visit
[http://dreamlance.io/apply](http://dreamlance.io/apply)

And we are happy to have your referrals :)

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at rishi@dreamlance.io

~~~
slaxman
it says "7.5% of the project cost. Payable by the project owner and the
freelance professional"

Does that mean that the freelancer and the project owner both pay 7.5% each?

~~~
twohlix_
"This fee needs to be paid by both the parties before their service contract
commences." So I have to pay you to do work if I'm a contractor. Sounds like a
great plan.

/sarcasm

------
michaelkoz
I own a company and have been using ODESK for the last six years. I have spent
nearly 35,000 on above average programmers, their normal rate of pay is
anywhere between 15 and 65.00 an hour. At first, i selected this site because
it was a good source of low paid talent, but then I realized there were some
really solid developers/programmers using the service.

I only really had problem with 2-3 guys who said they were good, but you know
during the job they were Googling answers to the problems I had and had no
real experience, but for the most part, some great programmers there.

I recommend ODESK, as a buyer, I am super protected from people not following
through, so i have some confidence, aside from hiring locally for
temp/programming work, I always use Odesk.

~~~
issaria
"but you know during the job they were Googling answers to the problems"

LOL, what an asshole.

~~~
jackgolding
I had to laugh too

------
itl12
As a western developer, is it possible to earn six figures (US) from any of
the bidding sites? Which would be the best to focus on?

~~~
Iftheshoefits
Anything is possible, but keep in mind you'll be competing with people
(individuals as well as companies) who will happily bid very low (even down to
$5/hr or so, possibly less). You will also be wrestling with clients who see
pages and pages of projects (with accepted bids) along the lines of "Build me
a Facebook clone, I have a budget of $250" and think its normal. So not only
do you have all the marketing issues of a freelancer, with all the time sinks
that go with it, you are targeting an audience of clients who are unlikely to
pay well.

In other words, these sites are sites where a specific commodity--dirt cheap
developer labor--is bought and sold. You'll almost certainly do better in the
commodity market of well-paid, but not as plentiful, developers in your home
country.

------
alex_hitchins
Does anyone have a good alternative? Like many people commenting, so many
people are willing to do insane amounts of work for next to nothing - where do
those who provide value-added services look to outsource or tender?

------
j4pe
I've been thinking about forming a co-op for a trusted network of freelancers,
to handle the crummy parts of the job (sourcing, selling, collecting) while
encouraging the good parts (building, branding, partnering with quality
colleagues). I had similar experiences being left with fake jobs/bad credit
through freelance markets.

Thanks for sharing! I generally take longer-term gigs, so consistent dealflow
isn't as big an of an issue for me. OP, what are you planning to do to fix
your offline-network problem?

~~~
codyb
I think gun.io has pretty decent projects although I've never actually worked
through them. They seem more properly screened and to hold their talent to
higher standards. At least that's the impression I've received.

~~~
curiously
I don't know anyone that actually were able to work on projects advertised on
gun.io. These were freelancers with a high hourly rate to lower hourly rates.
The experience of gun.io is frustrating because you send out a proposal and
you often have no idea what is happening to it. Let alone that the given set
of requirements are esoteric enough, there just doesn't seem to be any
available jobs that end up happening through the website.

I've unsubscribed from gun.io and can't really recommend it because you won't
find any work on it. The experience has been consistent across many
freelancers and it's not at all what it is advertised to be.

~~~
mrfusion
So I think if you're going through the trouble of curating the freelancers you
allow to bid on jobs, then one of your rules should be that job posters must
reply to proposals.

It might make sense to limit proposals to one at a time,so the job poster must
reject a proposal before he can see another one.

------
settsu
Use your Freelancer portfolio to get contract work with agencies. They tend to
fancy themselves one stop shops for clients and you can capitalize on that.

~~~
cylinder
This, quality work is going to be brokered through an agency, not an eBay for
freelancers.

------
mudil
I had pretty difficult experiences with Freelancer.com. I even documented it
in this thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5177951](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5177951)

To summarize: I had a big project, that was not delivered after a several
milestones, so the developer canceled the project, took the escrow, and I
couldn't even leave a feedback!

------
msamoylov
A freelance marketplace is always full of cheap and mindless people who are
not able to deliver anything. They place random bids and produce crap.

Unfortunately most of clients don't realize that it's not possible to get a
quality work for $20 per hour or even less. They get frustrated and
disappointed in a whole idea of hiring a freelancer.

P.S. If you need a reliable person for your Python or Javascript work – just
drop me a line ;-)
[http://careers.stackoverflow.com/msamoylov](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/msamoylov)

~~~
GFischer
I disagree, it is possible to get quality work for U$ 20 or less... but it
probably takes so much time to sort the actual decent bidders from the busts
than it should not be worth it.

I know of several good developers that started out on those sites, but were
quickly snatched full-time by companies that realized they were good.

~~~
msamoylov
I could agree about prospective juniors with extremely low rates. But, a SUPER
DUPER FULL-STACK DEVELOPER with a decade of experience for $20/hr doesn't make
much sense. Most probably he has no idea what he's doing. His communication
skills and the results of his work won't be impressive.

------
posnet
I always wonder when I hear these sort of stories out coming out of odesk,
freelancer or elance, if the sort of highly qualified developer is actally
their target market. Now I am not saying that people on freelancer are
incompetent but like the original post said they now don't have a network
outside of freelancer which is far more imporant for an actual freelancer web
developer as opposed to someone in india or the phillipines were
freelancer.com or similar is their only opertunity for work.

~~~
mk3
Me myself living in small city in Europe. So it was a good starting point to
kickstart my skills in programming, and hacking stuff together. Though the
projects are mostly involving wordpress themes and etc. so it gets boring
quite fast.

------
debacle
> But by growing within freelancer, I had neglected forming my offline
> network.

You can't advertise the work you've done through freelancer.com as your own?

------
SixSigma
I did quite a bit of work on vWorker. I enjoyed doing it and got a very good
reputation but I ended up making about $1 an hour

------
mk3
Had similar issues with oDesk, which is now as I know is owned by the same
company as freelancer.com. Though it has time tracking and I always tried to
bid only on projects with hourly rates, I got stuck with non paying client
which dissapeared from the face of the earth, and even when submitting that
project is canceled from my side because of no show they are not closing the
project. Not to mention I was not paid at all. After this incident I decided
to move away from oDesk and similar platforms. As the hourly rates are low,
and getting repeating clients with whom you already have relationship to work
outside oDesk is easy.

Also there is an issue with 3rd world developers who are making impression
that freelancers should be paid dime on a buck.

From client side there are different horror stories when clients are scammed
into accepting low-rate bidder, and get burned heavily, and then either turn
back from these platforms, or turn to accepting only bids from local country.

~~~
flavor8
> Had similar issues with oDesk, which is now as I know is owned by the same
> company as freelancer.com

Are you sure? Elance and ODesk "merged", but I thought they were still
competitors with Freelancer.

~~~
mk3
Sorry my bad, tried all of them stuck with oDesk, at one point in my freelance
career, cause they had time tracking quite nicely integrated, then decided
that working with clients directly on one hand it's harder to find one outside
of the system, while on the other the hourly rate is worth the additional
effort. Though I miss badly time tracking capability with screenshots outside
of any system where I could share screenshots and work done with my client.

------
DavidWanjiru
Well, a platform like freelancer is designed intentionally such that you
can't, or at least shouldn't, build contact with clients off the platform.
Otherwise you and your clients have no use for freelancer.

~~~
josephjrobison
Some people would still prefer to use the platform as protection, with their
escrow-like payment service.

~~~
AlexeyBrin
There is no protection against fraud on Freelancer. If a buyer issues a charge
back on his credit card after the project is paid and delivered, you are
screwed. Freelancer declines any responsibility for cases like that.

~~~
Bigdognec
Unfortunately this is the case. I hear that Skrill is safe in this regard. I
have had bad experiences with Paypal as well. Do you have any recommendations
on what is better way to get paid?

------
sosuke
I've had luck working with Creative Circle, even found full remote stuff. The
rates aren't high since they take a cut, but you can sit back and let the jobs
roll in. Very passive freelancing.

------
gasull
This is why we need a distributed system like OpenBazaar.

------
curiously
Stay away from any website that acts as a marketplace. Their incentives are
not aligned with you the Freelancer. Their aim is to get as much money as
possible through the market in order to boost revenues from the commission.

