

Finding freelance jobs: Sites for talented techies - abennett
http://www.itworld.com/career/65739/finding-freelance-jobs-6-sites-talented-techies
These days just about everyone is feeling the financial pinch. If you're lucky enough to have a day job, chances are you've at least had thoughts of moonlighting. Here are 6 sites that promise to help you put a little cash in your pocket.
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swombat
_If you're a developer who thrives on competition, TopCoder might be up your
alley. If you're the very picture of patience coaching your granny through a
virus scan, chances are you have what it takes to be a CrossLoop "Helper" or a
LivePerson "Expert." Elance, RentACoder, or Guru.com might be good choices for
established freelancers looking to source jobs and market their services._

All sounds pretty dire. If you're a developer looking to freelance, go build
your contacts with potential clients personally.

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FreeKill
Most of those sites are pretty tough for the smaller independent freelancer,
especially Elance, RentACoder, or Guru. The reason being that they are
dominated by low cost programming conglomerates in countries like India,
Russia, etc.

So, whatever you think you can charge for your work, you're guaranteed to have
someone charging 5 bucks or less for the same work due to their massive
resources (and thus their ability to work dirt cheap).

I'm sure you can make a go at it, but there is definitely substantial
competition.

~~~
zacharydanger
That was the biggest detractor when I started to try some of these sites out
during my latest stint of being laid off. There would be lots of requests for
"clone eBay/etc" with 15 bids from outsourced developers offering to do it for
< $200.

The signal-to-noise is often too low on these sites.

~~~
vaksel
thats because all those clone eBay sites are nothing more than $99 scripts
that these guys just modify

~~~
ojbyrne
Even then it's fairly challenging to modify some crappy script for $100. My
experience with elance was that development was just a no-go, but you could
make some money with other areas, for me system administration. You could get
$100 to modify some script, or the same $100 to _install_ it.

~~~
trapper
A few years ago I hired a guy from the Ukraine, he only wanted 2$/hour. I
couldn't believe it and paid him more, but at that rate you have 50 hours to
customise. Not too hard.

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plinkplonk
"Most of those sites are pretty tough for the smaller independent freelancer,
especially Elance, RentACoder, or Guru. The reason being that they are
dominated by low cost programming conglomerates in countries like India,
Russia, etc."

This is an interesting problem to solve though. Just thinking out loud here
but if there were a site where only good programmers (say someone with a
significant open source project commit) could register, and on the other side,
only "good" companies could offer work (say, companies having YC funding) then
the quality/price slope might disappear.

I, for one would love to know of a site where there is _good_ work offered at
decent rates. Since I work out of Bangalore people assume I'll work for 200$
for a month long project and flood my inbox with such offers.:-D I even have a
filter for my inbox to remove such "offers".

The google summer of code program comes nearest to offering good work for
decent money (at India rates) but only students can contribute, so that's a no
go for professional developers.

~~~
FreeKill
Yeah, I mean no disrespect for those companies that can literally take on
hundreds of contracts a day at bargain basement prices, but I definitely think
there is a market out there for companies who want a little extra attention to
detail or singular focus and are willing to pay slightly more for it.
Definitely a great idea...

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vaksel
you want to find a freelance job? Get in your car, go to the town center, and
go talk to all the small business owners there. Offer to build them a site for
their business, or redo their current one. Or you can pickup a phone and try
to pitch over the phone.

Out of the trip you'll snag a couple of jobs, and you can charge decent
prices, since the guys have no idea about all the freelance sites.

~~~
rw
the set of talented techies != the set of website designers

~~~
zacharydanger
That's a _very_ true observation. Being a PHP developer everyone assumes I
know how to operate Photoshop and often ask for a portfolio when >95% of my
work is subcutaneous. I've never wooed anyone with sexy accounting interfaces.
Chances are, I never will.

~~~
patio11
You can surely show them a portfolio of sites which you programmed that are
pretty because of the template and/or designer you use, right? That's no more
dishonest than a photographer showing a picture of a beautiful woman despite
not actually being a beautiful woman.

~~~
sachinag
Or use crowdSPRING to show off lots of various designs so that you don't get
pigeonholed by your designer.

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Tichy
For Java, I had good experiences with Jobserve.co.uk (they are not only active
in the UK).

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coderholic
<http://jobs.plasis.co.uk> aggregates about 10 freelance job site, and is
always good for finding work.

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krzyk
you might want to give a try at <http://odesk.com> one can work there on
projects which pay per hour, the rates are not great, but much better then
$200 for ebay :)

