
Ask HN: What Freelancer site do you recommend? - 10dpd
Having unsuccessfully attempted to use Freelancer.com to complete a relatively simple job (I could do it myself but don't have time at the moment), I was wondering if HN could suggest a good freelancer sourcing site for relatively straight-forward work? Unfortunately the freelancer marketplace sites seem to be dominated by weak PHP developers.
======
mgiglesias
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 we needed something new.

I joined other fellow freelancers and long time remote working clients,
together with highly successful entrepreneurs (founders of a +55 millions
users social network, Google managers, DMGT as a strategic and finance
partner) and we launched www.workana.com

We initially built it to let other markets (particularly Latin America
including Brazil) join and benefit from the freelancer way of life. Shortly
after launching, though, we realized we had something much bigger than what we
thought: we were making top quality professionals be available for clients
that did not know they were even there, since this talent was not a part of
any other platform.

I invite you to try Workana, where you will not only find awesome
professionals (and in your time zone) but we will also, personally, help you
identify the best candidate, and guide you through the whole process.

~~~
Dove
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.

~~~
mgiglesias
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.

~~~
Dove
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.

~~~
mattbarrie
It's an incorrect statement. vWorker user earnings are well up, around 50%
higher than before.

vWorker did have some great freelancers and some really nice features. However
it was an incredibly difficult site to use, this is why they did not survive
as an independent business. Ironically, this is what those people that were
left on the site at the end were high quality. To post a project took
something like 3 pages of complicated forms in a 3 point font in order to just
get it live. Around 70% of people dropped out of the post project funnel. So
of course, if you laboured on to complete those three pages then you are
probably a pretty dedicated employer. Likewise if you were a freelancer and
put up with horrendous interface, you were probably pretty dedicated.
vWorker's UI was franking shocking, and so was its UX. It was right out of
1995.

We imported 100% of the feedback into our reputation system, so the big
freelancers on vWorker are also at the top of the leaderboards at Freelancer -
and there are significantly more projects on Freelancer than vWorker ever had.
Also a vast majority of employers have come across and are active on
Freelancer. I am not sure what sort of projects you are going for, or what
categories you are working in- I am happy to have a look at your account if
you private message or email me to provide some feedback to you.

Regards Matt

~~~
mgiglesias
You do have a point. All of us ex-vWorker users had to "put up" with the UI.
Of course Freelancer is way better in that aspect. In terms of UX you have a
better product than vWorker. However so do pretty much all other platforms. It
isn't hard to offer something better than a "horrendous interface"

Regarding the feedback transition it indeed went smoothly, minor some glitches
(for example one of our ongoing vWorker projects took two months to appear on
Freelancer) The reputation, though, was greatly destroyed. To move from a long
lasting #1 ranking to be in Level 10 (or whatever, can't remember which one)
and from within that level to be placed in the 10s of thousands is not a fair
move.

This is purely coming as a vWorker user, it has nothing to do with my
business. I do understand that were existing users with an ongoing reputation
on Freelancer, so displacing them because of an acquisition is also unfair.

But to offer "a badge" and "one month free membership", after which you have
to pay monthly to keep your subscription is the reason why I personally know
the majority of the top 100 workers from vWorker moved away from the forced
switch.

They, and I, felt aggravated by a sudden and very harsh shutdown. Now this is
not freelancer fault, I'd guess, but vWorker. They should have given a more
friendly approach to the whole process, other than a "Goodbye folks I'm happy
with the acquisition" and a "Email support at freelancer" from now on.

Most of the people I know (including me) from vWorker took our business INTO
vWorker. I did not get most of my work through the platform, but I did move my
clients into it. We did that because despite the awful UX there was a feeling
of being a part of something that worked. You obviously have the numbers so
you can probably see that was the case. And I can go as far as saying that
probably 80% of vWorker business was handled by the top 20% of workers. So
helping that 20% be happy about the transition would probably have helped the
process.

This is, once again, my personal feeling as an ex vWorker. I do hope all those
ex vWorker users that are part of Freelancer stay there and are happy with
their decision.

And kudos to you matt for nerding it up and answer all these comments.

~~~
mattbarrie
You don't have to pay for membership. Free accounts have a 10% commission,
versus 15% for vworker. Our paid commissions drop this as far as 3%.

You were happy moving your clients in to pay 15%?

~~~
mgiglesias
We paid 12.5% on private projects, 10% on DP.

Free accounts on Freelancer do pay 10% commission. But that's not the only
difference. According to your own page
(<http://www.freelancer.com/membership/>) free accounts only offer you 10 bids
PER MONTH, 20 skills, 5 portfolio entries (why would you limit a freelancer
ability to showcase his quality?)

So yes, I was happy. I personally feel I rather have someone charging me more
and provide me a personal service, than pay less and have to pay more to be
able to bid. Meritocracy is what should drive your limits upwards, not money.

------
HyprMusic
Every month there is a post on HN with the opportunity to post that you're
seeking a freelancer, and likewise freelancers will advertise themselves. You
might have more luck finding good freelancers on there:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5637667>

~~~
Udo
I would second that.

Why not just source from within the community?

~~~
namdnay
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?

~~~
Udo
I don't think so. Say you have a relatively simple website that you would like
to have implemented. Would you like to hire an unskilled $10/h web worker, or
would you rather pay a $100/h dev to do it in a fraction of the time, and do
it right? The OP _was_ complaining about quality, wasn't he? And why wouldn't
someone advertising their services in the HN Freelance thread not do a small
project?

~~~
namdnay
What I meant was that the scale is not linear. Certain tasks take nearly the
same amount of time whether you're a rockstar or a standard developer. Would
there be any point hiring Ferrari F1's lead pit stop technician to change the
tyres on your Prius?

Maybe you can get someone to do it good enough for three days at 10/h, whereas
the other guy would have taken "only" an afternoon at 100/h. 240 vs 400 total.

~~~
Udo
_> Maybe you can get someone to do it good enough for three days at 10/h,
whereas the other guy would have taken "only" an afternoon at 100/h. 240 vs
400 total._

Again, the OP was complaining about quality. The difference is not just that
the better developer gets it done in less time, it's also a better product in
the end. Even on simple tasks, the better developer can serve as a consultant
and help the customer make sound decisions about the project, whereas the
stereotypical el-cheapo web dude will be struggling just to keep up with the
customer's requirements.

 _> Would there be any point hiring Ferrari F1's lead pit stop technician to
change the tyres on your Prius?_

If the F1 pro explicitly advertises that he would like to change Prius tires,
I'd rather hire that guy. Besides, this is about building stuff, not
performing repetitive maintenance tasks.

------
dsirijus
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 particular), in which I was good, and that lead some clients to
me without me browsing. I'd bet my profile was only search result for many
queries during that short period of time.

EDIT: Ah, you're on the "other side of the fence". Sorry, misunderstood you.

~~~
dj-wonk
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.

~~~
bobx11
I have been posting on oDesk for years and never got rejected... what were you
posting?

------
tejay
I really hate being so self-aggrandizing, but at gun.io, this is exactly the
problem we're trying to solve.

Open and extremely easy to use, while not sucking in terms of quality. I think
we're doing an OK job, but this is more complex than it sounds, and quite
obviously, there's always room to do better. (If anyone strongly feels that we
just suck, PLEASE email me).

Thanks for allowing us the self-promotional spot, haha - but seriously, if you
do want to try us out, just email me and we'll give you a post for free. I am
sure our devs are itchin' for (well-compensated) work.

~~~
tehwebguy
Sorry to hijack, but what's with the compensation estimates on gun.io?

It seems like there is some good work on the site but everything seems to be <
$500 or > $10k, but there is no basis for the price (is it project pricing, is
it per week, did the client estimate it or did you?)

I'm interested in using the site, I guess I just don't know how.

~~~
tejay
Hey man - awesome, thanks for the question. we clearly have a self-interest in
talking about this publicly, but I don't wanna derail the ongoing
conversation!! I'd track you down but maybe that'd be a bit weird! Just drop
me a line at teja@gun.io and let's chat!

Although, just so it's not like I'm dodging your question for any onlookers,
fixed price estimates are the way to go for a number of reasons (alignment of
incentives, doesn't penalize high productivity, etc). The clients do the
pricing, generally, but if something looks silly, we try to step in.

~~~
tehwebguy
I think my main confusion was that there are a few things that appear to be
full-time jobs but only list $250 - $500

------
driverdan
None of them. Their rep is that they're great for hiring low to mid level
offshore devs for $10-20/h. If this describes you then great, get on all of
them. But if you're charging $100+/h you do yourself a disservice by
associating with them and are unlikely to find clients looking to pay that
much. It may be an unfair stereotype but it's mostly true.

Network instead. Get yourself out there. Go to local events where you can meet
potential clients. Get active on Twitter and interact with people in the
industry. Put open source stuff up on github. Increase your exposure so when
people come looking they find you.

~~~
ssharp
You can get higher paying gigs on oDesk if you're willing to do more than
carpet bomb categories. Finding good gigs on their takes some time and effort,
but it's possible. I did a gig on their that paid a fair amount below what my
rate would normally be, but was still above the $10-20 range and I was able to
make some good connections from that for more work outside of oDesk.

It came at a time when I was trying to pivot from developer to more of a
marketing / marketing-dev role and it also provided me some exposure to tools,
problems, and tactics that I wasn't familiar with.

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

~~~
Dove
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."

~~~
lotharbot
[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 vWorker, but
not Freelancer.

As professionals, we want to be rated and visible based on delivering quality
work on time and on budget and making our clients happy. On vWorker,
ranking/visibility was based entirely on revenue x client rating, with a bonus
"top worker" designation for never missing a deadline or having a bad rating.
On Freelancer, we level up by following you on social media, get badges for
logging in every day for a year, and generally get ranked according to
tangential criteria. It's distracting, and appears unprofessional to clients
who are being asked to "level up" and "earn badges" themselves when all they
want to do is hire us.

As professionals, we don't bid until we've already come to terms with the
client. On vWorker, we'd regularly have dozens of messages with clients
establishing the details of a project, discussing timelines, etc. and then
we'd put in a bid with that full understanding. Freelancer seems geared toward
submitting a large number of bids without having ever really discussed terms
-- the sort of thing that might work for "transcribe a 10 minute audio clip",
but not for projects measured in months and costing $x0,000 to complete.

As professionals, we want to pay our $50 monthly fee and our 2% per-contract
cut, use the site to connect with clients with real large-scale contracts, and
get paid on a reasonable timescale. Trying to do that on freelancer is an
exercise in frustration.

~~~
mattbarrie
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

~~~
lotharbot
> _"You are mixing up the Freelancer leveling system with reputation."_

This sort of confusion suggests the leveling system is far more prominent, and
therefore distracting, than it needs to be.

------
Silverreven
Hey guys,

got this thread from a friend (Nodesocket). I am usually cautious about
promoting myself in threads like this since it is almost impossible not to
sound spammy. BUT with that said I will do it anyway for a simple reason; a
bunch of you have pointed out the challenge with quality, vetting, good vs
cheap freelancers.

I started Coworks because I had such a huge need of great freelancers, and
couldn't find a good way to find and manage quality people. (This is my 4th
startup, so I bought a lot of freelancing work over the years)

And I do think we have solved a bunch of these issues with Coworks. We are
entirely built on social recommendations, manual curation and are explicitly
not targeting "cheap" freelancers. It is still early days, but our first
customers seems to like us. (This is how it works <https://coworks.com/works>)

~~~
Kliment
Looks like you're more focused on "fluffy" fields. What do I click if I do
hardware, robotics and embedded software projects? The only options are
"writing/editing", "design/illustration", "photo/video", and "web/apps". Or
are you not interested in that market at all?

(shameless plug, if you need any hardware, electronics, automation, or
firmware work done, poke me at kliment@0xfb.com )

------
guillermovs
All online freelance marketplaces suffer from some variation of this problem.
Either unskilled workers, generic bids, unverified skills, spam..

As @wilfra and others say you can try to filter by hourly rate or target
freelancers in certain countries and you're bound to find someone good. And
when you do it's a good idea to keep them on speed dial. You should also
definitely look at the monthly threads here on HN of people looking for
freelance work.

We've had the same problem you're in and decided to do something about it by
creating <http://socialance.com> \- A site that aims to fix online
freelancing.

If anyone wants to help us shape the future of freelancing, please get in
touch!

------
ilaksh
If its so simple yet even after trying to find a good developer and failing
you still haven't done it yourself, then its actually not that simple.

The problem is you, not the developers on that site. When you say its simple
what that really means is that you cannot or will not pay more than a very
small amount of money, and/or even worse, you are unable to comprehend the
complexities of the task.

When you post a project and say "its simple", good developers know to avoid
you because you are unrealistic and have very little money.

Maybe you even put a number on the project (like $50) or something)
advertising just how cheap you are.

One other thing that people say is that freelancers "can't think". What a
bunch of horseshit. People who put projects on freelance sites do so because
they cannot or will not pay a market rate in the US. That means that the
projects were underfunded. Which means that the schedule is inadequate from
day one.

Which translates into constant pressure on developers to deliver. Because of
the nature of those sites, developers have no choice but to deliver the
minimum set of unpolished work that meets only exactly the requirements
specified. The number one reason this is necessary is because any attempts by
the developer to clarify various issues unforeseen by the client will
generally not be comprehended and will simply be assumed to be 'delaying
tactics' preventing the completion of their 'simple task'.

So in order for the client to see how complex the task really is and actually
come up with new designs, a working system is required. If a freelancer were
to try to make his own decisions for the client in regards to application
design, the client is very likely to demand the work scrapped and another
approach taken.

I am a freelancer. I live in the US. And I have dealt with my share of cheap
bastards on sites like odesk and vworker. I have been extremely selective in
choosing clients, and still run into all of the issues I mentioned. I feel
very bad for all of the Indian programmers who are stuck with assholes who are
even cheaper and stupider than the ones I ran into.

You get what you pay for.

~~~
DenisM
That's a lot of jumping to conclusions there.

------
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.

------
Brajeshwar
We are relatively new but I think I'll have to plug in our new effort of
curating good developers and designers for clients/customers willing to pay a
premium for quality work.

"My Startup, LxiDD[1], is a curated network of the best indie designers,
developers, and creatives on the web, with exclusive access to top shelf
clients looking for the best talent."

<http://lxidd.com/>

------
riklomas
A friend of mine is currently trying to sort this problem by creating OnSite
(<http://onsite.io/>), it's not live yet but it's one to keep an eye on for
the future.

~~~
OnSite
Thanks Rik.

OnSite aims to eliminate the race to the bottom by removing project bidding
from the process. Results returned are based on skills, location and
availability (among other metrics). Rates can be entered by the hirer, but act
simply as a guide, don't exclude results and aren't visible to the matched
freelancers. In addition all freelancers are manually approved and profiles
need to be 100% complete before becoming visible on the system.

Doors open in a couple of weeks as we start to roll out invites. Currently we
are only accepting applications from verifiable agencies / studios / start-
ups, not individuals looking for extra help. <http://onsite.io/apply/agency>.

If you are a freelancer, you can apply here:
<http://onsite.io/apply/freelancer> (you will again need to be verifiable with
online examples of your work to be considered).

Cheers.

------
mikescoffield
I use both odesk and elance a lot. I find that the former is better for work
that's more commoditized.

E.g.,

For PR work, I'd go to elance. For SEO work, I'd go to odesk.

For a mobile app, I'd go to elance. For wordpress customization, I'd go to
odesk.

------
tharshan09
I am keen to try out freelancing. I am still a student, so I can only do part-
time but I already have a year of industry experience (django), and projects I
have done that are live now (that people actually use!). I just need someone
to give me that first chance to really prove myself and start building up my
portfolio of real clients, rather than just projects I did for fun. I have
been keen to try it out, but I was never sure when was the right time to dip
my foot in the water. I did freelancing with someone for a short time (PHP
MVC, Wordpress) but I always kinda felt I was getting the short end of the
stick in regards to the pay and work. I guess I always thought it was always a
bit risky and afraid of being takin advantage of so I never really went for
it.

Anyone have any advice? I would appreciate it.

------
nodesocket
Check out <https://coworks.com>, they are just starting up, but building a
freelancing site based exclusively on recommendations and your social graph.
Really awesome technology.

------
startupstella
Check out matchist.com

We've got top developers from around the US (many, many from this community)
and we match you to developers who fit the skillset, timeframe, and budget
you're looking for. Instead of a million bids, we match you to three top notch
devs who can get the job done (any of the three can do your project, we just
assume you'll like get along with one more than others)

DISCLAIMER: I'm a founder of matchist, but started the company because I was
sick of freelancer outsourcing sites not being able to match my talented dev
friends and entrepreneur friends.

------
d0m
I've been using elance exclusively for years. I usually ask for a very
specific job with detailed requirements. For instance, I'd manage the overall
project but could hire someone to transform the psd to html, one to tweak that
html and adding missing pages, etc. But that's because I'm a programmer
myself, I could do all these parts and thus write very specific
specs/requirements/realistic-expectation.. I wouldn't recommend that approach
to a friend without technical background.

------
ilaksh
Just for curiosity's sake 10dpd, what exactly was the task, the description,
and the rate or fixed fee you advertised for it to be completed? And what
happened during that implementation process? Were there any new requirements
or wrinkles discovered? What was the final amount the developer received or
was to receive?

And how long ago was it that you started unsuccessfully trying to get this
task completed on a freelance site?

~~~
mattbarrie
This would be good to know, at least I will be able to respond to the initial
issue that spawned this thread.

Regards Matt

------
BigBalli
I have the feeling that all the time you're putting to find a dev and even
communicating here is more than what it would take "you" to execute. However,
I heard peopleperhour.com is good (very big in the UK). Also, last week I met
the founder of coworks.com Still in beta but good concept: your connection
share their freelancers and refer them. Good considering the overload of
freelancers and high risk.

------
kephra
I would suggest the relevant IRC channel.

First ask a smart question that is on topic, next PM those who answered, if
they are for hire.

~~~
panabee
sorry if this is a dumb question, but how do you find the relevant IRC
channel? i googled the issue and found a few search engines like this
<http://searchirc.com/>. is this the best search engine for IRC? or what do
you recommend? thanks!

~~~
kephra
Most technical computer topics have an IRC channel on freenode.

Often google shows up a page for the active channels. The searchirc.com
sometimes shows dead channel.

~~~
panabee
thanks!

------
Nux
"the freelancer marketplace sites seem to be dominated by weak PHP developers"
- all the "non-weak" PHP devs I know are in well paid positions already and
hardly have time to be on freelancer.com or similar, maybe that's the reason
you haven't found one. :-)

------
philfrasty
Wrote a post on this a week ago: „The Ultimate-Guide to Hiring a Freelancer“
([http://franzisk.us/2013/05/08/the-ultimate-guide-to-
hiring-a...](http://franzisk.us/2013/05/08/the-ultimate-guide-to-hiring-a-
freelancer/)). I usually go for oDesk but you better apply some filters to
your search or select candidates by hand to apply to your job. I think your
main problem is what Trevor McKendrick called “(you) Pay them to Code, not
Think“ (<http://www.trevormckendrick.com/contracting-developers/>). Other
great option is Reddit's „for hire“ subreddit. Good luck!

~~~
rebelde
"Code, not think". This is my current problem with the freelancers I find.
They need an awful lot of guidance, even the good ones.

Any recommendations on how to find freelancers who do much more of the
thinking? (I plan on trying with some HN freelancers soon.)

~~~
mrich
Depending on what you want to have developed, they just might need that much
guidance, otherwise the end result will be a surprise for you :)

When looking for a freelancer consider people who have done things that you
personally like and think would be a good fit for you too. E.g. contact the
developer of a website you like or the contributor to an open source project
which is well-respected.

~~~
rebelde
Thanks. I haven't tried suggesting freelance projects to people not actively
looking. My feeling is that they would probably say that they are too busy, or
worse, say "yes" and not find time to get it done.

------
rosstamicah
Having used a handful of sites like freelancer.com and elance.com with varying
results, I'd say the best results I've seen were from postings I put up on
freelanceswitch.com job board (jobs.freelanceswitch.com/jobs)

------
nedwin
We started Tweaky.com to help with this exact problem. We only tackle small
projects but we've built a system which makes this work for both customers and
developers.

Our project managers break a project down into "tweaks" where each one is well
defined and $39. We then curate the developers in the marketplace to ensure
that only quality people are in there.

Once the tweaks are paid for the developers pick up the jobs they want to work
on and get started.

------
mguillech
I work for toptal (<http://www.toptal.com>) and we're proud of having a very
well selected network of developers (top-notch devs screening each other, our
"let through" ratio is 1:10 approximately), that solely will rule out
inexperienced devs so our customers are given nothing but the best. I'm open
if you want to reach out.

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level09
I've used ODesk and Freelancer.com (still use ODESK occasionally), in my
experience, It was very difficult to find really good programmers/designers
and if there are any, their hourly rate would be really high. on the other
hand, I found some excellent and cheap rates for things like translation,
data-entry, office-related tasks ..

------
jbobes
I'm sort of desperately looking for a gig, and I consider myself hacker
(unfortunately not a marketing guy). <http://linkedin.com/in/jparicka>
jparicka@gmail.com How can I be of an assistance?

------
seyz
If you are interested, I am a freelancer and I develop MVP in two weeks.
<http://munda.me> for more information

------
boyanpro
Try this German site <https://www.freelancermap.com/profil/BojanNisevic/1>

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rk0567
I tried to solve it by creating <http://railyo.com> for Rails Freelancers!

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wusatiuk
finding a good freelancer takes some time and you have to learn first how to
deal with freelancers. usually, especially when you are hiring low-priced
freelancers, you have to define the tasks very much in detail, which sometimes
takes more time than doing it yourself.

try odesk.com - i made the best experience there until now.

------
thibaut_barrere
Best freelancer site for me: twitter.

Make sure you regularly post useful links related to your craft (using eg:
buffer).

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checker659
What kind of job are we talking about?

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willbill
None, just meet people. You'll get better jobs and introductions through
clients who like your work.

~~~
dylangs1030
Clarification - the OP is asking for good places to hire, not to find work.

------
kawsper
Does anyone have experience with finding good Ruby freelancers for smaller
tasks within these sites?

~~~
Buzaga
I'm an awesome Ruby dev and I'm on oDesk, I live in a city with basically no
market for rubyists but I've stuck with it out of passion(I'd have to find
something else to do with my life if I had to keep with Java and
government/bureaucracy software), I've got perfect english and I'm 1 hour away
from EST, I've got no doubt I'd be making nice figures if I lived in any hot
startup/private sector spot. oDesk allows me to work and get paid doing what
I'm good at.

------
tehwebguy
I'm interested! Info & contact @ <http://kevin.fm>

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joelhooks
<http://gun.io/> shows a lot of promise.

------
personlurking
peopleperhour.com is a UK-based site akin to oDesk. I take issue with any such
site, though, since the number of bidders is huge and low-bidders are
omnipresent.

------
orangethirty
The HN freelancers thread is gold. Use it.

------
dcaranda
Anybody have feedback on Fiverr.com?

~~~
jonathanjaeger
If you want to artificially boost your Facebook likes or Twitter followers,
that's the place to go.

------
truetaurus
Twago

------
wilfra
elance is good and the only site i use for this - mostly because i'm used to
it and i find new sites confusing to get used to, more than that i consider it
'best'.

it's dominated by the weak php developers you speak of, but if you just filter
everybody out who charges less than $20 per hour[1], you'll get rid of most of
them and be left with some good people.

after you've gotten a few hundred proposals on elance it will be tempting to
just ignore everybody from certain countries. i urge you not to do that
though. instead filter by hourly rate. an indian or pakistani developer
charging $25+/hour is either delusional or really, really good (i.e.
$150+/hour if they were in san francisco). a quick skype chat is usually
sufficient to figure out which.

[1]do this yourself, don't set the terms to $20/hour, or all of the bad devs
will just try to charge you $20/hour. by setting it to 'not sure' it's a race
to the bottom and all those guys will be competing with each other for the
lowest hourly rate. you then just ignore all of them.

~~~
maratd
> it's dominated by the weak php developers you speak of, but if you just
> filter everybody out who charges less than $20 per hour[1], you'll get rid
> of most of them and be left with some good people.

As a freelancer who picks up quite a bit of work on Elance, I can vouch for
this, from my end of things.

The key to success, both on the client side and on the freelance side, is
absolutely brutal filtering. There are _many_ opportunities there, but you
need to dig for them.

Some tips for success looking for talent on Elance:

1\. Be sure to _invite_ well performing freelancers from the geographical area
where you reside to your project. There's really no need to go abroad, there's
plenty of talent available wherever you happen to live. You skip any cultural
and communication issues that might crop up if you go with somebody abroad.

2\. Again, be sure to _invite_ the right freelancers to your project. _In
fact, make the project invite only._ Anybody who is worth their salt on Elance
doesn't search for work. They only reply to work they are interested in when
they are invited to it. I get several invites every day and for whatever
reason, on weekends, I can get over a dozen a day. Weekend warriors?

3\. Always do fixed price projects. With a fixed price project, you'll know
exactly how much you'll pay and can reduce the cost of the project
intelligently by pairing down the features. With an hourly project, I'll just
throw a number I charge per hour at you and you're nowhere closer to knowing
how much you'll pay. One guy can get the job done in 10 hours, another in 2,
you have no idea which is which ... stick to fixed price.

4\. Be sure to provide as much technical detail into the project as possible.
Try to break things down into achievable milestones. Clearly specify the
features you need and the work that you want done. I ignore projects which
simply specify what qualifications you want me to have. Let's assume I already
know how to do the work or I wouldn't be looking at it. Tell me what the work
is and be specific.

5\. Reject proposals. If you're not going to go with a proposal, reject it. I
do not like submitting proposals in a crowded space. It tells me the client
isn't involved in the process. There's no way in hell you're entertaining a
dozen proposals or more. More than likely, you'll pair it down to 3 or 4. Do
the pairing from the very beginning. If you wait until the end, many quality
freelances will choose not to even submit anything because they do not want to
deal with the crowd.

6\. Include your name in the project description. Just the first name is fine.
I need to know what to call you, right?

7\. Immediately reject proposals that don't include your project specifics. If
you took the time to write a details project description, expect me to read it
and to respond to it in kind.

~~~
tocomment
Does it pay well? I was under the impression it wasn't viable for developers
in high cost of living areas?

Also what do you mean about number 5, rejecting proposals?

~~~
maratd
> Also what do you mean about number 5, rejecting proposals?

The client has the ability to reject a proposal and move it to the declined
pile, where it is hidden from view. The client should exercise that ability at
every possible turn to keep the current proposals on the project page to a
minimum. Nobody likes dealing with a crowd.

