

Ask HN: How would you improve the online Freelancing marketplaces? - jibly

Professional freelancers, that refuse to work for $5, seem to be losing the battle against an army of low-rate workers on sites like Elance, Odesk etc. I&#x27;m interested to hear from you folks how you think this can be solved&#x2F;improved. I recently launched http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnnected.com as a possible first iteration of the problem, but all ideas are welcome to help solve this serious issue.
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ziles88
This was only a slight problem a few years ago. Now the landscape is quickly
changing. You'll find a lot of employers specifically seeking "onshore"
workers. They usually state it's because of timezone differences, but their
off the record comments clearly point at them associating offshore with low
quality work from past experiences. The trick to spot them is look for
employers that have had many job postings already and whose posts show they
care about the technology. If it looks like the product owner themself
posting, or they are talking specific modern technologies, or asking for
github accounts for reference, then there is a good chance they respect
quality. I have had amazing success using this strategy. The first two jobs I
took both employers almost forced me into taking a higher pay they were so
happy to finally find somebody who can deliver quality and communicate
effectively. The market corrects itself, I watched myself as my former
employer fired and hired 4-6 cheap workers in a row until he finally became
fed-up and reposted the job for triple the starting rate.

So yeah, spot the guys who have done their fair share of hiring, the ones who
have been burned already, and hit them with your best quality focused pitch. I
take this controlled approach, bid high, and do my research.

I think if these sites need improving at all, it's putting the spotlight more
on the employer. These lowballers will become more visible to the seasoned
developer who will avoid them, thereby only attracting the lower quality
workers who don't even bother to read past the title of the job post. Half the
battle is these employers just don't always know better yet, let em loose a
few thousand and they'll come around quickly.

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gexla
> Professional freelancers, that refuse to work for $5, seem to be losing the
> battle against an army of low-rate workers on sites like Elance, Odesk etc.

I disagree, but you made the statement. Can you back this up?

I don't think there is a problem with these "freelance markets." As with any
market, it's a crazy, chaotic, noisy place with prices all over the board. The
so called $5 workers occupy a niche just as their higher paid counterparts do.

Perhaps the missing ingredient is education for the customer. Again, each of
these types of workers are potentially helpful for different cases. The
difficulty for the customer is to figure out the landscape. I have heard many
stories of people having a hard time doing this in the beginning but after
blowing through X funds and trying out X developers they eventually figure it
out. If money isn't an issue in this case, then the time may be an issue.

For the developer, the fix is to break out of these markets and attract
potential clients with your own brand as opposed to piggy-backing off someone
else's platform.

There are resources all over for finding out this info. Patio11 is quite
active on HN and posts a lot of great info. Here is an example article from
Brennan Dunn

[http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/high-value-
clients/](http://doubleyourfreelancing.com/high-value-clients/)

And a quote from that article.

> This is going to have you seek out clients who have problems to solve,
> rather than clients with projects to do.

As a consultant, you're end game is to become a partner to the client. These
markets are about being a drop-in developer.

If drop-in developer is what you are looking to become, then I think you still
need to be able to generate client work based on your own visibility rather
than being matched through a platform. You need to learn how to sell. If you
can't do that without the platform, then you die when the platform dies.

Bottom line, you are an entrepreneur running a business. There is no special
formula for being a business success (just like being successful with any
other business.) If there is a formula, then you probably should be working to
break that formula so that you can stand out and unlock further value.
Otherwise, how do we justify our continued presence in the gene pool? Keep
things moving forward or get out of the way.

~~~
jibly
This is based on my own experience and I've been reading this here on HN a
dozens of times. High-end freelancers have smaller chances (not zero, just
less) to get projects through sites like Elance and Odesk. It usually seems to
be race to the lowest, where quality becomes secondary in most cases (not all)

tnx for the valuable info! Reading through it right now. Very much
appreciated!

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projectramo
Fundamentally, the problem is that the buyer doesn't have enough information.
If I see

person X, javascript, country A, $5 person Y, javascript, country B, $15

all I see is that person X is $10 cheaper. I want to know if person X does
better work than person Y, and I can't tell that from this.

People will tend to use country as a proxy for quality, or perhaps assess
purchasing power or something. Can you imagine a situation where people have
to say "Russian programmers are better/worse than chinese programmers?" Its
absurd as a criterion but it is driven by fact that that is one of the main
pieces of information we get.

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IndianAstronaut
There needs to be more of a personal touch and a better selling of expertise.
The work you want done shouod not be task oriented but idea oriented which
requires expertise of individuals. This means weeding out entry level type
candidates from the pool of workers and weeding out small tasks from the jobs.

Also, you need to have companies that are open to getting work done on
weekends or evenings.

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jibly
What if the client would set the budget, and that's it. And the freelancers
that propose to do the job, don't bid with lower (or higher) prices, but
simply show their work. This way the client would choose between the most
appealing portfolio, rather than the lowest (or highest) price.

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chrisked
Why did you choose a minimum budget of 100 USD in the project form?

~~~
jibly
Because there is a bidding system involved in this process, if you would bid
$25 for example, than a project of $10 doesn't make sense. So I thought I'd be
nice to have a minimum. But up for ideas.

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Mz
I assume you mean programming?

I do freelance work online as a writer. Most sites out there seem to let the
writer sell themselves, bid for projects, state what they will do for X amount
of money, etc. The most successful writing market I am familiar with makes the
person hiring decide what they want done and sets a preset price and lets
workers read the specs and select what they are willing to do. Workers get
rated on the quality of their work and their rating determines the kind of
work available to them.

The lower skilled pools of work are very competitive (in terms of assignments
rapidly disappearing) because there are a lot of people at those lower skill
levels. The service provides feedback and a bit of training in terms of
letting you know what kinds of things they are looking for at the higher
quality levels and what you need to do to achieve that. If you are willing to
work to improve yourself, you can get yourself up to a higher rating. Once you
are at that higher rating, you also qualify for select teams.

