

Ask HN: Do people have any luck using eLance or Upwork as a client or freelance? - aml183


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logicrime
I do gigs on Fiverr all the time, and if I'm honest it doesn't really make the
money that would make the time spent worth it. If I didn't LOVE writing
poetry, or tidying up Rails apps or any of the other crap I do there, I'd have
quit a long time ago.

IMHO, a dev would better spend his time going from repo to repo on GitHub and
cleaning up code. Like checkout random files and run Rubocop and fix it up and
commit. Fast, simple tasks that get your name out there. Sooner or later
you'll either become part of a larger project, or be noticed for your work and
get recruited somewhere good.

Either way, e-lancing is risky altogether because of disinhibition in clients.
It's apparently tempting to let someone deliver a quality product and not pay
or rip them off or just be rude to them, and oftentimes a platform will have
more concern with throughput than with quality so if one dev gets ripped off
it's not big deal for them.

Like I said, build _YOUR_ name and you'll go farther altogether. If you're
doing it just for a few bucks, you're already doing it wrong anyways.

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sova
Na. Typically there are thousands more devs from cheaper places and although
your code might be beautiful in comparison, someone who just wants "a website"
is not going to care what the source code looks like.

Just my personal experience, though, maybe people with tight portfolios
actually make a living.

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danieltillett
I use these sites as a client to get work done on projects that I don’t have
time for. From the hiring side it is rather hit and miss. I have found that
price does not correlate with quality or reliability of freelancers. About
2/3rd of all developers flake out before delivery. This is despite me
providing technically very detailed proposals and extensively discussing the
projects before choosing a freelancer so they know what I expect.

What I have found works best is just hire two people to do the same project at
the same time - rarely you will get two delivered projects, but since cost is
not such an issue I just chose the best coded one.

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samtimalsina
I have had fair success, but not the best experience with the competition.
There are far more developers that are ready to work for cheap. Getting
noticed and interviewed feels like winning a battle. It has helped me by
working on niche projects, and not regular websites.

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theaccordance
Looked at eLance a couple years ago but never followed through. Appeared very
tedious in terms of setting up a profile and submitting proposals, I had
easier methods available to me to obtain work and utilized them instead.

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collyw
Care to share any of the other methods?

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theaccordance
Leveraging your existing network of contacts and communication mediums like
Twitter

