Do you think there is room for yet another freelancer site? If you do what is it that really tees you off about the ones that already exist? I mostly use them for sourcing people rather than the other way round and I am always hearing my freelancers griping about the different sites. I for instance really like Elance, but a common complaint I hear is that they are too expensive from the freelancers point of view. I have heard that certain other sites don't check out the people who post projects well enough and that too many projects are canceled;is this true? I would really like to hear your views regardless of how trivial they may seem and what you think could be done to improve the current freelancer sites. Better still; what would your perfect freelancing site be like?
It is a fairly packed market, but I think the issue with many is that they don't offer much incentive to post projects there. You will need to invest some money to market it. A perfect freelancing website for me would be a lot like rentacoder where the company holds the money until the project is complete. The problems I see with them is their unfriendly attitude towards small projects. $15.00 projects are almost useless on rentacoder where your fee is a minimum of $3.00 I believe. Just something to think about. Worry about traffic before making money when you first get started.
Thanks for your input PHPgator. So you believe that Escrow should be obligatory and also that the fees are too high on some of the smaller projects. What are your thoughts on the categories? I have posted this on a couple of other forums and the feedback I am getting is that the categories are too generalised. Do you think that there ought to be a minimum price for some of the work sought and that clients are getting things done far too cheaply? I am not sure that I want to get involved in this at all at the moment because as you say it's a pretty crowded field, however nearly all my business successes as such have been down to taking an existing idea and doing it so much better.
In my opinion, theres too many freelancing market with too little outsourcer and way too many freelancer. If you could drive in alot more outsourcer, im sure you could fit in.
The market is way to saturated with sites to honestly produce something that will be profitable. Unless of course you offer something else that the competition or rather other websites don't have with unique features, maybe cheap listing's etc.
I don't think it is that overloaded of a market. I know a lot of people who got their name out by using freelance websites.
another freelance website would require lots of hard work to succeed. I have though about it, but I don't think you will be successful if you just clone an existing service.
I am a lot further down the road now with my research and now I would like to ask you guys about any bad personal experiences you have had with the various freelancer sites. I would like to hear from buyers as well as freelancers to try get a balanced view. I would also be interested in what you think could have been done by the site to stop your bad experience happening in the first place.
There are always room for any site you want to create... The question is, Do you have the will to compet with other stronger and stable sites?
I would say there's room for one. I'm active on Rentacoder and somewhat active on Getafreelancer and I can say, the competition is steep. Prices for articles have gone down badly in the last year, which leaves me with little work options. A new site would increase my odds as a copywriter and I'm sure many others will feel the same. One tip though: Since copywriting is one of the easiest freelancing jobs to commit scams, I'd say a money escrow system like rentacoder.com would be best.