Freelancer Outsourcing Portal |
This used to be branded “Get A Freelancer” but they’ve recently updated their branding and domain to drive better name recognition. Freelancer is one of the first outsourcing established portals – they came online in the early 90’s, you can expect 30-50 responses to any bid for work placed here, with about 60-75% of these bids from outside the US, unless you specify a vendor location in your job description.
They are one of the largest outsourcing portals in the world, have connected 3.5 million “Freelancers” and companies over the year, have a built in API and very robust community. We have found their customer support to be good overall if you have a problem with a listing you can interact with them immediacy via their live chat function and email. But, you can’t call them on the phone if you have a problem, they are located offshore.
Direct competitors include: Elance, Fiverr, LinkedIn and oDesk in the outsourcing vertical market.
1) They have 400 job posting categories for listing segmentation and over 3.5 Million users in their vendor community – you can expect 30-50 responses to a job listing within 48-72 hours if the listing is well written.
2) If you are looking to offshore some of your outsourcing this is a great portal, as 70% of the responses (on average) will be from outside the US, with 30-50% of these from Asia, maybe 10-20% from Europe. These statistics vary depending on the type of outsourcing you are doing. More popular (web site design) services will generate significantly bid volumes from contractors.
3) Setting up an account takes about 15-30 minutes on average; posting a job listing can take 1-2 hours and make sure you post very specific details (“I want to pay XX for YY and if you don’t have these specific experiences don’t bid”). Be prepared to pay $50-75. per job listing for a Premium Listing and a transaction fee of 3% unless you pay extra for the Standard or Premium listing or vendor relationship.
4) The User Interface with Freelance is a bit confusing at first – be prepared to spend 1-2 hours wading through responses (depending on the number of course) and working within the interface (communicating back and forth) can be very challenging and at times tedious. You may be better off using the platform for selection and then moving to direct communications with the vendor. This violates the TOS of Freelancer (this is a gray area) to a certain extent; but if you pay the success fee they don’t seem to mind.
5) Be prepared to wade through a lot of bids from companies and individuals who are a) either not qualified or B) have not paid attention to your job listing requirements – underscoring how popular this outsourcing company is.
We like this popular portal and it’s used by many businesses large and small for outsourcing purposes. And, we have found it easier to structure and connect direct relationships with contractors using this portal versus others, which facilitates building a long term relationship versus trying to communicate via a web portal in the cloud, which can be challenging for many.