LITTLEBLACKDOG.COM

Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 7:20 pm Post subject: "Freelance" websites

Hey fellow coder type people!

Having recently lost my job ( who hasnt ), I'm looking at doing freelance design and programming. I know theres quite a few sites out there that have 'classified ads' for this type of thing, but was wondering if anyone has actually used any of them and has any feedback?

Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 6:23 am Post subject: Re: "Freelance" websites

wolven wrote:
Hey fellow coder type people!

Having recently lost my job ( who hasnt ), I'm looking at doing freelance design and programming. I know theres quite a few sites out there that have 'classified ads' for this type of thing, but was wondering if anyone has actually used any of them and has any feedback?

I don't know any software engineers who've used sites like that (and I know a few software engineers). I'd love to hear otherwise but I'm not convinced "freelance programming" is a viable career without being a full blown consultant.

Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 6:26 am Post subject:

I am looking more for website based development, database backend stuff, etc.

I realize it isnt a career. I am looking for a means to temporarily offset some of the lost income is all. The reason I'm asking for suggestions, is I'd perfer not to get ripped off in the end Smile

Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 6:45 am Post subject:

Personally, I find that unless you plan on working for pennies, literally, stay clear of such places.

Off and on for the past few years I take a stab at rentacoder.com. Reason being, I've tried using that to fill slow periods with some extra work. I walk in thinking "any bill rate is better than no bill rate," and I try to keep that attitude while bidding on jobs.

I used to bid at what I thought would be realistically fair for that specific job after realizing that my actual bill rate is considerably higher. After being out-bid more often than not I brought my prices down to what "the neighbor kid" would charge, thinking again, anything is better than nothing.

The end result is, you're bidding against people living in Eastern Europe and India, who before this global depression, were making in a month roughly what I'd make in a few hours.

In these days and times? I'd not be surprised if the bid winners are offering to do a 3 or 5 page site from the ground up for a few bucks.

Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 6:48 am Post subject:

heh... I yelled about this almost a year ago to the date

http://www.miscellaneousdebris.com/words/2009/02/21/nothing-better-than-old-fashion-exploitation-or-why-i-hate-rent-a-coder/

Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 7:04 am Post subject:

Olive wrote:
heh... I yelled about this almost a year ago to the date

http://www.miscellaneousdebris.com/words/2009/02/21/nothing-better-than-old-fashion-exploitation-or-why-i-hate-rent-a-coder/

Nice article, makes a lot of sense.

I'm certain, wolven, that your time would be better spent padding out your CV by working on Open Source projects. (This is why I contribute to the Fedora project -- it looks good on my CV and prospective employers can check out samples of my work before or during the interview.)

Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2010 1:22 pm Post subject:

I get jobs at scriptlance and craigslist but like has been stated I am competing with east Europeans and Indians. I emphasize that I am local and have a solid command of my native language. But still, I have to bastardize myself sometimes just to make a buck; it sucks, everyone wants something for nothing

Posted: Wed Aug 18, 2010 7:27 am Post subject:

Now I remember why I deleted those links. What a waste of time.

Stray Dog Joined: 20 Aug 2010 Age: 49 Posts: 5

Hi everyone, this is Nicole Miller from vWorker (formerly known as Rentacoder).

I can understand the frustration with seeing low bids on an international website as large as ours, however our statistics point a different picture. vWorker's employers actually select the lowest bidder only 19% of the time.

Knowing how insignificant these low bids are, some of our workers go on make tens of thousands of dollars a year and more and I'm confident with the right skills and approach, you can do the same. The key is to concentrate on what you're doing and focus on how you can improve. It's truly isn't about how much a worker in Turkey or Russia bids.

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 12:50 pm Post subject:

Welcome RACNicole. Sorry about the 10 post limit thing. It's an antispammer feature. I disabled it for you if you need to post links for folks.

/edison

and what's with the email address?

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 2:50 pm Post subject:

RACNicole wrote:

I can understand the frustration with seeing low bids on an international website as large as ours, however our statistics point a different picture. vWorker's employers actually select the lowest bidder only 19% of the time.

I'd be interested in seeing these stats.

The wife unit in the family recent started working with RAC again.

She has been bidding on jobs again for the past two weeks.

She had one so far that actually paid a decent rate. I've been keeping a running total (mostly to prove she's better off working at Burger World,) her average pay, per hour, over the past two weeks:

$0.48 an hour.

At that rate she has to work 24/7 for 2 1/2 years to hit $10,000.

Sure the lowest bids are picked 19% of the time. How about 2nd lowest? 80%

Stray Dog Joined: 20 Aug 2010 Age: 49 Posts: 5

EdisonRex wrote:
Welcome RACNicole. Sorry about the 10 post limit thing. It's an antispammer feature. I disabled it for you if you need to post links for folks.

/edison

and what's with the email address?

Hi EdisonRex, thank you for the welcome!! And thank you for the link limit removal as well. Smile

(My email address is a company work address.)

-Nicole

Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2010 9:42 am Post subject:

Another thing was pointed out to me too, and this in a round about way may support your 19% theory.

So many of the jobs on RAC have a "max bid" set by the job poster, that after doing the math, work out to being 10's of cents an hour to almost a dollar an hour.

That may fly in India, Russia, and Romania, but stateside even panhandlers make more.

Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2010 10:59 am Post subject:

Since I started this post, I have come to agree, freelance sites suck. I finally managed to network and get 2 or 3 clients who, up front, stated since they were nonprofit they could pay ONLY $60 an hour... doing the math of olive, at 10 cents an hour, that means ..15 weeks of full-time freelance website work to match 1 hour of networked work.. granted its not reliable hours, and I can't count on it, but I average about 50 hours a year total between them, and unlike RAC n such, I know that within 1 week of finishing project, I will have a check that wont bounce... with RAC, the one time I got a rate I didn't laugh at, the person went quiet when project was ready to deliver and I never got paid

Stray Dog Joined: 20 Aug 2010 Age: 49 Posts: 5

wolven wrote:
with RAC, the one time I got a rate I didn't laugh at, the person went quiet when project was ready to deliver and I never got paid

Wolven, did you bring this to the attention of the site's faciliators?