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Ask HN: What would you do to fix freelancer for hire sites?

7 points by dynabros ↗ HN
Have you had any issues with freelance for hire sites, or the clients using them?

If you could make the current solutions better, what would you do to change them?

12 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 41.6 ms ] thread
kremdela
As an american looking for freelance work, I find it hard to find a place to get clients that are willing to pay reasonable rates for skilled talent.

On the other hand, whenever I try to hire, my compromises are usually poor communication skills or sub-par code.

timjahn
I'm working on matchist (http://matchist.com/talent) to help American based developers find quality clients. Have you tried us yet?

We're focusing on attracting the right type of client and we'd love to have your feedback along the way.

kremdela
Awesome, haven't tried it yet. I'll check it out.
dynabros
How do you differentiate yourself to clients who think they could get the same code from some guy for 10x cheaper?
kremdela
It's been very tough. Unfortunately I have found that the most lucrative projects tend to be those that require lots of ongoing maintenance, or people graduating from a crappy MVP into something that needs richer features.
startupstella
the right clients understand that paying a premium for quality will save them time/money/stress in the future. disclosure: i'm tim's partner for matchist (http://matchist.com) and we definitely see a difference in the motivations of clients who have outsourced with terrible results in the past.
jefflinwood
I've used freelancer for hire sites to get specialized work done, and they're not horrible from the hiring end.

Here's what I would do to fix things on the freelancer side - establish a minimum price per hour/price per project. Think about "The Ladders" - a job site that established itself as only for job seekers for $100,000+ jobs.

What if the market was only $75/hour and up? And both developers and clients had to be invited?

dynabros
So you're talking about a premium experience. Nice concept
jefflinwood
Yes - no idea if it would actually take off, but it would be different from what's out there now.
reefoctopus
The biggest problem is that clients on those sites want you to build them facebook in two weeks for $300. People willing to work for this type of client are your run of the mill php spaghetti coders. They tend to attract the worst of both coders and clients.

I agree with jefflinwood's comment. Setting a price floor at a reasonable rate will weed out the "$300 for facebook" clients. I'm not sure, however, how you would weed out the bad coders.

dynabros
Do you think you can actually convert those $300 clients into paying a reasonable hourly rate?