Comparing The main Freelancer Sites






British voiceover
Amongst a number of other guises, such as the whole marketing thing, I'm a voice artist. And it is as a voice artist i use these freelance sites, but there are many jobs on them all separated into categories and sub categories from design and digital art, to animation and proofing jobs.


British voiceover
So, if you are a graphic designer or perhaps a singer, remember things i do and why I take advantage of these websites as my experience could differ from yours… I will be seriously likely to paraphrase here - don’t expect breakdowns into the sites’ intricacies, you’ll can simply trust my judgement go for a nose around yourself. Right, blogs with long rambling intro’s never get read, everybody knows we see the title then look for the very first bullet point, so without further ado…



1. Elance 8/10



Elance continues to be well constructed and makes you feel quite comfortable whilst utilizing it. Incredibly, specially when you take into account the amount of designers work through internet websites, a lot of freelance sites often feel dated, but Elance doesn’t. The UI is fairly slick and the features are way better than most. The pop out dialogue box is effective and finding work in your unique genre is simple. Little touches like having a store of one's demo files to easily affix to a proposal in the mobile is great and achieving an enormous limit to how many files you can use is good in addition to a massive individual quality limit. All of it works very smoothly, has got the freelancer in your mind and this is the one I am going to first. Top billing.



2. Skillpages 8/10



This really is gathering momentum and looks like the future of freelancers. It’s essentially a social network for work but without the horrible boundaries that makes LinkedIn so bloody frustrating. No fees to begin with, Skillpages let’s you advertise a posture or role free of charge and similarly respond to other’s jobs. They don’t wish to muscle in and hijack your best and preferred methods of communication and let’s you handle your own personal business. It is without it’s own system to protect each party the transaction, but let’s tell the truth, that’s all a façade developed by these websites to warrant the charge also to ensure that it stays all in-house. I’m pretty sure we have been quite effective at protecting inside us a company transaction without resorting to a huge bro watching over us anyhow. Definitely check it out. One of the reason’s it’s not toppling each one of these other sites is that it’s a little around the quiet side and you don’t hold the immediacy of job turn-arounds as you do with these other services, but a quick look round immediately suggests it’s definitely getting busier and i also have finally had sort out it and possess considered it to promote two roles - one which continues to be filled as well as the other is looking good for applicants up to now. Let’s just hope there is something in place to prevent those darned spammers who jump on this type of free loveliness. Go and register and present it a go.



3. oDesk 5/10



This really is favoured by India and the East. Being a guy perfectly located at the UK my bids can’t take on the simply enormous amount of bidders on the website. This doesn’t mean I haven’t had work from oDesk however have a tendency to provide it with a wide birth. The favoured hourly rate just doesn’t suit the voice work either - for my line of work you must bid for a complete product. It’s filled for the rafters with freelancers ready to just work at an exceedingly low rate and people expecting try to be achieved as well kind of rate. I have found the bidding perplexing - you’ll use a guy requesting visitors to just work at a crazy $5 hourly for something after which you’ll have people bidding a fee for the completed job and some bid excess of what he's got requested - it’s a mess and if I will, I ignore the site and venture in when times are difficult. This is a pretty good functional website also it may suit certain genres and industries, although not mine, however, if there is a “voice talent” sub category, you ought to cater to it.



4. Freelancer 5/10



It’s no Elance but it’s not too remote the site’s functionality but there are several little niggles. There's a strange “bid after which PM (personal message) your files” approach making no sense at all and just results in people bidding with “Please see my PM for details.” If you have the job list for the industry you can’t work off that list simply, you can’t open the jobs in tabs for example. You can only acquire one file at any given time to the customer too. But perhaps most significantly you need to be aware that Freelancer place their fee regardless of whether you get paid or not. When challenged they will tell you just how they may be merely acting as the “introduction” service which the dealings between anyone with a employer are nothing to do with them. That might be translated as “we don’t give an excessive amount a shit, just as long as we take our lump from the transactions taking place round here.” In the event you win employment for $1000 your bank account will immediately visit -$100 as Freelancer immediately take their 10% fee; when the employer gets cold feet, deletes his account and runs you might be still having a $100 debt to Freelancer and ironically NO contact information for your guy who ran because Freelancer frowns upon sharing contact info! Why not a compulsory 100% escrow or why they can’t get their fee in the transaction, I don’t know. When it comes to withdrawing your money, if you want to use Paypal they inexplicably charge a fee $1 for withdrawals in dollars and £1 ($1.60!) for withdrawing in GBP. Why the main difference?! It’s suspiciously random (ie what's the fee for exactly? If it’s a cost on their behalf, then Freelancer must have one cost that's equal across all currencies). That’s anasty little sting in the tail after your work is performed of course, if there is a great deal of transactions going on, particularly if you have fees for every job, potentially a regular membership for the service and Paypal’s own over-inflated fees on the top, it all accumulates. The profiteering runs right through the entire service and it’s score has suffered for doing this.



5. People Per Hour 4/10



Hmm. They’re taking care of it. Still it has a way to attend get up to date but they have reached out for feedback greatly (see the red feedback tab about the right side of each and every page). It doesn’t feel as old skool since it did a few months ago but someone seriously has to get hold of that logo; it feels as though a 1980's supermarket! Apart from the aesthetics it's got some major problems that you can’t get passed. For me being a voice artist for instance there's no “audio” category so jobs are strewn across categories such as “design” or even “secretarial” however, you can only bid in a small group of categories so I can’t even get to the jobs without fiddling with my categories! When you bid for work you own an upload limit of an utterly ridiculous 2mb (it was 1mb up to a few weeks ago!) so when looking at showcasing media files - you’re stuffed, of course, if you link to a hosted file, the link isn’t even live leaving clients baffled. Plenty of these minor/major gripes make up a huge one; however they are taking care of it apparently.



6. Guru ?/10



I don’t understand how it has evaded me for so long however have just discovered it and early indications are incredibly positive. They don’t look uptight about you getting in touch from the website which is refreshing. The threats coming from all the above about daring to get in touch with on Skype, for instance, isn’t solving a problem and is also very off-putting. I must get a handle on Guru but to date it appears available online for with Elance and might eventually turn out to be a normal location for me; particularly because the site is the first one to differentiate between male and female voice jobs (note to all or any freelancer sites please also do this, and differentiate between accents required and character or commercial work - it’s far deeper than “voice talent” and would help us enormously).



Honorable Mentions



Office Cavalry A new comer to the scene. While the interface looks nice, the horrific stereotyped characters around the webpage will put anyone off and it’s dead quiet!



Freelance Just seen it whilst Googling - think it's got just launched. Seems like a new look and incredibly quite promising but no apparent audio category (over a personal front). Is this PPH reincarnated?!



Google Will it trump the lot? It certainly has the potential to. Have a close eye on it; particularly as its business elements get launched.

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