The ability to find freelancers quickly and effectively can be a boon to any small business. Whether you are looking for someone to redesign your website, write advertising copy, or translate corporate communications, it’s important to be able to find the right person at the right price, and make sure that the job is done on time and to your satisfaction. To this end, we have taken a look at five of the best websites for sourcing, evaluating, and hiring freelancers to perform essential tasks for your business.
Having benefited from over $44 million in investment since its inception in 2005, this California-based work marketplace is now the most profitable freelancing site out there. Recently announcing that over $1 billion has been spent on its site so far, it’s clearly one of the most trusted sites too.
For the user, the substantial investment in oDesk has resulted in an interface that is slick and intuitive, with a relatively easy account set up process, especially if you sign in with Facebook. The payment process is seamless, with oDesk taking a flat rate of 10% of the fee paid by clients to contractors.
The quality and price point of the freelancers is varied, but you can verify their skills by viewing their online portfolio, looking at their feedback ratings, and comparing their test scores. The majority of contractors are based in the US and Europe, and the site is particularly well-stocked with specialists in web development and administrative support.
All in all, this is one of the best freelancing sites around, currently offering up the broad range of skills of almost 4 million oDesk members. These contractors have to download software that monitors their activity too, so anti-scam security is reassuringly tight. With no membership fees to pay and swift transaction processing, it’s also a site noted for its customer service.
oDesk might be the most profitable freelancing site out there, but Freelancer has more users. Founded back in 2009, Freelancer is now firmly established as one of the market leaders in this increasingly competitive field, and is one of the best-funded and most widely advertised services of its type.
Yahoo! Finance reports that Freelancer.com’s profits for the first quarter of 2013 are up over 100% from 2012. What’s more, the site now claims 8.5 million registered users, which puts it streets ahead of its main competitors, such as oDesk (3.1m) and Elance (2m). Because the site is so well-known, there is a lot of competition for work, which is good news from the client’s point of view.
As with most other sites of this nature, the freelancers are accredited through testing and feedback, and they are required to provide a portfolio of work examples. There are a number of paid options to make your work posts more visible, and accounts range from basic free offerings to premium packages costing up to $49.95 per month.
A large proportion of the freelancers are based in the US, the site features freelancers from all over the globe – primarily within the 25 regional marketplaces that Freelancer has set up with local language, customer service and currency support, including Canada, Australia, Philippines, India, Latin America, as well as the UK.
In terms of security, Freelancer announced recently that it’s taking steps to fight potential scam accounts by ensuring that all registered users are in the country they say they are in, using phone number verification systems. First-time clients will also find plenty of useful ‘How to’ articles within the site’s help section, talking you through the best way to search for the freelance skills you need.
Alongside Freelancer, PPH is one of the best-known and most widely used sites of its type. The layout and functionality of the site is similar to Freelancer, albeit with a little extra flexibility in the form of ‘Hourlies’, which allow freelancers to advertise certain services along with the associated cost.
While the site does cover a range of specialities, it is particularly well-stocked with designers, for those on the lookout for creative types. Most of the professionals are based in the UK and US, but a fair proportion of the freelancers are based elsewhere in the world, widening competition for translation services.
The pricing is done on a strictly commission-based model, which means that there are no upfront costs involved in posting and promoting the work that you want done, although the commission fees are correspondingly high. Like fellow market leader Freelancer, there is some online negativity regarding the validity some of the site’s contractor accounts, although there are enough satisfied customers to suggest that this may not be completely warranted.
A classified ads website concentrated solely on serving US cities for the first ten years of its service, and it remains one of the best known ads sites in America. Slowly but surely branching out since its launch in 1995, it now serves over 700 cities in 70 countries, including Amsterdam, Bangalore, Paris, São Paulo, and Tokyo.
Craigslist now has a large and growing user base in the UK, and while Gumtree has a higher profile in the British Isles, the international reach of Craigslist means that there is a much larger base of freelancers looking for work on the site. You can search for freelancers in specific geographic areas, such as the UK or London, although the huge popularity of the site in the US means that this is where you will find the greatest competition for work.
While the design of this site might charitably be described as ‘functional’, and the interface is certainly the least slick of all the offerings on this list, it’s far from difficult to use. As a general-purpose classified ads site, it lacks many of the useful features found on Freelancer or oDesk, such as being able to compare contractor qualifications side-by-side. While its simplicity makes the site more accessible, it also makes it harder to gauge the suitability of various candidates at a glance.
The leading classified ads service in the UK, Gumtree boasts a much slicker interface than Craigslist, but apart from that, the features and functionality are essentially the same.
Those looking to spread their talent search more widely might find Gumtree’s user reach a little limited. Being a predominantly UK website, the vast majority of users are based there, so the user base is smaller and more localised than that found on other sites. Like Craigslist, it features a wide variety of freelance services, across sectors like finance, marketing, and IT, as well as the creative industries. The site is also beginning to gain greater credibility as a more generic recruitment service.
Again, it lacks useful features like the client comparison tools that come part and parcel with dedicated freelancing websites, and there is no dedicated freelance section as such, but the lack of red tape can be a blessing if you are in something of a hurry. The only major drawback is that it can be quite expensive to post jobs on this site – typically around £40 per ad, and almost double that if you want the post to feature prominently. However, as the UK’s number one classified ads site with 790,000 average daily visitors, the site’s popularity could make this worthwhile.
By Sam Miranda. Sam is an senior editor and owner of online gaming information website Liveroulette.co.uk.