Freelance Websites
With all that in mind, I surveyed some freelance websites; I was especially interested in the ones that catered to Western developers, who typically need to operate at price-points higher than that of their counterparts in many developing nations. The old 37 Signals job site has transformed into WeWorkRemotely.com, a site devoted to listing remote-working jobs. The jobs can be anywhere in the world, although most seem to be U.S.-based, and mainly for Web development. A few of the U.S.-based ones ask that their remote workers live in the U.S. or within four time zones (which allows Canadians, as well as Central and Southern American developers to compete). Freelancer.com (formerly getafreelancer.com) is one of the oldest freelancing sites and certainly amongst the biggest, with over 14 million developers. In addition to project hiring and bidding for projects, the site encourages developers to take exams in order to demonstrate competency in many subjects. (These exams cost between $5 and $15.) Apart from a few local job categories, which don't have much activity, Western developers have to compete on price. Then there’s Odesk, which detected that I was based in the U.K. and localized its offerings accordingly. (But localization only works if the site has enough business for individual niches; for example, I checked out Technical Articles and found that none were U.K.-oriented.) Odesk does offer technology groups where businesses can hire prescreened freelancers, but breaking into these prescreened groups takes time. The biggest group is BigCommerce with over a thousand developers, but smaller ones aim at particular technologies—Facebook development or Corona SDK, for instance. Slightly different is ProBlogger Jobs, which offers freelancing jobs for bloggers, both English-speaking and otherwise. There is a wide gulf in jobs offered; some offer just $5 per article, while technical pieces can earn a writer $300-$500. The last site I visited was Envato Studio, a reworking of the existing Freelanceswitch jobs site. Instead of the usual list of freelance jobs and freelance developers, each freelancer has a page listing what they can do, as well as how many jobs they’ve done, recommendations, and costs. Prices are definitely cheaper here but not stupidly so; one Italian company charges $2,000 for developing a game on iOS and Android using Unity 3D. Another in India will convert websites to Android apps in one day at $50 each. Price, reputation and number of jobs count here.Conclusion
All the above sites are largely global in scope, although some (most notably WeWorkRemotely) seem to have more of a local focus than others. It’s my impression that the bottom has already been reached, in terms of contractor pricing; to compete these days, it’s not just a question of price, but also quality and speed.Upload Your ResumeEmployers want candidates like you. Upload your resume. Show them you're awesome.