Who hates Freelancer Like I do?

[carlalexander]

Every time I hear someone talk about freelancer as a source of making money I usually wonder what the heck they are talking about.

Freelancer is one of the sites where someone would want to pay you $1 for a 500 word article, now if that isn't a huge joke then I don't know what is. You can imagine someone paying you $5 for 2,500 words or original content. lol.

Which begs the question. How many of us hate freelancer as a money making site like I do?

 

[strata12123]

I also hate Freelancer.
The payment scheme, as you said, is just such a joke.
If they somehow improve the payment scheme and the overall mechanics of the site, I think they would get more writers and people who are looking for writers to write for them.
It does not even need to be an extravagant raise in the payment, just reasonable pricing would do.

 

[Yorozuya]

Yeah, freelancer is basically the same as Fiverr (angry customers want the world for a few dollars...) I used Freelancer a few years ago but quickly learned that it simply doesn't worth my time. As someone mentioned above, '1$ for a 500 word article' kind of jobs are common there and they even complain if your article is not optimized for SEO. Or at least if they THINK its not optimized which is the worst case since you can't talk any sense into them... Just avoid that place altogether, its a complete joke. Use oDesk instead.

 

[wasi90lk]

Every time I hear someone talk about freelancer as a source of making money I usually wonder what the heck they are talking about.

Freelancer is one of the sites where someone would want to pay you $1 for a 500 word article, now if that isn't a huge joke then I don't know what is. You can imagine someone paying you $5 for 2,500 words or original content. lol.

Which begs the question. How many of us hate freelancer as a money making site like I do?

I do not know where you saw "$1 for 500 words long article". Can you tell me the site's name?

I am a freelance worker on Fiverr and I made good money from it.

 

[Nymph]

Freelancer, as in, freelancer.ca? I don't see many projects posted that demand a single dollar for a 500 word article, which is bogus if the poster is looking for quality work. Then again, some webmasters don't understand the value of a quality article, they may think it is just a cluster of words to attract visitors, and if they really think this, they'll surely fail. There are posters who offer much higher prices than that for articles there. You must be talking about a different site?

 

[BruceBanner]

I've never used freelancer.com as a provider, but I have used it several times to have plugins built and altered for me. I thought that the going rates were reasonable and the quality of work done was great. Maybe it's just the writing assignments, because I didn't notice anybody lowballing on bids for plugin related work. If I remember correctly, all bids were within a $75 range of each other.

 

[deansaliba]

I have started to dislike it, not hate it because when these jokers started to really come out of the woodwork I was already moving away with private clients. The people came over from sponsored post networks, oh I remember the audacity of them offering me $0.50 to write a 500 word sponsored post!

 

[Brad]

I tried Freelance to try get some jobs, but everyone scammed me, thus causing me to dislike the site, but Fiverr, I actually really like, it's very easy, nice site.

 

[Viktori]

I've read some very bad comments about Freelancer when I was thinking of joining, and they were very similar to what I'm reading in this thread. It didn't seem like they offered much protection to their service providers, and it confuses me as well as to why people still utilize them. Although, to be fair, there were a lot of good comments as well, so I suppose not all parts or aspects of it are bad.

 

[donaldplozha]

Try www.elance.com, a much better website that includes payment guarantee and other cool features. And they have so much sub-categories for different kinds of jobs, so much you will be amazed.

 

[Scitamehtam]

I loaded up Freelancer one day when I was looking for writing jobs and I closed the browser just as quick as I opened it. There was a lot of low paying jobs on there, and there didn't seem to be any protection for the content writer that would prevent the requester from taking the content before making payment for it. This might be a pre-judgment about the place, but it didn't give a good impression when I last looked.

 

[SwagBear]

I don't have a problem with freelancer websites, but I would never become a freelancer. Freelancer sites are good for people that have a project they want to start, so I'm not against it at all.

 

[John Smithers]

Freelancer has provided me with some good jobs in the past, but they are typically swarmed by writers who are selling themselves for $2 or under for 500 words. It disgusts me that they have been able to reduce the rates so drastically, as customers now expect to get high quality content for $1 or even less! Let's just remember also that not only does it cost to then withdraw these funds, but Freelancer also takes a slice as well.

 

[wasi90lk]

a 500 words long article should cost at least $4-$5.

Anyone who is charging less than that should be avoided, in my opinion.

At the end of the day, it is all about quality.

 

[Drixxy]

I have yet to receive a job on Freelancer, but I already despise the system. The amount of jobs in a certain field is an "okay" number, but the pay is a joke. I feel like the "employers" searching for legitimate contractors on that site want to believe they're posting a craigslist ad in an attempt to get "quality" work for cheap.

It's such a let-down for the contractors on that site that have quality skills to provide, and receive little in return. It's great for someone willing to accept a low payout to build their portfolio, but to me it seems like employers are trying to outsource work and get lucky enough to find someone in India charging cents on the dollar for their services.

Employers that undercut the standard wage, and contractors that accept below the minimum are slowly lowering the value of hard work. Sure, there are jobs that don't require a high pay, such as the data entry jobs listed on that site, but what about the DBA jobs, or the web design jobs that take hours or complex coding?

I would be willing to give it a go if the pay was equal to the workload required.

All I'm saying is, don't ask for so much if you're not willing to pay for the quality you expect. And this should go for non-freelance jobs as well, but it never does.