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Software freelancing list

There are two equally terrible strategies to doing anything significant.

  1. Jump straight in head first (active)
  2. Wallow in research and talk forever (passive)

I don’t recall anyone saying to do (2), but it’s often said to be worse than (1). In my opinion this is because the vast graveyard of people who do (1) and fail are mostly silent. Meanwhile the successful 1’ers are noisy and visible.

So what do you do? Passively research what you are about to do while actively probing the water. This is where I am now. Anyway below is a list of freelance platforms I have compiled for my own purposes.

For the most part I rely on what the companies themselves say and cross reference it with information from places like Crunchbase, IndieHackers and Reddit.

General

Basically they all provide some billing services and whatnot. These things aren’t that interesting so I won’t cover them.

Gun.io

I generally get a good feeling from Gun.io. My perception is that they would provide me with more value than simply an introduction to clients.

Update: Also web developer focused. However after speaking to them I think my feeling was correct.

Lemon.io

I also get a good feeling from these guys. Although they don’t seem to be into the crusty C code market.

Toptal

Definitely the gorilla in the room throwing its weight around. According to third-party sources they add a margin on how much the freelancer charges. It doesn’t say anywhere how much and I tend to think this is because it is variable with a high lower bound. I also think though that if you need them then you need them.

Upwork

It is what it is. My brother in-law says that you have to put a lot of work in to get work, but it is a good platform if you put in the time.

I initially did not realise they have a token system. It costs money to buy tokens, but you get some free. This makes spamming costly and from having hired someone on one of these sites before, I can tell you this is a good thing.

Contra

Kind of an odd one, they charge for fancy portfolios not commission. How long this will last is debatable as they will need a lot of portfolio customers to pay off their funding (assuming such things matter again).

Codementor.io

Arc

Braintrust

OK, this is where I start to lose it. Basically all of the companies that do more than provide a platform do some obfustication. Most likely because not all clients and talent are created equal. Publishing a flat fee would not be wise if some engagements can and should have a higher fee than others.

Braintrust look a bit like the other vetted platforms. What’s really interesting though is that they are a non-profit which took $23M in VC funding and then did a $123M initial coin offering.

They charge clients a fee on top of the amount they pay to the freelancer. So they then say that the freelancer gets to keep 100% of what they make. This of course assumes that the freelancer would charge the same on platform and off it.

It gets better, because apparently this fee goes towards buying back their token. Not to their employees or investors who appear to be substantial. If you are familiar with blockchain shenanigans then I’m sure you get the point. If you are not, then perhaps you don’t and that is the point of blockchain.

richiejp.com

Improbable to produce work for now, but it is nearly a free option. I’m going to do the work regardless of whether I freelance, create another SaaS or work on an Open Source project.