Freelancer Ebay

[Eldoria]

Hi all,

I was just thinking of an idea that I would like to share: An Ebay type site for freelancers.

Here is the idea: Freelancers can post their particular projects they have done, or their services. Publishers can then bid on them. Feedback can be left for both freelancers and publishers.

I know this would probably be a pain to build, but it sure would be a useful website...:)

William

[LBrownIII]

Already done, William.

It's a terrible idea, and I have no idea how it keeps going. The people looking to have work done get flooded with responses, and all the low bidders are flakes with marginal skill. Unfortunately, they don't find that out until they've already come to an agreement.

For the freelancer, you get undercut like mad if you try to bid even a fraction of a decent rate. People want to get a business plan for $50 or $100. You're asking a bank for a quarter of a million and can't pony up $800 for a business plan that'll get you the loan? Please.

Guru.com is one of the leaders, but there are others. I have an account, but I've never gotten a job from it. My sister has gotten a few doing website content, presumably for SEO wannabes, but the pay was terrible.

[NCardiff]

What would you be looking to fix about the current way work generally gets done by moving to an EBay-type system? I'm not sure that you'd be making it any cheaper or faster to do business, since you wouldn't want to hire someone solely based on price. You'd still have to basically post an open call, get quotes or post your rate, and then check on everyone's portfolios before hiring one of the respondents.

The only part that I can think of that would be helpful is the feedback section, and it seems like RPG.net and the freelancer community as a whole tend to praise the good people and point out the bad ones. I'd love to see a more formalized version of that, but I know whenever the idea's been batted around of a "blacklist" or any kind of listing of problem people, it's eventually been shot down as liable to cause more problems than it would solve - so I imagine people might be willing to sign on for a praise-only site, but I'm not sure a blacklist could survive the inevitable backlash from the listed people.

Then again, maybe it has a strength from the publisher standpoint I'm just missing...

[Eldoria]

Hi there,

Thanks for responding. I have a few clarifications or responses below. Before I get into it, I just want to clarify that I am not proposing such a system as much as 'thinking aloud' about what benefit such a system would have.

Lloyd: I agree that price should only be one consideration in determining who to hire. It is often said that 'you get what you pay for.' Of course, all who studied economics know that the price is 'whatever the market will bare.' While I am still quite new to RPG publishing (I have only been at this a little over a year), I have had experiences with freelancers that charged quite a bit and said "well, you could go with less expensive freelancers, but you get what you pay for." We have used freelancers with varied costs and actually found that the pay we gave them had remarkably little to do with quality or timeliness. In fact, there are two freelancers from here that were very reasonably priced, and I thought the ideas were so good they were almost immediately included into my my home game--and will form important parts of our 'official setting'.

Now, this is not to say that high priced freelancers aren't occasinally worth it; it seems, however, that the price you paid for the freelance work is not always the best indicator of whether work will be high quality.

NCardiff: You wouldn't want to hire someone based solely upon price--while price would certainly be one of the things about such a system, I would envision it being more. Again, please understand that I am not proposing such a system, rather just thinking aloud about whether it would be advantageous to have such a system.

Here are the advantages to such a system:

1. A quick place for freelancers and publishers to get an idea about market prices/pay for various projects. When people come here and ask "How much should a freelancer charge for art or writing", or "I am a new publisher, how much should I pay freelancers," it often breaks down into a generic discussion of "well, when I worked for White Wolf, this is how much they paid me so I would not suggest anyone work for less," or, "small press doesn't make very much, and you should work for this much." Such an ebay type system would show how much is actually being paid (not talked about being paid, but actual amounts for new freelancers to see).

2. When a publisher has more cash than ideas (or time to develop them), or some extra cash to find a new project, they can go to such a site to see what is available to buy.

3. Feedback: When I buy things on Ebay, I always check the feedback (when available, I also try to find out what item the feedback was left for... if I am thinking about buying the same item, I am particularly interested in the feedback from previous customers that bought said item from this seller). A "blacklist" forum could potentially lead to flame wars (one person puts another on the blacklist, the other person retaliates by defending him/herself and attacking the first person, and they are off to flamesville).

Thanks again to both of you for the thoughts!

William

[Ineti]

www.elance.com does something similar.

[oddsea]

I don't think its a bad idea if the freelancer galleries were juried but freelance gigs are so temp I don't see it being applied all that well. I mean, would the site's intent stress the freelancer or stock work put up for sale?

[LBrownIII]

We have used freelancers with varied costs and actually found that the pay we gave them had remarkably little to do with quality or timeliness.

Are you saying that you offered a substantially higher fee and did not receive offers a larger group of freelancers than when you offered lower fees?

Or that you reviewed work from multiple people, offered different rates afterward, and did not notice a difference? Naturally, once you choose to work with someone, if you offer that person more money, that person's skill doesn't magically improve.

Offering more pay (but only if you publicize this higher pay) allows you to draw from a wider pool. The wider pool means more competition, which should result in you finding better talent.

On the other hand, if the pay you offer ranges from a half cent a word to *four times that rate*, you really didn't affect the size of the pool you're drawing from.

[Darklance]

Can't we ask the starter of GamerBidding to try this out?