Comment by jasonkester | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasonkester | Hacker News Reader

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As a rule, you can toss every response you get in the first hour. As you've noticed, there are tons on people on those sites who send out the same canned proposal to every single listing. That level of attention is a good indicator of how the rest of your project will go if you're foolish enough to take one of them on.

Wait a few days. If you've written a good project description (and if you're a bit lucky), you'll start to see a few qualified proposals trickle in.

This is the main problem with freelancing sites. The race to the bottom finished years ago, and the result is that there are simply no good developers or designers left there. It's actually an opportunity waiting for talented newcomers, since a single person showing up and acting professionally would get the job described by this poster (and everybody else who goes there seriously looking to build something).

I took the time to write up my experiences with these freelance sites a few years back:

http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/09/how-to-fail-at...

Thanks for tip. You're absolutely right, most of the first once were automated and totally crap. This was evidenced by the fact that they didn't contain the test "I AM REAL" statement which was intended to filter out the spammers.

I'll wait it out a bit longer before calling it quits on these sites.

I work as a django freelancer and have picked up over a dozen sites and built up quite the portfolio in less than a year on Elance. I've met some awesome clients there, and i think the kind of people you attract also reflect on the kind of person you are, and what you want out of it.

A lot of people expect a work of someone at 100$/hr but only want to pay 10-20$/hr.

- Price is a pretty good differentiating factor.

- Communication is another. If he can speak/communicate well then you can still work with him even if he's not a "rockstar"

- Portfolio of work. is he able to deliver a product by himself?

- Get references of past clients. Infact as a freelancer myself, they're my biggest selling point. I simply hand out references of 3-4 clients i've worked with.

- And to be honest, things like "I am real", actually put me and probably other professionals off from your post. You have to treat us like professionals, and not like cheap throw-away labour!

- Be as descriptive as possible, add mockups, add anything that might help a person to judge the effort/skillset needed for that job. Otherwise it indicates, you didn't do much homework and want us to fill in all the blanks. To outsource anything, you actually have to put in more time initially than the actual dev!

"things like "I am real", actually put me and probably other professionals off from your post."

I suspect the poster's goal was to easily identify those responders who didn't even bother to read the posting (or those posters who were machines!). Is there a less offensive way he could have obtained this information?

Well yeah sure, by asking pertinent questions about the project or how i "might" solve X. What technology might be good for X etc? In my opinion it gets a conversation going, which might be a better way of judging someones worth(goes both ways).

Posting "I am real" looks more like a test for "i'm smarter than a 5th grader"? But other freelancers might differ on this.

Think of it like a CAPTCHA. It's not a reflection on you as a person, and it's not much of an imposition — it's just a way to stave of an inevitable flood of illegitimate requests.

And just like captcha, expect a decline in conversion :-), that's all i'm saying.

I asked for a pencil sketch of a logo idea. Went with the only artist who submitted one. I even ended up using the original idea.

Pro tip here, I have spent a few hundred thousand in the past few years outsourcing on these sites and the simple - "please respond in the Private Message area with the phrase 'i am real'" goes very long way in filtering out these bad providers.

Additionally have them restate in their own words what they feel that you want from them. It is amazing how much miscommunications happens at that initial stage.

I think asking them to say "I am Real" is a waste of time. You could get much more useful information by asking them to do something else that would also show that they read your instructions.

I prefer to ask them to demonstrate their knowledge or skills in some way. Either:

a) researching something very minor that will only take 5-10 minutes

b) including samples of something very specific they did that is relevant to the task you posted

And then if they don't include what you requested, you can delete them because they obviously didn't read it.

This was evidenced by the fact that they didn't contain the test "I AM REAL" statement which was intended to filter out the spammers.

Sorry, but this is stupid. I think a developer should write a dedicated message. That is, you should figure it out from the message you get, you don't need such things. I actually ignore buyers that put such rules.

I've no experience of these sites, but asking dev's to put "i am real" strikes me as something they're doing out of desperation of dealing with fake requests etc.

This implies to me that they will be all the more appreciative when you turn out to actually be real! A client that appreciates you from the get go, well that has to be a good thing, no?

The problem is that it's disrespectful in the first place. Who wants to be part of a group that is so little respected? How hard is it to make an evaluation that doesn't devalue the audience?

Harder than you think. OTOH, how hard is it (on your feelings) to type 'i am human'?

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