Availability.is
availability.is
availability.is
- We emailed people to update their availability. If they were available this week, we'd email. Otherwise they could set their busyness to between 1 week and 3 months.
- We tracked where people were working and used that to bill the companies that hired them. First we charged a flat subscription rate of $3600 per year but people didn't want to pay that. We then charged $100 per week per freelancer. They wanted to go back to paying the subscription again. Then we went broke.
- People won't keep their availabilities up to date. They won't like you asking them to keep their availabilities up to date either. They really won't like you asking them where they're working this week.
- People will ask you how you're curating the list. If you're not curating it, theirs no point in using it as I can get list of people to hire anywhere. I want a list of people that are good at what they do.
- Recruiters function because they hide the cost of hiring freelancers. You're a design agency, your charge out rate is $250/h. Hiring this gun front end developer through a recruiter costs me $100/h. I make $150/h, simple math.
The most important things to solve from POV is how you're going to curate the list and keep the bad coders off it. You want to start with A's and only have A's. As soon as B's creep onto the list then your reputation goes down. Also, because you want to keep showing growth, C's and D's begin to creep onto it. Also, your friend who you like but sucks at JavaScript will ring you up and ask to be placed on it.
Good luck.
StackOverflow Careers handles this rather nicely. If you mark yourself as available and are contacted, you get a notification email. If after N days you don't respond (through SO) to the contact, you are automatically marked as unavailable.
It's not perfect, but in most cases it should remove stale list entries after their first contact.
People won't update their availability for 2 reasons, they can't be bothered or they want to keep their options open. Good freelancers will often have a few offers on the table at the same time and can pick and choose between jobs.
One of the ways we have attempted to deal with the problem is by building in the option for available and qualified freelancers to state an interest in a position. Hiring companies are still returned a list of matched candidates, but can further refine it by showing only those interested in the job.
We are looking at also building in a simple 1 click update via email (I'm booked next week, I'm booked for 2 weeks, I'm booked this month) that will allow freelancers to update their availability without having to sign in. Unfortunately people don't like emails much either. So this will require careful testing.
Agree that curation is important. Nobody is going to pay for access to a list of people of dubious quality. They would rather have 4 good results than 200 bad ones. You will get accusations of elitism, but if you are serious about building a valuable product, quality control is paramount.
Cheers.
- The settings link is a 404 if you haven't completed your profile yet.
- There isn't a link to complete the registration flow from the rest of the app. If you click Settings prematurely and get that 404, your profile is hosed unless you know to find http://availability.is/users/calendars in your history.
- There's no obvious way to choose a profile photo.
- The calendar listing doesn't auto-update. I just went and made a calendar (thinking it was required) in GC, but I can't link it to your site.
- It isn't made clear during registration that the availability calendar is a feature, not a requirement.
e.g. http://availability.is/for/sebinsua links to http://twitter.com/http://twitter.com/sebinsua
Besides, even if it is, knowing when a particular freelancer is available still is useful - isn't it?
It's about skills + price. Not about availability. I don't know many freelancers with full-time exclusive projects that last more than 12 months.
A friend pointed out we'd then need a subsequent site for checking available.is's availability too
The site looks good, though. It might end up working very well with some refinements as others noted.
2. Sign up...
3. As a freelancer...
4. Google account?!
5. Go back. Is there no other option?
6. Seems not. Fuck you. I'd much rather create an account than give you my gmail address, have you use my fake name that I set on my google account, and have a single point of failure for authentication availability and security. That is assuming you only request read access.
Not the OP, but don't take it personally. When someone's building a side project, there are so many things to do, and making using of an existing authentication system is fairly reasonable in the interests of time and effort vs value.
Of course, you have a right to your privacy, but you don't need to be so rude.
What the hell is the matter with you?
There had been the option to sign up with twitter too, but I dropped everything but Google because that gave everything I needed very simply (dates, avatar, email), in a single step.
Part of the problem I felt was consolidating different auth mechanisms into a single account - which I decided not to deal with by leaving out.
Downtime isn't uncommon either, it happens, but it's also one of the reasons your rate should be high enough to support your downtime.
User Experience is a skillset that many clients need, and that many also mistake for visual design or front-end coding. They're very different things.
I must be biased into thinking it is either visual mockups (ranging from paper to balsamiq to powerpoint to adobe) or working prototypes (ranging from a UI builder on the web, a UI builder in an IDE, or HTML/JS/CSS coded by hand).
The former case I would label "design" and the latter case I would label "front-end developer" (with low technical skills and high artistry).
What am I missing? What else is "UX" for freelancers?
Edit and P.S. I just read through http://www.jaysonelliot.com/about/, and I like the candor and approach. One bit of a small friendly feedback: Please add measurements for the outcomes of the projects you want to highlight.
For example, it looks like Preferio (the first example) is no longer around. That's cool, we've all worked on failed projects. What are some of the decisions you made while working there and designing the app? You had to have had some influence... was there a visual style or conversion flow you updated that increased X% of some valuable activity? Of course there was, so add it :) That is the kind of behavior and thinking I want to see from UX people. The entire presentation talks about things you did and omits outcomes. The things you did are great, but please add more outcomes. They will complete an otherwise good message.
UX, for me, is a very upfront strategy role, which culminates in static or prototype wireframes, but doesn't involve visual design or coding. User research and testing are also big parts of it.
Of course, roles are fluid and I might answer differently in a year.
I think UX is a role that's often misunderstood in startups, as it's often most prevalent in larger corporate teams. I've been trying to find ways to make it more accessible for everyone, though.
Thanks again for the feedback, it's been a while since I updated my own portfolio, and I will take your advice.