Finding success with the freelancing sites such as getafreelancer, rentacoder is not easy. Getafreelancer, Europe's answer to the widely popular American competitor Rent A Coder, was established in February 2004. On last count, the site boasts of 189,848 users and 91,595 posted projects which is still a far cry from RentAcoder's user base of
I have been a member of both the sites for the past 30 days and I find GetAFreelancer much better than RentAcoder for the following reasons:
- E-mail notification: Periodic e-mails notifying a service provider of newly posted projects is a very user friendly feature. One does not have to browse or search for projects through the site's user interface. You can set alerts defining the project criteria such as projects PHP and Perl only that fall in the range of $30-$100. Or Java projects that fall in the range of $1000-$3000. The number of e-mail that gets triggered in a day depends on the number of new projects posted. I just take a cursory glance at the listing in my e-mail and if something interesting catches my eye, I goto the site for further details to bid.
RentACoder's alert notification system works only when you have won a project. - Low No-action rate from buyers: The buyer no-action rate is way high on RentAcoder than on GetAFreelancer. I've had 0 success on RAC till now. All the projects that I have bid for on RAC have either been cancelled or there has been no response from the service buyer.
- Mode of payment: Escrow payment is available on both. But I believe the percentage charged by GAF is slightly higher than that of RAC.
- Privacy: Again both the sites dictate the same terms and conditions. Service buyers cannot contact service providers directly. Revealing e-mail address is an offense and you stand to get blacklisted on doing so for projects less than $500.
- Value for service: GAF fares low on this as compared to RAC. It is very common to see buyers posting projects to develop a clone site such as ebay.com or something popular as digg.com while quoting a price of $30-$100. They want the moon for peanuts.
- Service Buyers: Service buyers from Europe are very finicky. Language is an issue with them. They generally try to squeeze in as much as they can going beyond the specifications of a project. Americans are very professional in this regard. They know what they want, they say what they want in clear terms. Even if they don't, they are quick to admit it and are courteous. As principle, I try and avoid European buyers.
Categories: getafreelancer, rentacoder, freelancing