From last couple of months I have been using Freelancer.Com for freelancing. This website is really great place for new freelancers who are seeking for jobs. Also it has low competition among freelancers, so if you are looking for job and you have quality then I’m sure that you will get your project from Freelancer. But, the main reason for this review is to make you aware that GAF has too many lack of features. So, here we go with those reviews:
1. Bad System of Taking Project Fees:
Everyone knows that freelancing sites are usually takes commission like some percentage of the total project amount. So, here Freelancer.com takes 10% but in a bad manner. For example, the takes $5 from project amount $30!! Now, this $5 will be debited from your Freelancer account immediately after accepting the project, no matter whether you have got paid from the project owner or not!! If you do not have positive balance in your account, then it will go to negative. But this system should be as Elance. The charges the whole amount from the Employer.
2. Bad Rating System:
Now this is the worst part I ever saw there. In last month I started one WordPress project (Project Creator kimara2009 ) and from last 45 days client is not responding to my mails, chats etc. etc. After completing the project I was waiting for money to arrive instead she stopped responding. Now that’s not an issue, I can leave 70~80$ but what about the completion rate? I asked Freelancer support that client is not responding from months, what to do? They ask me “Try sending her email once, but if you abort this project your completion rate will be affected!!”. Now what if some employer dies? Money is not a factor but the fact is your reputation and you will get bad reputation without doing something bad!!
Means, they have some un-balanced rating system, they think that Freelancers are the main reason for aborting a project, no matter whether the employer is bad or not!
3. Freelancer Supports Multiple Currencies But No Internal Currency Converter!!
Well, you can pay using USD, AUD, GBP, EUR etc. so remember you have to receive money on the currency that employer is using, so for example you have 100 USD and you are getting 50 GBP for another project. Then you will never get total money in one currency.
4. Bad Withdrawal Process Due To Multiple Currency
In addition to point 3, you can place payment request once a week! Well thats good but you cant place request with multiple currencies at a time. So, if you have 100 GBP, 30 USD and 32 EUR then you have to spent 3 weeks to get all those money!!
So what do you think about Freelancer? Should they correct or change these things or just fine?
this post is very usefull thx!
Freelancer made me million thanx for sharing
Yeah! Me too!
But I’m not satisfied with these things!! 
My completion record has gone down from 100% to 96% because someone i was doing a job for got banned so the job is stuck in my ongoing work and it will be forever. It sucks because I havnt done anything wrong
Hi Scott!
Its really bad!! Have u tried to get in touch with GAF support regarding your issue?
yes Freelancer need to change the features like always payment come in USD and withdrawal with in 1 days paypal or moneybookers.
Thanks
Rajesh
So glad I stumbled on this post! I’m also having an issue with an unresponsive employer. They hired me based on a submitted sample but now seem dissatisfied with my work and are taking forever to respond to emails, still haven’t posted a milestone payment, etc. I’m thinking of aborting but don’t want to ding my completion rate, so far I’ve only worked on two other projects so if I abort this one then my rate will be 2 of 3 or 67 percent! Not good when you’re starting out!! And such a shame because my previous two experiences with the site were absolutely wonderful and one led to an ongoing project.
Hi Martha!
I suggest you that – “Do not abort that job”. Try getting at least 10~12 ten star ratings and then abort that. If you abort now then you will get a bad impression on your profile.
Their completion rate system is absolute bull shit. This is the 5th time my completion rate % has gone down, and not because of me. I have complained to them over and over about how their algorithm is absolute nonsense, but their illogical asses can’t comprehend what I am telling them. Completion rate is based on many things, worst of all, time based completion rate. When you bid on a job, you bid on how much you will complete the job for, and you also how long it will take for you to complete the job. So, say some employer decides to post a job “Need a few XML tweaks, really easy job, need it done in 8 hours!!” So you bid 0 or 1 days, knowing that the employer (client) needs it done post haste. There you are, working on the job, and get it done in just two hours. So you send the client an email, letting them know that you have finished the job, and what do you know…. no response. Hours later, you email again “hey, I am all done with your job sir. Once payment is made, I will send the files right on over to you!” Still, no response. A day passes by, and the client finally responds and sends payment. Unfortunately for you, your completion rate now drops because the client was late in making a payment, going over the 1 day time frame you had bid on.
It is absolute bull shit because this reflects poorly, ONLY ON the freelancer! This has happened to me 5 times, drastically dropping my completion rate. Now every time I bid on a project, I have to explain to the prospective client why my completion rate is as low as it is, that I am not incompetent, rather the group of people who came up with the algorithm for the completion rate are the incompetent ones. As I said, I have written Freelancer many times on this but they don’t care, and all they do is copy and paste how the completion rate works, as a reply. It is a business killer. I would bid 500 days each and every time, but then you won’t get a bite. The employers choose their freelancers based on the freelancer’s rating, completion rate, bid, time frame, and past work. The first thing they see though, is your rating and completion rate. Doesn’t matter what you have done in the past. If your completion rate is sloppy, they will question you, or bypass you altogether.
I wish there were better sites to freelance on, because that one algorithm alone ruins business. I am tired of having to explain my completion rate to the prospective employer, when the reason it is where it is, is based on the time frame expiring even though the job was completed and the client was beyond elated with my work. Perhaps if more and more complain, they will pull their heads out of their disturbing place, and do something about this got damn algorithm.
Hi Vince!
Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
One thing you can do is to show employers this blog post – this will be cleared to them that what Freelancer does. Then you don’t have to explain every time whats the reason for low completion rate.
I have also tried many times to contact them for the rating system, but seems they needs good developer to upgrade it! BTW, I am using Guru.Com and Elance, you may use then too…
Hello:
As a rock-solid employer who just wants the work done and the freelancer paid, I have some serious issues with freelancer.com.
I have pretty much stopped using it due to the difficulty in finding good developers on there. I have switched over to Guru.
On Freelancer.com, my project offers would be flooded with spammy responses, it was obvious that 99 percent of the bidders had not read my project specs and were just bidding on everything. After combing through all the junk responses, I would usually end up with some incompetent who would wreck the project and then complain when I cancelled the job and had to start over.
No offense to anyone here, but Freelancer.com is pretty bad for employers too, or at least this one.
Hi Enzo. Even though it’s been months, I’d like to take this opportunity to address your concerns as well.
Freelancer.com still has one of the largest pools of professional, reliable and reputable freelancers in the world. Be assured that we have hundreds of great experts and specialists available, ready and eager to meet any project requirement.
Budding freelancers will eagerly bid for projects to prove themselves. As we have mentioned in our previous post, to gauge the reliability of a freelancer, we suggest that you view their Reputation. The higher his/her ratings are (5 being the best), the more reliable he/she is. While this goes a long way, we suggest that you dig deeper into the user’s profile and see how they communicate, how they wrote their bids and how much thought they put into their profile. This will help you to get the best freelancers to work with.
Additionally, we have some great articles and tips for employers such as yourself. Please visit this link http://www.freelancer.com/news/articles-providers-89.html to know more.
We hope we’ve helped and see you use again Freelancer.com. Thank you very much.
Am I the only one having complains about this site? No: I personally know many who now Hate this Scam Site.
Few years back, Getafreelancer was one of my favorite freelance site. I used to work there every day for years, but then something happened to their Management: I think site was sold to some other company or the Management was given in hands of another company. Whatever, happened, I do know that the CEO was changed and the new guy is a Thief [his name: Matt Barrie aka Matt the Thief].
As this is a big company, therefore they are using complicated techniques to Rip-Off its users.
I will mentioned at least two Lies of this site:
Freelancer had an Affiliate Program from the very beginning. Years back, All the rules were clearly mentioned and there were no lies.
Then Mr. Matt took over, the first thing he did was that: he changed the rules about affiliate earnings without telling the users:
Instead of giving commissions [commission = a percentage of fee that freelancer .com earned from the users we refer] to affiliate partners for unlimited time period, they decided to limit it to the first 3 months only.
So Am I here just because of this change? No: This is just one issue of many…
I also know that they have the right to change their Affiliate Program rules. That is not the problem…
The problem starts when the Mr. CEO tries to hide this change from its users. He wants users to think that they will be getting the commissions for Ever but in reality, it has been limited to only 3 months.
The main Affiliate Program Page does not mention this change: it says that we will get the commission and it does not mention the real part.
There is a Terms of Service Page: Deep down in this page, they have added one line which mentions this change.
Why have they not mentioned this important part of their affiliate policy in the Main Affiliate Program Page?
Because They are thieves: that is why…
I personally had been sending users to their site for so many years. Everyday, I was sending 120 or so Verified/Registered users to their site via mine. If we talk about the total traffic going to their site, that is much higher.
Everything was ok till 2009, when I first noticed a drop in my affiliate earnings. I tried to find the reason but as Freelancer was hiding this info deep inside their TOS page, I failed to find the cause of my earnings drop.
But then later in 2011, my earnings dropped to almost Zero.
This is when I contacted the thieves and also tried to find the reason myself too.
Now Here is the most important part:
These thieves replied to me telling me that commissions are now given only for 3 months and this change was implemented in 2009.
But wait: after 2009, my earnings did decrease but I was still earning from the old users who I had referred. The thieves said that due to a Bug, I was still getting commissions???
The truth is that: they were giving little bit of the commissions to me so that I do not suspect anything and I fail to find their Big Stupid Change. Why did they worry about me? Because at that time, the total number of verified users in their site in 24 hours was around 1200. In this figure, my site was contributing 120 or so users.
But then in 2011, they had developed other Scam techniques. Now their site gets much more traffic: verified users everyday are around 2500 or so. SO now they do not need me or other affiliate partners.
But Wait: Freelancer is still lying. Their Affiliate Page still does not contain the 3 months limit info. They still want users to advertise their sites all over the internet so that they can get their pockets full of money and in return, they want to give nothing.
Why will they not include the 3 months limit info on the main affiliate page?
Because they want to rip-off users more and more.
Also note that: sometime in 2010 or 2011, for few days, they did add the 3 months limit rule in the affiliate page: but this info was removed after few days. When I contacted their support, their cleverly sugar coated the situation via saying that they have not made any changes in their program since 2009 and then they removed that 3 months limit part from the affiliate page.
Now if someone from Freelance reads this rip-off report and decides to prove me wrong, by adding the 3 months limit info in the affiliate program page, this can happen. But for years, they had been hiding it from users:
This is just one scam going on at freelancer: they are using sophisticated techniques to scam users:
Like their CONTEST Sh*t
Thousands of users are working hard to advertise Freelancer all over the world: majority of these users will get NOTHING in the end: by the time they realize what Freelancer is doing, it would be too late. New victims replace the old ones.
They are using different kinds of Contests to scam in different ways.
But what, if we look at the Traffic Stats of all the freelance sites, then Freelancer stands at the Top? How is this possible?
Using their scam techniques, they are using victims to get more the more traffic and earn more for themselves.
But note one thing: the most number of Scam Projects are posted at Freelancer… I had been working there for years, I know what I am talking about.
There are all types of SCAM buyers at Freelancer.
Freelancer Management’s obsession about getting more traffic and seeing more projects opened in their site is making this site a garbage freelance site.
For example: if there are 1500 projects opened in one day, then may be 1000 of these projects will never end successfully: some of them will be totally useless projects that are opened by scam buyers. They call them Trial Projects.
Anyway, anyone who wants to join a freelance site: My suggestion is to stay away from Freelancer . com
There are many other Professional sites out there, like Guru . com
Hello everyone. My name is Emir and I work for Freelancer.com. I came across this post and we appreciate the feedback. We know it’s been a while but we’d like to address the concerns here.
We believe we have one of the most organized fee structures for an online outsourcing site. We’ve been transparent about it and we list them just about everywhere that we can on the site. When new users have registered, we bring them to our membership page where we present all of the available features (both free and paid) and the fees that come with it. It’s listed in our Terms and Conditions (TOC), (http://www.freelancer.com/page.php?p=info/terms) and in our Freelancer FAQ, specifically the Employers and Freelancer.com Membership Plans, Payments and Billing sections (http://www.freelancer.com/faq/view.php). We also have more information on fees and charges via this link, http://www.freelancer.com/news/articles-fees-84.html. With all of the features and services available for users, we strongly believe that our charges and fees are nominal.
As to your concerns about our rating system, the Freealancer.com User Reputation System is still by far the best way to gauge an Employer or Freelancer’s reliability. We recommend that you dig deeper into the user’s profile. See how much thought they have put into their profile, how good their communication was and how detailed they were in their proposal.
We’d like to assure you that Freelancer.com allows users to convert money on the site. Please go to the Finances Menu of the site and click on the Convert Currency.
We’ve also been clear about our withdrawal policies and we have an extensive FAQ to explain every facet of it via this link – http://www.freelancer.com/faq/view.php.
Thank you very much and we hope we’ve addressed your concerns. .
Hi Emir!
Thank you for responding to my review. FYI, this post was written almost one year ago so some of the issues described in the post are no longer exists. In Freelancer.com’s recent changes I really like the new reputation system and the currency converter is useful too. But still there are some issues left such as – Still there are no solution for those projects where employers are not responding, and its taking the completion rate down (I have 3 such projects pending). So there are a lot to fix and I hope you guys will overcome these issues asap so that Freelancers can make more money and get more security about their profiles.
Thanks
Hi Pankaj,
We’re glad that you like the improvements we’ve made to the user reputation system and financial transactions.
We’ve taken into account your feedback on the completion rates. Normally, completion rates are tied to payments made through Freelancer.com’s Milestone Payment System. To achieve a high completion rate, Freelancers should complete projects on time, and ensure they are paid in full through Freelancer.com’s Milestone Payment System. As for your concerns on employers who don’t respond, the only way we can help you with employers who don’t respond is if they elected to use the Milestone payment. You’ll be able to use the Dispute Resolution Service to do this.
We hope we’ve addressed your concerns. Thank you very much.
Hello All,
I wanted to share my experience on this site. Well I have made money on it. But there are huge problems on the site.
a.) Like Pankaj mentioned the completion rate rating is crap. Such a huge part. And the worst part is that the customer care folks including Mr Emir are not willing to listen. They keep claiming that their rating system is the best.
b.) Horrendous customer care support. These guys are seriously of no use. Including Mr Emir. All they have is pre-prepared answers with them that they will post. Few small queries they will resolve easily but for others you will either not get a reply or it will come after months. These guys can really make you cry. And I have almost cried. Really…I did reach that point.
c.) There are a ton of technical glitches on the website. For example, recently one of the feedback customer left was not being displayed. It has been 6 months. The issue has not been solved.
If you are a starting out at freelancing my suggestion would be to possibly use Elance. If you already use freelancer then you are stuck. We just have to hope that people like Mr Emir pull their socks up. Because I do have a few friends from Florida who all use the site. What they say is Mr Emir is very pro active on the blogs, which is very good. But he will not look into matters deeply as he has promised. This is despite sending mails to his personal id.
Good luck!!!
I experienced two extremes, one where the support/helpdesk gave me generic answers, and another support member of freelancer.com’s helpdesk contacting me first as if looking for a textmate, I mean if you are a representative of a company, you should put in your text that information in your intro.
Hi there!
I join freelancer now and looking for job.but no one gonna
give me job or project.Although i updated my profile but nothing happens.
And also there are many scam projects.how to know about them.
Hi there,
You need to be patient about projects as your profile is new so you need to convince the employer to award you a job. Just try to initiate a communication with him/her by asking questions in your bid. If s/he replies then you will get a chance to win that project but you have to communicate with them in a professional manner.
About scam projects, just try to bid on those projects whose employer has couple of reviews, that will minify scam projects easily!
Lemme know if you have any other queries.
Thanks
Hi,
We just created AlaTask, a Facebook Application that should help users post Task and earn money through the power of social network. We are not taking any fees and we believe that you can select the person you work with, based on their Facebook profile, or based on the recommendations of friends in common.
I hope you will give a try! Please let me know if you have any comments.
Thanks,
Astrid
Hi Astrid,
Thanks for the comment and yep, definitely I’ll try with the app.
Cheers
How is this any different from Freelancer.com? I’ve been getting my jobs at the site regularly. What makes your app different? I’ve been blessed that I’ve been awarded with a number of great jobs at Freelancer and it even has the Rewards System that lets you earn credits if you keep on using it. Accumulate enough credits and you can buy extra bids, and even face time with the Freelancer CEO. I hope you can develop more features to your app but for now and probably for the foreseeable future , i’ll stick with Freelancer.
Hello,
Thanks for this information.
I am about to start my freelance career, but I am finding it difficult to get a job using freelancing websites available, can you please tell me should I choose freelancing or give up.. I have 10+ years of exp in software development for web applications.
Actually, what i have found is that now open source applications are more in demand than MS applications.
Please guide.
Thanks in advance!
Hi Hemlata,
There is no reason to Give Up on freelancing! Coz this is only one place where you can earn money according to your requirements. What I will suggest you is to go through this blog post – How To Be A Successful Freelancer? and to check with your profile standards. After you fix your profile, try at Freelancer.com or at Elance.Com to grab projects. I hope that will work for you.
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