To give context to this question, allow me to explain my situation.
I have been working as a freelance developer for a few years now and at times the work load gets a little difficult to handle. That's when I hop on to websites like freelancer.com and upwork to find a few other freelancers to help me out. The results have been really bad, bad quality developers at extreme rates cause they have have paid accounts.
Somehow, on multiple occasions I've managed to find skilled and in-budget developers on craigslist. I presume this is because of craigslist's dead simple methodology and lack of rating systems or paid accounts.
Taking this into consideration, I built a little web app called FreelanceList.in (http://freelancelist.in/ still in beta.. or alpha-ish) thats follows the craigslist philosophy but focuses on freelancers.
Now the current situation is that I'm not able to get freelancelist.in off the ground! I'm good at building products with a team but have no experience with branding or promotions.
The projects I work on as a freelancer usually have an active audience or a good brand value hence, I have no idea about launching this off the ground.
What do you think should be the next step ? While you're at it, please leave a feedback too :) Thank you!
In reddit's case they were providing real content, just created by them. In this case the content is completely fake.
I also think this would be harmful to the business. I have very few interactions with a service before I make a judgement on them, if most of my interactions go nowhere (as would be the case if they are fake) I would stop using the service.
However if the service was just slow I would be likely to still use it, just check it less frequently.
Of course one viable way of adding content would be to repost content from other sites - with suitable indications of course.
Having people waste time bidding on fake projects that have no chance of happening is not the same end product as a realistic site where projects are posted by real people and have a chance of happening.
Also I'll tell you from experience: Even if your product is 100% real people who lose their bids are going to think it is a fraud. If you site actually is a fraud you are just going to burn through all the early adopters extremely quickly. The strategy should be the opposite --- have the content be so good that early adopters feel like they've hit a goldmine.
OP should consult a lawyer about the relevant legal and licensing requirements for running a recruitment agency.
First, your business has to solve a very intense chicken or the egg problem. Quality freelancers will not join until there are good projects. And you won't get good projects until you have quality freelancers. In freelancing, the problem is even more difficult to solve as both sides of the exchange require quite a large investment in time. Listing yourself as a freelancer (and building a high quality listing) takes work. And listing a project also takes work. This is an obscenely difficult problem to solve and networking alone will not get you there.
Second, you decided to enter a market with a ton of competition. Your competitors range from the simple but effective (Craiglist) to the complicated but mostly useless. People who list projects are wise to the game - they know that most sites deliver shit. And freelancers are also wise. Whenever I've joined a freelancer website, I've been inundated with 'offers' to do 200 hours of work for $500 USD. How do you provide better value to both sides of the market?
Third, your website is quite bad. If I just navigated there by chance, I'd have no idea what I was even looking at. Much less would I have any idea what to actually do. Your language and choice of words betray a serious lack of professionalism. Work on your copy a touch and maybe find someone to read it over - preferably someone who will tell you the unvarnished truth.
Consider:
"Due to some amount of trolling on the site, filters to be implemented and the site will be cleaned up within the next 24 hours."
That's not only a grammatical nightmare, but you're coming right out and telling people not to trust you!
Or, consider "no bullshit listings for freelancers." At best, that's an extremely unprofessional attempt to sound edgy and hip.
Good luck with this!! You seem like a good person and I'd love to see you fix this (badly broken) business.
The site was just a weekend experiment and is not even close to complete, so I'm at a stage where I can consider all your advice and implement whatever seems best for this project. - Clearly nobody thinks the title is professional, so that'll be gone for good - A lot of people said they had no idea what the site offered on the first look, so a landing page probably needs to be added
The idea of a bare minimal open sourced app is to build a product based on user feedback cycle instead of copying what other freelance websites are doing. This is the only way we can have an app that truly makes a freelancer happy!
(Monjya Street) http://www.tokyometro.jp/en/attractions/monja_st/
Have you tried running any adverts? Ultimately, I suspect it comes down to either running a marketing campaign yourself or networking enough to find someone else who's prepared to handle that side.
I'd be great if you guys could point me in the right direction but within the context of this project .
To a large extent, networking involves a lot of doing. You can read all the theory (and you should!), but you can only become comfortable networking by spending a lot of time meeting people. To this effect, one of the best decisions I've ever made was to work in public spaces.
Networking is like sport. It takes practice, in the sense of practicum.
Finally host your own landing page, stick Google analytics on it, and track how your visitors behave with Inspectlet.com and experiment with A/B tests (split tests). If you want to learn how to do this on AWS check out my course and I'll throw in a coupon and save 70% https://www.udemy.com/go-landing-pages/?couponCode=HACKERNEW...
Many thanks and good luck!
Is it Social Media for Dummies or is it actual discussion of strategies?
So get your Producthunt invite, build some Karma on Hackernews, share useful links on Twitter and gain a following. Create Facebook pages, write tutorials for your product, do Reddit AMAs, do Reddit selfposts, etc
Try to add value as much as possible. All the best marketers I know are doing Youtube screencasts for free and showing their prospects that the company has a genuine passion for the product(s).
As mentioned in another comment below I think a landing page is required to describe what the site is offering
You eventually want a product that users come to on their own, but in the beginning, you could talk to users on both sides to get them to come to the table. If you are interested in the space, this should come easy!
For instance, talk to people who want apps and sites created. Formulate their requirements into really great, attractive, clear posts on the job board. Give them logins to your site so that they can see the post. Now you have real users, and real job listings.
Now "advertise" the job listings, and/or your site in general with freelancers (tweeting the jobs, tweeting at freelancers, announcements with popular hashtags, telling your freelancer friends about the new site, etc etc). As others have said, when there are job listings, the freelancers will stick after their first click when they see there are listings.
Get feedback from both sides. I think the freelancers will be more able/willing to communicate electronically their feedback, and you will already be in touch with some people who had apps/site projects, so you can get feedback from some of them directly. Rinse and repeat many times.
I do think the existing freelancer sites need improvement in the personal touch area, so I think it's totally possible for you to compete, and even a major advantage to you in the beginning stages since I think success will hinge upon you doing things like this, which don't scale.
Good luck, please post a follow up to let us know how it goes!
When you can't keep up with your listings then you have "new problems" and new problems pay way better than old problems.
#1 Is your product aimed at freelancers like yourself as you describe, for when "work load gets a little difficult to handle" and these busy freelancers are looking for "other freelancers to help" do some of the heavy lifting, but you (busy freelancer) remain the point person between the client on an already established project?
Or
#2 Is your product aimed at everyone i.e. competing directly with freelancer.com and upwork.com where you are trying to: (a) get a market of clients to post their project needing a freelancer and (b) have a community of freelancers for clients to hire from?... With your revenue being some version of taking a small cut per job.
I realize your site is pre-beta and not finished. But knowing the actual goal here helps provide feedback and better advice for next steps.
Side note: How to get people to use _______ (fill in blank) when you suck at networking has very different answers depending on what the product is. Sucking at networking is rarely the main issue. I suck/don't enjoy networking but it turns out it only gets you started, other kinetic factors take over quickly (word of mouth by clients is an example).
A site for freelancers needing extra manpower from skilled "sub-freelancers" isn't such a bad idea. It could be sustainable and profitable. I wouldn't discount this idea too quickly.
IMHHO ignore "eventually will have to move toward xyz" thoughts creeping in at this point. No path is a must follow. Maybe there are third or fourth directions it could turn toward.
Again, hard to give concrete advice with the limited info, but:
(I) The site is not ready or close to ready. Start with a newsletter or email list maybe? Can be weekly or ad hoc. Potential hook: "Are you a freelancer who would like to be notified by email ONLY when a fellow freelancer needs some extra help on a big project that pays $ and requires skills you have?"...Time needed, skills needed, pay involved and lead FL contact info will be listed. Sign up here!!! (you can have check boxes for skills during sign up - verify if you can).
Or
(II) Decide if you want to compete/join freelancer.com and upwork.com market. Why? How? What's different? How different? Are you sure you want to?...Networking with freelancers won't be your problem - they will come. Client side noise is a bigger problem (some people call/lump this with "CAC"). Displacing or joining market incumbents will be a pain; Need a =>product and money and luck and energy. Not impossible biz to get into but a slog.
Start a new HN thread when that project #(II) is actually beta ready and you have a 1-2 sentence why your site vs freelancer.com or whomever.
I vote for #(I). I bet there are freelancers who need help on big projects and are looking for quality, reliable second pairs of hands to sub-contract work to. Use that experience and email list to decide if you want to devote your life to #(II) as that option is a not a side gig type of endeavor. GL!
A: Ask this question on HN mentioning your product!
Damn... you're good!
Tricking people is not a good marketing strategy. Part of the reason I visit HN is to see what others are doing. "Hey, look at this business I'm lauching" would have been an infinitely better headline.
Don't deceive. People will resent you for even the smallest, most insignificant deceit. Exhibit A: me, right now. Objectively, you haven't really hurt me, but I'm still ticked off. ;)
They are your target market, no?
Interview them. Find their biggest pain with using craigslist to find work.
That is how you will "sell" your service. You solve their problem, and you can articulate that in an ad or forum post.
(1) Your real market is the people/companies seeking to hire freelancers. You need to focus the site on that. Once you start having jobs listed, the freelancers will come. Otherwise, as a freelancer there is no real reason to join unless you offering some other benefit. (2) It's fine if you only want to have freelancers from Mumbai or Bangalore, but if you want listings you need to open that up to more than just those to locations. (3) Change the Title of the page "No bullshit Listings for Freelancers" really doesn't sound professional and if you are targeting people/companies seeking to hire, may be a turn-off. (4) Create a landing page that tells what and why. I understand you want "simple" but at the same time you need to explain what/why/how.
Your user experience is ... void of any considerations for your user. No way to search for a particular set of projects, no way to see potential matches, no way to see how old a particular request is, no way to unselect a city, etc.
I would strongly recommend you avoid marketing and promotions until you have iterated several times on real user feedback. Your current product will most likely leak users so you'll just be wasting money.
Don't try to get user testing through marketing - that's super inefficient. Just pay people directly to use your product and give you some real world feedback. Much faster, cost effective, and easier to do.
Don't spend effort or money to grow your website until you've validated that your website actually solves a real problem and does it well. It doesn't cost that much to validate and it can save you a ton of wasted effort.
I've skipped this step several times, and I can tell you it is not worth it. You can spend a year marketing and growing your project only to realize that it's just not a strong enough value add to be a business.
Your brain doesn't want to hear rejection so it often skips this step. But listen to reason. You can spend a week paying real users to tell you how much your app sucks, or you can spend a year of your time and energy and thousands of dollars marketing to come to the same conclusion.
Don't skip this!!!
I went to the site and it was blank. Pressed refresh and took too long to load. I would never return to this site under normal circumstances, but since you made a case for yourself here I'll check it out another time -- if it's slow then I'd probably never go back. Use amazon to auto-scale your instances if you get too much traffic, or .. well really do whatever you can because a slow website will kill your business.
I am a startup with limited capital who needs competent freelancers, your site seems apt. Hope it works when I visit it next time.
One thing that might solve your chicken/egg/community problem AND troll problem is an invite-only list of a few dozen people.. make your product seem scarce and special, and then take great care of the few users you have and grow that way.
Lecture 4 - Building Product, Talking to Users, and Growing (Adora Cheung)
It's really frustrating as I know there must be really good guys out there but I suspect they establish 121 relationships quickly and move off a platform clipping their earnings. Or some guys start well for some jobs and then you can see they farm off work and the quality goes to hell.
I've considered this problem myself. The best solution I can think of is for a platform with physical offices in likely cities for cheaper devs. People work for an 'in-house' projects a known project manager that has high QA standards, and after X time proving them-self they get clearance to 'freelance' from where-ever and bid for projects independently. Or simply not allowed on the platform.
It would come at a cost of human management, but I imagine many would pay a premium for known quality. And given the amount of freelancer to jobs ratio there seems room to cull lower performers and maintain a stable of quality devs. I guess it would be something between Toptal and Freelancer....
Feel free to steal it. I really need something like this.
I know you said you are bad at networking, but the market doesn't care. You'll have to choose: either waste your time for basically zero response advertising online, or learn how to get over or hide your personal issues long enough to make networking work.
I didn't used to like it, either. I have very strong opinions about modern corporate culture (emphasis on the "cult"), that it grates me raw to see so many other people aspire to such hell. I had to learn to just keep my mouth shut, avoid the instant gratification of telling someone they were wrong to avoid turning then off of me so I could focus on my long term goal of building my business.
Networking isn't scalable unless you have something industry/domain specific and can reach influencers (top bloggers, users, etc.). It's probably better to work on appealing SEO, design and succint message in a way which automatically sells potential customers on its value. Let the product sell itself 24x7 so you don't have to do as much work. Then, once profit is coming in, think about a sales team and hustling others whom don't/won't self-discover. At the beginning, focus on schelping to solve real/hard problems, providing fanatical support to early customers and other things that don't scale; and eventually make the product experience so compelling they voluntarily spread the word as well.
2. Develop a persona for your target customer. Make it tangible so you can imagine your end-user. Imagine how they go about their days. What their interest are; what their hobbies are. What they do in the morning; what they do at night. Their fears and challenges. What is the challenge that your product is solving for these people?
3. Now, you should have a sense of who you want to reach. It might be quite a broad category... 'Heads of Business Development in start-ups', 'Design freelancers on PeoplePerHour'. At this point you should be in a position to think about where you might be able to find lists of these people. Go niche, so you don't overreach. It's easy to capture a small market than a big one. Start small, and grow to new markets. Maybe, if you're building a freelancer website, it'll mean dialing down your target market to 'design freelancers in Aspen'. Try to find a directory of people online that meet this category.
4. Create a database of all these people. Only start with 100. It should have their names, companies, email addresses, and a notes column. Fill all this data in. This is a list of potential early adopters.
5. Draft these people a short, targeted email laying out in CLEAR and DIRECT language your valuable proposition. 'I spotted your were a design freelancer in Aspen. I'm building... I thought you might be interested because... Is this something you might want to use?' Follow up a week later with an even shorter note for people that didn't reply. RESPECT their details. Don't spam them. This is a PERSONALISED message.
6. You will receive two responses (a) 'yes' -- that's great, you have an early adopter; track their use of the service and value them; (b) 'no' -- that's even better, ask them why they don't think it's a good fit for them; ask them for feedback; why isn't it attractive; what would make it attractive?
7. Fill in your database with all these responses. After you have 20-50 responses, you have some important intelligence about whether you have built a product which ACTUALLY solves a market problem (i.e., you have market fit); if not, pivot -- build a product that responds to these people's feedback.
8. Rinse and repeat.
Sorry for the plug... people have told me that the most time consuming bit of this process is finding these people and their emails. That's why I built Find Emails Team. You can find it here: http://findemailsteam.com. For a few dollars, we can put a manual team to work to find these contact details for you.
Best of luck!
What immediately comes to my mind is Justin.tv. It was originally just a website featuring one guy constantly livestreaming his life via a camera on his hat. Eventually it became a livestreaming platform and gave birth to what's now Twitch.
I've read a few comments in this thread to the effect of "develop a personal brand," and I think that's exactly what you need to do. Firmly establish yourself as a high-quality, in-demand freelancer, and then transition towards forming a network of freelancers. Maybe initially it'll only be people you've directly worked with whose quality you can personally vouch for. Once you show you can provide quality talent and have drawn in clients, then you can start opening up your platform to more freelancers.
I'll note that I don't have much entrepreneurial experience, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
