Ask HN: What would you do to fix freelancer for hire sites?

As an american looking for freelance work, I find it hard to find a place to get clients that are willing to pay reasonable rates for skilled talent.

On the other hand, whenever I try to hire, my compromises are usually poor communication skills or sub-par code.

I've used freelancer for hire sites to get specialized work done, and they're not horrible from the hiring end.

Here's what I would do to fix things on the freelancer side - establish a minimum price per hour/price per project. Think about "The Ladders" - a job site that established itself as only for job seekers for $100,000+ jobs.

What if the market was only $75/hour and up? And both developers and clients had to be invited?

The biggest problem is that clients on those sites want you to build them facebook in two weeks for $300. People willing to work for this type of client are your run of the mill php spaghetti coders. They tend to attract the worst of both coders and clients.

I agree with jefflinwood's comment. Setting a price floor at a reasonable rate will weed out the "$300 for facebook" clients. I'm not sure, however, how you would weed out the bad coders.

Checkout http://www.taskarmy.com/, I believe its created by a freelancer keeping freelancer in mind.