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The Online Freelancing Guide  >  An Analysis and Review of Popular Online Freelancing Marketplace Sites

Caveats, Disclaimers, and So Forth 1 Project Quantity and Marketplace Size

One of the reasons that the reviews of freelancing sites I read all over the Internet are of limited value is that they are one-dimensional: they focus only on volume. These articles are nothing more than “top ten” lists, sorted by the number of projects on various sites every month, or the dollar values of those projects.

Well, market volume is not the be all and end all of assessing a project marketplace from the perspective of either a freelancer or a buyer. And that’s even more the case for people who care about quality, which I assume applies to anyone reading this guide. After all, there are a bunch of fast food chains that serve millions of people every day, but that doesn’t mean those are the places where you want to eat.

In order to analyze and assess the various online freelancing sites fairly and accurately, it’s necessary to first come up with a proper set of criteria by which to compare them. To do so, I drew on my extensive experience using and reviewing these sites to come up with a set of what I believe to be the most important factors that indicate a site’s usefulness to independent freelancers. In this section I will lay out the major criteria I have chosen, and explain to you in detail what I look for in each of these dimensions. The reviews of individual freelancing sites are patterned to follow these criteria, in order to help you understand clearly how I am assessing the sites, and to let you make comparisons between them.

Note that these factors are not listed in any particular order to imply what’s most important or least important; that’s really up to you to decide.

Caveats, Disclaimers, and So Forth 1 Project Quantity and Marketplace Size