If you don’t know what a barcamp is, this is a an “international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. The day consists of sessions proposed by attendees and the schedule is created on site the morning of the event. BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn from each other in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.”

This was my first barcamp, or unconference type of event I’ve attended and I must say it has been by far the most interesting conference I’ve ever participated. So much better, engaging and with great conversation than a the usual conference where someone on the stage presents his slides. I’ve learned many things and this post is to outline my takeaways from this event. Here are just the most important ones:

Takeaway 1: meeting with other freelances.
Designers, photographers, writers, programers, or lawyers, all were freelancers. Even if working in different fields and with different experiences it was great to see that others have the same problems, and experience the same joy to work as freelancers. It is great to meet other people that are the same as yourself, and have the same values.

Takeaway 2: working from home… or not…
During the session about how people are working from home and maintain their sanity, I realized that for each person that works from home the situation is different. Some like it to work from home, some tried various solutions like working from a caffe shop, a library, a store, or even while driving in a train. My takeaway is to look for what works best for each individual and the particular type of work.

Takeaway 3: coworking
I’ve heard before about coworking and thought it is a very interesting concept and wanted to give it a try. Still from what I knew before I thought it was just a place to work, where you pay a free and have your desk, power and internet connection to do your thing. Now I realized that this is much more than that, and normally in such places the most important thing is the community of people that work there, that help and support each other. I would love to find a close by coworking place in the south bay area, but unfortunately as nextspace, most of them are in the city to far for a daily commute.

Takeaway 4: volunteer work; helping the community.
I was very proud to see that many freelances are involved in volunteer work and community projects. Even if we are so busy with projects there is always time for such great actions where everyone can contribute with their experience and expertise for their community. I know for sure that I will dedicate more time for this in the future.

Takeaway 5: networking, connections, promote your services.
You need to have an elevator pitch for your yourself, being able to explain who you are, what you do and why you are good the job in less that 30 sec. A freelancer needs to always market his services and not stop doing this even when he has a full plate of work; workflow can change in the future, and it will be much harder then to do this when pressured by the need to find new works quickly. I must admit that I’ve done this myself, being much to busy with regular work to have the time to market myself, and even dropped some potential clients because I didn’t had time. I will definitely have to change this approach.

Takeaway 6: productivity technique – pomodoro
Chris Burbridge mentioned about this great method he has been using to increase his productivity called pomodoro. It is a time boxing technique where you focus on only one task for 25 mins and then take a 5min brake; this is called a pomodoro after the name in italian of a kitchen timer in the form of a tomato. After 4 pomodoro’s you take a longer brake. For more details check out the online docs at http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/ It makes sense to me, and I will try it out to see if it’s working for my workflow that is rather heretic with many interruptions as you would expect for a busy sysadmin

In conclusion this was an awesome event and I will definitely try to attend the next one in Santa Cruz – October, 2nd 2010.

Each test will cost ‘only’ $4.95 (and apparently this is the ‘discounted rate’)

This is rather late is you ask me as Elance had this for a long time now, and for free! Instead of trying to get more money Guru should have launched this as a free service, as I am not sure who would want to pay for this… I would have liked to see an external service like BrainBench (or even ExpertRating) integration with all these freelaning sites so you don’t have to take tests for each site individually.

I have been using elance during the past 3 years, effectively helping me to build my freelancing career. Even now, since I am no longer actively looking for new projects, I am still rated as one of the overall top 10 individual providers (from a total of 34,121) – username net-force. I still have a few projects I am working on, and normally I am looking at elance’s new projects to see if there is something interesting and challenging to bid on .

Today when I got the elance notification that they will be offering a prepaid MasterCard® as an alternative withdrawal method, I immediately applied for it. Yes, it comes a little late, even after smaller marketplaces offered this, but in any case this is good news and I will definitely use it; and I am sure many people will be happy by this addition also.

The Elance Prepaid MasterCard® (Payoneer powered as GAF card) is a debit card that has a prepaid limit and can be used everywhere that MasterCard® is accepted. Any service provider with a paid membership can apply for the Elance Prepaid MasterCard®.

• Use Everywhere MasterCard® is accepted. MasterCard® is accepted by more merchants around the globe than any other card. Use your Elance Prepaid MasterCard® anywhere to purchase more supplies and services for your own business, or for personal use.
• Withdraw cash from any ATM. MasterCard is accepted by ATMs worldwide, allowing you to withdraw cash from your funded Elance Prepaid MasterCard anytime in your local currency. Here is also the list of commissions.
• Security. As long as the PIN stays uncompromised, funds are MasterCard protected even if your card is lost or stolen. A replacement card will be mailed to you and the balance transferred.
• Convenience. With the Elance Prepaid MasterCard®, no bank account is needed.
• Access. All cardholders enjoy online access to view their account, payments, balance and transaction history 24/7.

I am really looking forward to have my elance card sent in March, and will start using it immediately. Btw. if you apply before March 29, 2008, the $10 card activation fee is waived. To apply, simply login to your Elance account, click ‘My Account’ and scroll to apply.

ps. Next, it is expected that elance will be also releasing sometimes soon (february/march) the possibility to withdraw money directly to a paypal account .

Even if we are freelancers we are very busy persons (probably even more than regular employees that have their job secured, and not work on the project), and in such a huge amount of resources a newone can waste a lot of time (on searching, bidding, following up, etc.) and became very frustrated if he will not use the appropriate sites. This is the reason for this post to list the best freelance marketplace sites from my experiences and also to show how you can spot in notime a small site that will most certainly just make you loose time.

How do you know if a freelancer marketplace site will be good for you or not?

These are just general tips, and you can tweak them based on the profile of your job and the particularities of it and also based on your individual needs (like for ex. I would not like to work on a hourly rate, but I would like to find outgoing monthly paid projects, etc.)

Rule 1: NO ADS on the marked place site. If you see such a site that is full with ads (normally google ads) then it means that this is a small business. What are they trying to do? Are they trying to get their money from ads (don’t get me wrong many peoples have done great business based on ads, but here we are looking for a stable company that most certainly will intermediate the payments – and will hold the payments you get on projects, etc.). Personally if I see a freelance marketplace site with ads all over the place, I have finished my visit immediately.

Rule 2: Projects: see how many projects are available. Would you be interested in bidding on them? See the projects related to your own field (some sites might be good for one type of job – let’s say programmers, but not appropriate for others). On the projects look what is the average bid if that is pubic, or the award price for closed ones.

Rule 3: Providers: see what other peoples like you were able to accomplish. How many projects were they able to complete? How much money did they made on the site? This will also show the competition you will be facing and also the prices that the marketplace is normally awarding projects.

Rule 4: commissions? withdrawals methods? See if you can get the money you will be making to your own local account. What are the commissions you will pay?

Best Freelance Marketplace Sites

To help new freelancers (and maybe others also), I have compiled a list of best freelance marketplace sites. The list is sorted based on my own impressions. Feel free to comment on it if you think I have left something important out.

1. eLance
http://www.elance.com/
- paid monthly/yearly subscriptions to make bids.
- commission for each project/payment (6.75% to 8.75%, with a minimum fee of $10 per project)
- one free wire transfer per month

2. Guru
http://www.guru.com/
- free account (limited to 10 bids/month) with higher commissions than normal one
- paid monthly/yearly subscriptions with 100bids/mo
- many projects posted, but few get awarded

3. RentACoder
http://www.rentacoder.com/
- mostly for programmers
- projects rated at smaller prices than elance/guru

4. GetAFreelancer
http://www.getafreelancer.com/

5. ScriptLance
http://www.scriptlance.com/

6. oDesk
http://www.odesk.com/

7. GetACoder
http://www.getacoder.com/

8. iFreelance
http://www.ifreelance.com/

9. SoloGig
http://www.sologig.com/

10. ContractedWork
http://www.contractedwork.com/

For me personally only elance and guru have worked with good results, but maybe for other type of works other sites might be useful also. Others that I found ‘interesting’ but not very useful for me personally were oDesk (because of their hourly rate scheme but I haven’t found interesting projects) and Onforce (because of the onsite work provided that was the only one targeted towards that, but of course not useful for me either).

I will conclude with a list of what I consider smaller such sites (just so you can test my above tips ):
Project4Hire
FreelanceWork
AgaveBlue
FreelanceJobSearch
FreelanceAuction
Mac Freelancer
WriterLance
Hirelancer

Anyway, today I have just received this notice from GAF that they are releasing their own Debit Card that can be used online as any MasterCard® card, and also to withdraw cash in local currency at ATMs around the world. Wow! This sounds great and I would love to use this option on my elance/guru account.

Even though I can’t see any of the commissions charges (if any) for the withdrawal, this looks like a great addition for any GAF provider. For me the projects found there still look very small and not interesting at this time, but with this change maybe more buyers/sellers will join the site.

Official GetAFreelancer announcement:
http://www.getafreelancer.com/news/global-payments-49.html