[philip1209]

I'm a digital nomad who as in the same position. I couldn't find contract work for high-skill engineers. So, I started building a marketplace for it. Today that's Moonlight - we are still small, bootstrapped, and growing, but we have companies ranging from startups to a publicly-traded company hiring through the site. Hourly rates average a little over $100US.

https://www.moonlightwork.com

[acconrad]

I've been on Moonlight since it has launched and has not panned out very well for me. I'm in that ballpark of rates and most projects have been duds. Only 1 lead to a prospect and he balked on the rate (again, in the ballpark of what Phil is advertising here).

[philip1209]

Thanks for being on Moonlight! We have been working hard to increase the number of jobs. It's been about doubling month over month and has been our #1 focus. We are working on a lot of product and marketing initiatives focused on that.

It looks like you've submitted a few proposals - unfortunately, half of the jobs stopped before selecting a developer. If we had more posts on the site, getting declined would be more of a numbers game and less noticeable. Still, keep at it - looks like you have two open matches right now!

The good news is that, among people who get selected for jobs, they often get rehired again and again by the same client.

[acconrad]

I'll give it a shot again in 6 months. I've since landed a contract (not related to the platform) but my gut is that my effort was not worth it. I got much better results from my own local networking at higher rates.

[philip1209]

Clarification: 3 of the 7 projects you applied to were canceled without selecting a project - but this isn't a representative sample.

[m1n1]

How have those projects been duds?

[acconrad]

They either ask for a dev and then take it back (half of the time, according to Phil above), or my guess is they think I'm too expensive (and yet, I'm still priced less than the average that you see for a senior front-end/rails developer). The proposals I submit are highly targeted - what they need is exactly what I can provide. And yet only 1 proposal has lead to a statement of work, and they rejected it.

Whereas a serious amount of networking locally yielded me a 10% pay increase and a 6 month contract.

I think this is why you get all of this advice saying that these kinds of sites are a race to the bottom and not worth investing too much time into.

[orware]

Neat site, I just signed up...hopefully I can find a neat company to do some additional work with (working for a college is great from a stability perspective, but it doesn't always force you into the most interesting of projects...so the ones I come up with I have to find time for outside of the normal day to day work stuff that comes up...hopefully if I can find a good company to do some extra work for it'll help provide an outlet for me to continue my personal growth :-).

[philip1209]

Definitely! It's a great way to experiment with technologies that you are passionate about, or use open-source libraries that you have been working on!

[mekpro]

Looks great ! Just hope your product or Stripe would provide payment system to more countries as soon as possible. Looking forward to join.

[lza]

Just a word of warning. I signed up and their signup process requires you to link your card or bank account with stripe. And then the nightmare starts when you want to have access to the account at stripe. Stripe says you need to contact moonlight, moonlight says you need to contact stripe. I asked both of them to cancel my account. Moonlight replied that they cancelled it but stripe says they still have it and I can't get it cancelled. So yeah once you sign up your payment account is at the will of moonlight website.

Reminds me of that friends episode when Chandler tries to quit the gym LOL.

[elephant0xffff]

What differentiates you from freelancer.com and upwork.com?

The Problem at freelancer.com (currently testing that) is that it is hard to differentiate yourself as a good contractor it seems more like quantity then quality. However isn't that just the result from getting big?

Maybe there is an inherent stochastic process in freelancing platforms that lowers the average rate as more people get on it. So your main challenge should be to avoid that but that seems like a hard problem.

Toptal does screening, which does not scale, Upwork and Freelancer do nothing (or do upselling via courses, bid-boosts, etc.).

[flarco]

Awesome. Can you share with us how it's going with getting more clients on your platform to hire contractors? I know competing with upwork and toptal must be a challenge.

[philip1209]

Yes! It's our #1 focus. We continually experiment with marketing and product changes to increase the number of jobs. The good news is that, when a client starts hiring, they are likely to work again with their contractors, and they are very to post additional jobs using Moonlight. We launched three months ago, and the money we pay out to contractors has about doubled every month since then, and we are on track for another record week this week.

[alexman]

Would be great if you give hint about how much info/time is need to complete the signup on the developer onboarding page: https://www.moonlightwork.com/onboarding/developer

[philip1209]

That's reasonable - thanks for bringing it up. Our #1 focus right now is improving the client experience to get more jobs on Moonlgiht, but redoing the developer onboarding experience is next up on the list. I've logged your feedback for that project!

[langitbiru]

I am still waiting for cryptocurrency or Paypal support. Stripe is not supported in my country.

[philip1209]

We looked at cryptocurrency very closely. Basically, money laundering laws and slow adoption of crypto among businesses make it really hard to get adoption among clients: https://www.moonlightwork.com/blog/cryptocurrency-and-compan...

I have a moral opposition to Paypal after using it personally, but we are looking at solutions such as Payoneer to expand country support!

It's worth pointing out that you can incorporate in Estonia or the USA (e.g. through Stripe Atlas) to get access to Stripe.

[tasuki]

+1 for more countries. Wrt incorporating in Estonia, I suppose while bringing money from there to my home country, I might be liable for more taxes...

[fmntf]

Really nice. I signed up. I have a question: why are you forcing me to setup stripe in the signup phase? I would prefer to do it later (when I get some work). Of course getting paid would be a priority for me, but not now.

[philip1209]

It's mainly identity verification and fraud reduction. The whole app strongly relies on Stripe Connect, so we also want to make sure you can get paid automatically.

[bowlich]

Cool.

Signing up, to give it a try. I've got a FT day job but have been wanting to try to crack the nut of how to land a contracting position on the side for a while now.

[leetbulb]

Just signed up :D Thanks!