| Hello mmisu Freelancer CEO here. I thought I'd address some of the issues you brought up. We did increase the membership plan to $50/mo from $29/mo simply because the volume of projects have skyrocketed and as a result the volume of jobs performed by standard members had likewise increased. The $50/mo standard membership give a 50% discount on commissions to 5% from 10%, so there is tremendous value there. We have lots of users earning six figures (up to almost $1m per annum), so these memberships are quite reasonably priced for the benefits. We removed the buyers name but not the feedback. We did that after an overwhelming number of requests from employers to take it off. The problem has been that freelancers have been spamming and harassing employers by guessing their contact details (e.g. trying similar skype names). Of course we care about the coder's experience and we actively solicit ways to improve the site from our users. Your comment of "if you pay $2 your bid will be better placed than a bid of a coder with a better rating/history" is exactly how Google and Facebook works in terms of a small number of paid listings above organic results. We order freelancers from the best to the worst feedback in the organic results in the bid list. We have three slots available for paid sponsored bids above this. This gives people an opportunity who may be new but really want to stand out in the bid list a chance to break in to the market. We think this is a very fair way of doing things. We don't tolerate spam projects for free work, how would that make sense? Our primary business model is to charge a commission for introductions- after both parties have talked, discussed the project details, pricing and a prepayment (milestone payment) has been made, not before. We do offer financing protection for buyers and sellers through our milestone payment system, dispute resolution and arbitration systems. Your comment that we offer "no financial protection" is incorrect. Regards
Matt |