Freelancer.com Grows from Strength to Strength; Crosses the 50 Million User Mark

Freelancer.com, the World’s largest freelancing and crowdsourcing marketplace, has crossed the 50 million users mark with close to 20 million jobs posted on the site to date

Freelancer.com is an Australian freelance marketplace website, which allows employers to post work for site members who place bids in a competitive tender process. The site also allows members to host and enter contests for which prize money is offered as a reward. Freelancers and employers develop profiles on the site as they offer, win and complete work and write and receive reviews of people they work with or for. The site’s members receive a finite number of bids to use on the site, which are periodically replenished. A series of account options are offered, ranging from free accounts through to professional subscriptions.

Freelancer takes a 10% fee, which can be reduced with paid monthly membership, with a minimum fee of $5. The company has recently announced its new move into home and local services, staying first in its home market of Australia.

Most of Freelancer’s users come from India, the United States, Philippines, Pakistan and the United Kingdom but it is represented through its user network in 247 countries, regions and territories; and in both emerging and developed markets.

The top three job categories that most frequently get job requests are IT and software, 34%; design, media and architecture, 31%; and writing and content, 13%. The company has offices in Manila, Philippines; Sydney, Australia; Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Buenos Aires, Argentina; London, United Kingdom; and Jakarta, Indonesia.

According to news posted by the company on its website, it says it connects over 50,483,190 employers and freelancers globally from over 247 countries, regions, and territories, a feat the company achieved on February 17, 2021.

Freelancer users are of two categories; the freelancing professionals and the employers or people who post and award jobs to the freelancers.

Founded in May 2009 by Matthew Barrie and trading under the name Freelancer Technology Pty Limited, the company is quoted on the Australian Securities Exchange under the ticker ASX:FLN and currently trades at 0.50 AUD as at February 19, 2021.

Its equity was valued at $146 million USD (as of September 30, 2020 and revenue of $33.97 million as of December 2019. To date the company has raised a total of $37.5M in 4 funding rounds from Investible, Tempus Partners and Startive Ventures.

Through the Freelancer marketplace, employers can get work done in over 1800 different categories such as software development, writing, data entry and design right through to engineering, the sciences, sales and marketing, accounting and legal services.

Over the years Freelancer.com has acquired several outsourcing marketplaces including GetAFreelancer.com and EUFreelance.com (founded by Magnus Tibell in 2004, Sweden), LimeExchange (a former business of Lime Labs LLC, USA), Scriptlance.com (founded by Rene Trescases in 2001, Canada, one of the early pioneers in freelancing), Freelancer.de Booking Center (Germany), Freelancer.co.uk (United Kingdom), Webmaster-talk.com (USA), a forum for webmasters, Rent-A-Coder and vWorker (founded by Ian Ippolito, USA, another early innovator in the freelance marketplace space).

As of 29 March 2016, the company had set up 44 regional marketplaces and operates in 34 languages and 21 currencies.  On 2 April 2014, Freelancer acquired Ukraine based digital content marketplace-Fantero.

The possibilities with Freelancer.com endless: The Company has expert freelancers who work in every technical, professional, and creative field imaginable.

The Freelancer.com outsourcing process is simple. An employer posts a project or contest on the site for what he or she needs done and receives competitive bids from freelancers within minutes. The next step is choosing the perfect freelancer by browsing the profiles of the Freelancers that bided for the job. Chat in real-time with them. Compare proposals and select the best one. Award the project and the Freelancer freelance starts work.

The third and last step is that the employer pays the Freelancer when he or she is satisfied using the Freelancer Milestone Payment system

Freelancer.com has thus created a global window for project outsourcing and for various professionals to gain jobs and earn revenue, breaking down trading and contract barriers. It continues to grow from strength to strength as technology, outsourcing and economies continues to open up.

Speaking on this feat, Matt Barrie, CEO and Chairman of Freelancer.com, says “COVID-19 has boosted the already upward trending freelancer movement, but last year’s exponential growth reflects the strong desire for individuals to start their own enterprise, work on their own terms and supplement their income. This is a global industry that didn’t exist a dozen years ago and the Freelancer marketplace has enabled 50 million users with a dream to make it real.”

Some of the 50 million Freelancers who have used the platform to build their success include: Anne Valentino a freelance writer based in Rochester, New York, who joined the platform in 2015 and hit the six-figure mark in revenue eight months into signing up. “I just finished ghostwriting a project and the client said the primary reason he hired me was because I had a PhD from an American university.”

Toronto-based Michael Teofilo (Webeteer Inc on Freelancer) has earned $500,000 on the platform since joining in 2012. He started as a freelance graphic designer on the platform. Now he hires other Freelancers to do the work for his agency “I’ve been on both ends of the equation, as an employer and a freelancer. People want to know they are dealing with another human being as opposed to a bot”

Freelancer.com has received several awards and recognitions including the Gold Stevie Award for Best Website: Business or Professional Services.

Its competitors include Upwork, Fiverr, Skyword360, PeoplePerHour.com, Guru.com, Supersourcing, Hubstaff, Shortlist, Contently, Bark.com and Popular Pays, but none of them are anywhere near Freelancer.com. Its closest competitor used to be Upwork, which had over 18 million freelancers and over 7 million, but this reduced to about a million freelancers following the company s focus on fortune 500 Companies. This leaves Fiverr, with 4 million users in 160 countries, as the current closest competitor to Freelancer.com’s 50 million users in 247 countries and regions.

By Chimaobi James Agwu