How about a listing for the growing community of Pakistani freelancers. I’ve had a lot of trouble finding good (and cheap) freelancers to do small custom work. This listing could include reviews, ratings, previous work of freelancers.
Right now, the only option I have to post my project on rentacoder type websites and that takes quite a while.
June 1st, 2008 at 5:52 am #Fariha Akhtar
That’s one of the things that I feel we can achieve through the “IT Professionals Network of Pakistan”—the first idea at Ideas Hut :)
June 1st, 2008 at 6:29 am #Sohail Abid
I believe these are the perfect days to implement this idea. The reason: within ONE day, I get 3 people asking me to refer them to some freelance developer who can work for them task-based from time to time. Two of them were project-managers of software houses and 3rd a Pakistani abroad.
June 4th, 2008 at 2:16 pm #SAWJ
Yeah, I definitely need some projects to work on. Do you guys have any, by the way? :)
June 6th, 2008 at 8:34 pm #minky
I don’t think Pakistani sites will pay as good as oDesk.
June 11th, 2008 at 5:20 pm #SAWJ
But it’ll provide a good platform for Pakistani freelancers to find work in Pakistan.
June 16th, 2008 at 2:54 am #Fahad Ahmed
its about 6 months back when I was having a discussion with my friend on freelance works in pakistan. We were talking about same type of a solution which you are discussing. Its true that the freelance community of developers rapidly in pakistan (even s/w houses outsourcing work to freelancers) and its also true that paki geeks finding it very difficult to handle rentacoder or odesk. So keep it up guys and come up with some concrete things.
June 17th, 2008 at 10:31 pm #Usama
Yeah, this is a great idea, and what could make it more appealing are the desi payment options.
June 18th, 2008 at 2:49 am #Tehseen Baweja
SAWJ: We have a few small projects that need good PHP and AJAX people. You can get in touch if you, or anybody else, is interested; tehseen dot baweja AT gmail dot com
June 30th, 2008 at 11:44 am #Webdesign Pakistan
Although a small but a similar group with the same intentions is here @ http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9772455799&ref=ts
The idea is great but for such a B2B platform following things are important:
- a minimum critical mass of both buyers & sellers
- the portal or the hosting site authenticity & 3rd party certifications
August 18th, 2008 at 6:03 pm #AamirRaz
Strongly support this idea… the responsibility, though not completely, is of our IT professionals.
August 26th, 2008 at 10:38 pm #Babar Bhatti
Much needed. I have used 99designs and this model really works!
August 28th, 2008 at 3:27 am #Hasan
We definitely need something like that.
August 31st, 2008 at 9:39 am #Mocha
If there was such a site in future, pay rate will be really low as we can see from local salaries.
Employers usually convert salary per month into hours and set rate according to that. Since every cost (electricity, software, internet, equipment, training, health, idle time, and phone) is borne by the freelancer I don’t see it taking off with so many miser employers in Pakistan.
September 1st, 2008 at 9:31 pm #Asad Imtiaz
Well yes listings are always good, but I always have one reservation with all the freelance world and such listings, i.e. “regulation”. I, myself, am a freelance and on sites like rent a coder the problem I see is that for a massive (might be enterprise) site/task or job, people are willing to quote a price which is not fare at all. how ? Image a person who requires a Social Network or a B2B site or some similar job which is eventually going to earn that person thousands of dollars he gets it done from a freelance who is willing to do it in a price which are not realistic (but for a single person yes a $100 - $200 sounds great). You can call it price control in a conventional business. If such a listing is maintained and freelancers are allowed to be contacted directly it would surely bring more business and accessibility for our developers but along with that would dramatically decrease the quality of work and price for which its done. No doubt overall credibility of our general or average IT market/developers.
Such a thing should and has to be regulated otherwise it can also prove in a negative negotiation factor for those who run small setups and are still freelancers.
October 9th, 2008 at 5:07 pm #woman in a men's world
Desi payment options is one thing that makes this idea attractive for me. you see when a freelancer starts up n gets a project of say $100 then cheque payments n even wire transfer is rather too costly for him/her. S/he may end up losing around a quarter of this money to payment processing. Plus the fee of websites like guru n rentAcoder are to be paid as well. So i think a simple payment option feasible in Pakistan will add a lot of worth to this idea. BTW can someone suggest a freelancing site who pay through western union?
October 21st, 2008 at 11:19 am #Sardar Mohkim Khan
i think that’s the best way to promote rapid expansion in the IT field (that already sees a boom). And many freelancers pull off a much better job, apart from that it would create an atmosphere for tougher competition, eventually bringing out the very best.
October 31st, 2008 at 11:39 pm #Faizan A. Laghari
All for the idea but what “desi payment” options are REALLY there for the web? How would the payment be dispersed, will the online community escrow the payments or not, and if so then how do they charge the person creating the project, how to they PAY the freelancer? :-S
October 31st, 2008 at 11:42 pm #Momekh
Well, if so many people want it, why don’t I do it? :P
October 31st, 2008 at 11:46 pm #Faizan A. Laghari
well if you really can what can be better than that Momekh! :)