It's the end of 2020, everybody works from home, but we still don't have a decent freelancing website

Greetings Steemit!

I planned to write this article quite a long time ago. I can really feel the need of it now, so I am doing it!

Overview of freelancing status

I will pull up some bullet points with my thoughts on freelancing websites and the market in general:

• There are several high-volume and high-competition websites like Upwork.com (Odesk) and Fiverr.com
• There are follow-up'ers like freelance.com and local countries' websites (workzilla and youdo for Russia, etc.)
• All of the top tier and middle tier freelancing websites are a hassle in general, because:

1. They charge incredibly high commissions (for instance, if you count all the fees in total, starting with money from somebody who need work ending into somebody who does the work and get the money, Upwork results in total commissions up to INCREDIBLE 60%! This is not a joke - they are just treating us, the people, as we would work for them basically! If you don't believe me, check by yourself. They take some commissions on different moments UP TO 8 TIMES, totaling from minimum of average 35% to max of 60%.
2. They are uncomfortable and lack a lot of features
3. They are centralized and their opinion is controlled by some board of directors, so they can, for example, block some countries or accounts without any explanations from competing on the job market. Also, as they are centralized, they can went bankrupt, etc. etc. - anything can happen.
4. You have to trust them with your money. On the both sides.
5. They usually discourage or totally forbid using external communications methods. If you like some sort of program and want to discuss your job in this program (let's say, Jitsi Meet or whatever), their system will find "forbidden contact details" in your messages and will show a notice or even block your messages or, even worse, block your account.
6. They disallow discussion of competing platforms and solutions (e.g. it's denied to say "Fiverr" on Upwork and vise-versa. So, no free speech and no opinions/discussions.
7. Their support is slow and as they have a large user base it works really bad for everybody.
8. They require you to verify your profile, and they disallow anonymous work.
9. There are other points as well, if you think about it more (let me know down in comments!).

Are we really wasted?

Okay, so, we now see that currently popular freelancing websites are total crap. Are there any decentralized, modern solutions with low fees, better support, no required stupid verification process etc? Yes, they are, multiple:

• https://www.cryptogrind.com
• https://ethlance.com
• There are several "ad services" for crypto jobs as well, but that's not what I am searching for (like: cryptorecruit.com, cryptojobslist.com etc.)
• Maybe I missed one or two - let me know down in comments if you know good website

So what's the problems with that? Why just don't we use the blockchain based solutions?

Well, first, they don't have enough marketing, and because of that, they don't have enough users. So it's nearly impossible to find a job there, unless you're searching for a crypto job.

Can we do something about it?

I think, there are 3 main ways:

1. Try to gather the community around the platforms that exist and PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE them to everybody!
2. Build new services if you have power, and then switch to step #1 (PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE!)
3. Do both things in parallel.

I was actually thinking about all this since ~2015 and tried to pull several projects together, but I didn't quite made the day. Still. I hope you'll share your opinion in the comments as well as share this post to your friends and wherever you
can.

See you next time!

D aka @sxiii from O.