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Getafreelancer – Promoting Freelancing
Von admin | 30.Juni 2009
The current economic downturn has left many people jobless while many more are waiting for their layoff notices. Most people have no option than to settle for a lesser pay package or live on government help. Other people are launching their small start-ups or taking up freelancing.
There are number of freelance job portals on the internet. Most of them are doing good business. However, please check their authenticity before applying for any job or putting your money and financial information there.
There are many sites like getacoder.com, scriptlance.com and elance.com. One such site that is quite popular amongst freelancers is www.getafreelancer.com
The signup process is simple. This site offers projects for people in data entry, accounting, IT services, writing and many other job categories. The best part is people can choose many skill sets while creating their profile on this site. This helps them to get project offers for all those categories. People can apply to multiple projects within separate categories simultaneously. However, there is a catch here. The site offers free and paid membership.
People that have a free member profile are able to bid for only a limited number of projects in a month. Their bid quantity is set to the previous level after each month of their activity on this site. Paid members however can bid on any number of projects in one month. Moreover, there are certain projects strictly for paid members on which ordinary members cannot bid. The good part is that there are certain featured projects that do not charge a single penny from both types of providers, whatsoever.
Getafreelancer has a very irritating commission policy. It immediately debits your account with the commission account once you start doing a project. Normally, it is 10% or $5, whichever is higher in case of ordinary members. Paid members are leveraging this, as they do not have to pay any commission charges.
Withdrawal policies of this site are also quite dubious. However, it offers many withdrawal options like money bookers, PayPal and wire transfer. There is a fixed fee deductable for every withdrawal. Moreover, one cannot withdraw any amount less than $30 in a single withdrawal. Also, when one is about to make his very first withdrawal, the site takes up to 15 days to verify the providers financial information before allowing him to make the withdrawal. E-Gold withdrawal method can take up to even 45 days. Wire transfer is even more costly and time consuming. This also raises credibility issues for the site. The other drawback is those withdrawal requests received until Sunday is send for processing on the following Monday or Tuesday. The site is useful for buyers and providers in the US as it is setup to meet their needs along with payment options. International service providers find it difficult to work through this portal.
GAF also offers a very effective and unique affiliate program where in people can sign up and make money even when they are not directly working on GAF. This affiliate program is popular by the name of GAFcash on the web. This affiliate program does not require you to have any knowledge of programming or graphic designing. After signing up at GAF, one is entitled to use GAF ads on his personal blog or website. This program is useful for entrepreneurs, webmasters, bloggers and many small online businesses. It is a quick and easy method to earn cash. The payment is collectible instantly whereas on other programs there could b a delay of one to two months. People having good flow of traffic on their website stand to gain a lot of money from this program.
GAF even states that one can generate up to a whopping US$ 100,000 in commission if one can redirect their subscribers to become GAF paid subscribers.
Getafreelancer has started posting fake projects recently, as found out by some sources. They even bid on these projects and keep them open for months without selecting any bidder. This is just to ensure more and more traffic. At times, the project description is very vague. Moreover, the Australian company that has taken over this site recently, needs to prove its intent.
There are even reports of people’s money becoming unusable in GAF’s escrow account without any provider giving them a service for months. GAF does very little to resolve disputes and is provider friendly rather than being buyer friendly. In fact, it needs to have a balanced approach and set of rules for both providers and buyers.
Other issues that are common with this site are of anonymous providers creating fake profiles to lure buyers to put money in the escrow account. They then somehow manage to get the work done from somewhere and request for release of escrow, which the buyer cannot deny even if he is dissatisfied. Moreover, some people use this site as a social networking site only to come into contact directly outside the GAF network. There are reports of people transferring illegal funds in escrow account run by GAF. This is helping them in converting their black money into white, as GAF rules are not that stringent.
This review is personal to the author and has no implied interest in any party. The website has had a new makeover recently with a new design and some more security features which should help in addressing these issues to a certain extent. It is a personal choice to join GAF. The author takes no responsibility whatsoever for any dealings with GAF.
However, we highly recommend the affiliate program of this site.
The freelance portal business has a lot of potential and this market is charging up. Other sites are catching up and filling the gap, which was created by GAF due to its first mover advantage and by providing of good services and solutions, initially! GAF would need to tighten up its seat belt if it wants to walk the course.
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