I have used freelance websites for services that helped me, broadly speaking, with branding.
For instance, mirikolonja1 on fiverr.com made a speed-drawing video of my logo
and Faye did a introduction to an article I wrote for Linkiesta on entrepreneurship.
Here are my top three freelancing websites, in increasing order of budget.
Gigs start at $5 each, freelancers are rated out of five stars. Fiverr is strongest for quick, low risk, relatively low added value jobs such as having a pixelated portrait of yourself.
If you are short of ideas on how to spend $5 then you can always try the bizarre section.
You set the budget, freelancers are rated by employers and odesk administers an impressive variety of tests. Employers therefore have the ability to filter by tests such as English to Arabic translation, CS3, etc…
The image on the right shows the many ways in which you can filter freelancers.
(Odesk has recently merged with elance)
Finally, there is hourlynerd. This service is geared towards more sophisticated projects. The freelancers are said to be, or perform at MBA level.
The projects posted require more time, more analysis and more insight. For instance, reviewing clinical trials, reducing COGS, customer segmentation. See more here.
This means that the budgets range from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars.
The big question for economists is this: will these websites help reduce unemployment? Will they have a different impact on different job-seekers, favouring those with a minimum of skills and digital connectedness? Will it force employers to review full-time hiring and consider more freelance?
Mediacodex 