Freelancer

I agree with most all of the complaints raised by previous reviewers below. As a 30 plus year freelancer, I have serious issues with any of these freelance job platforms who choose to make their money off the freelancers, without whose services they'd have no business, instead of making their money off the people who don't just post jobs, but actually employ freelancers. This would weed out a lot of the lo-ballers right away. Freelancer.com definitely nickel and dime's it's freelancers to death. Where I've learned to make it useful, is to maintain only the free membership level, which supplies access to most their job listings, and provides about 8 free bids a month, which is plenty enough for me, after I weed out my own undesirable job listings each week. If I am contacted about a job, and manage to actually land it, I usually invite the client to work through me directly and disengage from Freelancer at that point. If the client wants to stay with Freelancer, I will inform them that they will have to absorb their fees, and those charged to me will be added to the bill. They usually will choose to work directly after that. At least in my experience. I know this doesn't build credit for me on Freelancer, but I don't need their accreditation. I did try their basic membership briefly recently, at $.99 a month, but in the second month they wanted me to up it to $4.99 a month, with no option for the $.99. Then they needled me through e-mails incessantly, so I went back to the basic free plan. It's unfortunate, they make you want to work their system like this, but they are still a viable source through which to bid on jobs.