Anyone use rentacoderOR getafreelancerto get work

[jkoder]

You can earn more working at McDonald's than you can as a coder on one of these sites. It wouldn't even appeal if you were a student but only if you were from a country such as India or Czech Republic. You often see people requesting a full website with a PHP backend for about 300 USD. Usually they link to another site and say "I want it like this" and the quality they expect and content as well as functionality would take you months to achieve and require you to have good skills in many areas. There might be some half decent jobs but not many in my experience and if you look at jobs which have bidding history you will see that the lowest price always wins, the people listing the jobs don't actually care if you are any good and will do a good job.

The only way you can make any money using these sites if you live in Western Europe or the USA is to act as a middle man and outsource your own work, but then you have to spend the time finding good people the other end and it's really pot luck.

[icarus]

I started doing small jobs on Rentacoder a few weeks ago, mainly for ir35. Yes, it doesn't help directly with your other contracts, but don't people say that you have to "build up a picture of being In Business On Your Own Account"? RAC jobs at least do that. As for the money, you'll be lucky to make the minimum wage, at least at first. After I had done a few jobs and built up a bit of a profile (getting some good ratings) I found that people were slightly more forthcoming and I managed to charge a little bit more. I also think it is good practice for your work estimation skills.

The biggest benefit by far was when I did a job for a guy who happens to be in the UK. He gave me a follow-up job - this time at a UK daily rate and once again 100% non-IR35 (purchase order, fixed price, work from home, etc).