GetACoder???

I've done some reading on this and a couple of other forums regarding those sites that allow programmers to bid on work. I'm familiar with RAC, read some about Elance and Guru (the former expensive, the latter doesn't seem to want to pay on schedule: agreed?).

My question is about GetACoder? My understanding is they don't take the commission out of your pay, but you can transfer funds from that pay to cover commission OR use cc/check to deposit money to cover those commissions, correct?

More importantly, does anyone have any negative experiences with this site? I've already found plenty of work that I could do and it seems like it's better than RAC in that you don't have a large number of people bidding outrageously low amounts for work. Would you agree?

Any personal info on this site (or others I haven't mentioned, or corrections to what I've said) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Tim

No experience with these guys, but I have been on rentacoder for awhile. My piece of advice? Stay away if you're trying to get hired.

For the most part, you have the Top Coders who get almost every project, because they have hundreds and hundreds already done. If you are lucky enough to get selected, then you will do it for dirt cheap.

I have bought a few services from there and it was great, just not the other way around.

I definately have not had a lot of luck on RAC. I've won 3/1,000,000,000,000 there. But I also have a 10 rating there that I don't on other sites. This is important to me because I'm working on a portfolio (I only have one site and it's not even complete).

I've posted this question on a couple of other boards too and I'm not hearing back from anyone. It makes me wonder if anyone uses them? If not, why not?

Thanks for the response.

Tim

If not, it's probably just because people don't know they exist. I stumbled across Rentacoder after going about 5 threads deep in a bulletin board, and if I have that problem as an engineer finding my way to it, I wouldnt be surprised how other people who just want a little program made can't find it.

Bullboards seem to be their primary get-the-word-out method. RAC has notoriously spammed this forum repeatedly, accumulating dozens of banned accounts by now.

I have experience with hiring through this site, and i have to say i am concerned.

My advice to you is if you are looking to get work done through a site like this, you had better know exactly what is being done and how it should be done.
(which of course you probably wont, otherwise you wouldn't be looking to hire somebody).
If you do, you should just do it yourself and save yourself the hasle.
Cant comment on looking to get work through the site as i have never done anything.
But its not a way to build a reputation, im sure.

I have posted projects through this site and timescale is not a word that existed with those that have done work for me.

(these are lessons i have personally learnt)
Simon
Incidentally, this site and simlar sites are often hosted in the states.
Hopone Internet Corporation. hosts 'getacoder'.
but there is not a lot of info about who runs them.
Suffice to say the About us page doesn't exist.

You are lie, RentACoder never send spam. This forum not exception. Programmers from expensive areas dislike RentACoder very much, therefore they think out fables about RACs.

We have recently won and completed a project on getacoder and are getting the worst difficulties ever to withdraw money from our account. I hope that the worst does not happen to us since its a quite important sum (more than $2000) - we are still hoping that we are wrong in our apprehension.

We never get any response from their support team - if ever they have a support team - they seem to not respond to our numerous queries on purpose. They have got no email address no about us page no phone number and its now that we are starting to realise how suspicious this site could be.

No way to contact them , except a usual contact form.

This sort of mechanism (bidding for jobs on a web site) for doing business is something mostly aimed at novices and innocents, and would be laughable if it weren't for the stories about people who acutally use these services (both to request bids and to make bids) who have been taken advantage of.

The only scenario that I see that might work for someone making bids is where the coder has numerous code snippets that they can sell over and over again. If this is useful to the purchaser, then everyone is happy. I suspect that most of the time the result is far from useful - but I can see where it could work for some people. In most cases, the same code snippets are available free with a little searching.

I would not be surprised to see many situations similar to the one gacs described where he has done the work but has not collected the fees. Why someone is willing to work under these conditions is puzzling to me, but then people do a lot of things that are puzzling to me. As PT Barnum has been attributed as saying - "There is a sucker born every minute". This is one of those cases where "if it is too good to be true, then it probably is" and "Buyer (or seller, in this case) beware" also applies.

I am a "cash on the barrel head" sort of person myself when doing "freelance work". Typically, I require a deposit of one weeks worth of work up front, and payment at the end of each week for work done that week. No pay, no play. I do no fixed price work, and enjoy laughing at people who do. As a matter of fact, I have been "under bid" on numerous occasions by developers and companies willing to work on fixed price contracts and I always have a great time when the customer eventually comes back to me to rescue them from the serious failure the fixed price developer caused.

Novice business people (and a lot of experienced business people as well, it seems) never catch on to the reality that a lot of companies you will do work for use the practice of outsourcing risk. In other words, they understand there is great risk in undertaking a project, so they attempt to place all the risk on the contractor. If you don't know what that means you are a bigger fool than think you are, and I am not going to explain it further here. The bottom line is, you are assuming a lot of risk when you take on a fixed price contract, and numerous companies have failed because of this.

We've used GetACoder for several projects and it all seemed to be going fine but then they shifted their VISA processing from US banks to UK banks (makes chargebacks for fraud much harder to manage) and suddenly started suspending multiple accounts that held large balances in escrow. (I lost hundreds of dollars this way). They they started asking for social security numbers and telephone bills. Although I'm not sure of anything, it smacks of an identity theft scam to me. I would be very very careful.

I don't really care about the money that much, but there is no appeal, no notice, and no financial protections. Be sure you don't mind losing the money you escrow there.

Whatever service you decide to use, I would focus projects on small scale objects where you have good design documents or very simple things like flash objects. Relying on services like this for larger, more complex projects are prone to failure in my mind.

Your mileage may vary...

i think if you are a starter you have more chance in a new site. Three years ago Scriptlance was a mess but now it is growing . And also Get A freelancer was a mess too now it is competing with Rent a Coder . So I think getting reviews in a site like this takes time and you have the chance in new ones ....

The best strategy would be . To open an account in the popular one and one in the site which you think is going to be one of the bests in the market . And bid for small jobs in the large site to get reviews . And to get the bigger jobs in the smaller site to insert in your portfolio . You wont get in a bad situation even if the small site crashes because If you keep the good communication active you can put the people who have hired you in your resume . And you can show the jobs in your small site to the large site to get more jobs in the site.

And my last suggestion is do not open an account and wait. Open your account whenever you are ready to start working for someone . Because people can see when you opened the account and it is annoying to see an account with 0 reviews in 3 years ...

I wont suggest you any sites because I have one .... I hope you all become successful coders .....

Take care ...

PS : I choose the ScriptLance as a small site but now I dont recommend because it is too large . And the biggest one is of course Rent a Coder . See: www.alexa.com

I think it's going to come down to whether you really want to spin your wheels doing project work for slave wages or do you want to grow a freelance business for the long run.

GAC/SL/EL/etc. are all about driving down the price of work. I've read lots of horror stories about cheap clients who request lots of work and want to pay only $300 for it.

Since you're in the USA, I recommend staying away from the bidding sites. You're better off selling yourself on via an agency for a medium-term project or really throwing yourself into creating a viable freelance business and doing lots of marketing (networking, online directories, blogging about tech topics, pay-per-click ads, etc.) to generate interest in your services in your town.

Good luck!

I'm wondering if the fables are coming from you, Grachyov. The way you wrote this made me suspicious, so I did a bit of checking. Every single posting you've made had sung the praises of RAC, sometimes with no connection to the rest of the thread. You have never discussed any other topic to date. To me, that sounds like you're astroturfing for them.