E-Business Assignment-I

Freelancer.com

Chintan Shah
126 MBA Tech. IT Trim X, Mumbai Campus 17
t h

August

Table of Contents
C2C & C2B E-Commerce Website ........................................................................................................ 2 FreeLancer.com ...................................................................................................................................... 2 About: FreeLancer .................................................................................................................................. 2 Value Proposition .................................................................................................................................... 3 Functional Operation .............................................................................................................................. 4 Features .................................................................................................................................................. 5 Milestone Payments ............................................................................................................................ 5 Feedback and Ratings ......................................................................................................................... 5 Skill Test ............................................................................................................................................. 5 Dispute System ................................................................................................................................... 5 Common Project Categories ............................................................................................................... 5 Projects ............................................................................................................................................... 6 Revenue Model ....................................................................................................................................... 6 Advertising Methods (for users) ......................................................................................................... 6 Financial Overview .............................................................................................................................. 7 Market Opportunity ................................................................................................................................ 7 Competitive Environment ....................................................................................................................... 8 Competitive Advantage .......................................................................................................................... 9 Market Strategy ...................................................................................................................................... 9 Management Team ............................................................................................................................... 10 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 10

Introduction
C2C & C2B E-Commerce Website
Consumer-to-Consumer E-Commerce Websites involves trade and business between individuals and users to facilitate each others needs and make revenue out of it. In our context, C2C involves various developers and individuals who meet and collaborate for developing an open source software application to serve a common interest and eliminate dependence upon greedy firms and companies. Consumer-to-Business E-Commerce Websites envelopes the business carried between consumers or individuals who supply product or service to a business or an organizational entity and refers to the practice of outsourcing to individuals and mavens.

FreeLancer.com
Such an example of C2C and C2B(partially) website which involves developers and project leaders over the world meeting, posting and collaborating; their work or project requirements on the website which is auctioneered by several coders and developers to fulfil the requirements is FreeLancer.com Freelancer as the word indicates, serves as a global marketplace for online and freelance jobs, where small and medium-size businesses and individuals connect with independent service provides for outsourcing their work. Freelance Jobs may range from creating whole websites to programming a business application, from marketing a product to operating a business, from writing reviews and articles to testing and implementing applications & softwares. Framing all in a sentence, Freelancer has transformed the business of outsourcing to crowdsourcing.

About: FreeLancer
Freelancer is largest marketplace for employers and freelancers to connect and conduct business together. The objective is implemented using various sets of web-based project management tools similar to GitHub, Sourcefourge.net, Google Code and document repositories etc. which are designed to transcend remote outsourcing altogether to a new level. Freelancer, formerly known as GetAFreelancer was founded in 2004 by Plendo Sweden and was headed up by Magnus Tibell of Swedish Web Solutions company. Freelnacer mainly divides into two main components called providers and buyers. Buyers can be individuals or companies wanting to outsource their work.

Value Proposition
Freelancer connects over 2 million professionals over 234 countries and regions where they can hire or do work in areas such as writing articles, softwares, data entry, and designing through to engineering and the sciences, sales and marketing and accounting & legal services. The average job is rated to be covered under US$200, thus rendering it extremely cost effective for small and medium businesses. Following are the advantages and benefits of using freelancers: 1. Cost Effective We already know that skilled staff located in cheaper geographic locations is more relevant than any other practices as most orders are begged on low price compared to competitors regardless of its size. 2. Adaptability Today, technology has diversified to a great extent. A company cannot expect to remain rigid by employing people with just a particular skillset. Like in web development, the customer sometimes may want to have the complete website to be made up using jQuery whereas the hired employees are just capable of making website using Microsoft SharePoint. Freelancer provides this extra set of skillset to fill the knowledge deficit of project or company and does not require to even hiring a person permanently.

3. Reduced Risk The cost of keeping full-time staffs and keeping them up-to-date with latest technologies and other tertiary skill employs high funding and high risk. Freelancer helps supply outsourced staffs which overlook cost of keeping them updated at their own and doesnt cost anything to the employer. 4. Scalability The staffing can be done on the basis of requirements and demand. In Freelancers, you only need to employ people whom you need for specific skillset and specified time. 5. Diversification Freelancer helps businesses adapt and expand its product or service base by pulling in skills that it doesnt offer. . For example, a web development company may find it desirable to offer Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services as part of their overall package. Thus they can offer value added services to its customer by augmenting related facilities. 6. Simplified Accounting Companies no longer need to maintain payroll of its employees and tax duty submission about the same. Freelancer offers to pay on the cost basis to the hired developers and individuals.

Functional Operation

Post

Post your project and specifiy requirements and criterias.

Compare

Comapre & select prices of different bidders and thier service ratings

Payment

Create payment for the project

Approve

Approve the completed project

Release

Release payment once job is satisfactory

Features

Milestone Payments
Employers and Freelancers are offered to use secure milestone based payment system ensuring mutual agreement regarding value of milestone payoffs in advance. Freelancer cannot withdrew money which is priory deposited without Employer releases the fund until satisfactory completion of the milestone. Thus it safeguards the money of the employer from losing if the freelancer does not deliver what he had promised.

Feedback and Ratings

Once a Freelancer.com project is completed and payments are released, both the Employer and the Freelancer can leave a service rating and a short feedback comment. Thus Employers can instantly see from a Freelancers profile how well they have performed historically, and Freelancers are able to judge prospective Employers in a similar fashion.

Skill Test
Freelancer allows individuals to undertake range of skill tests and certified tests to showcase their skills to prospective Employers. Employers, in turn, can check and get assure that the freelancer is adequate to be employed for a specific project.

Dispute System
Freelancer also offers a dispute resolution centre in case of unresolvable conflict or misunderstanding between freelancer and employer with the help of professional mediators evaluating the view from each side with the application of the field knowledge.

Common Project Categories

Projects

Revenue Model
Freelancer generates revenue using premium sign-up facilitation which it offers to freelancers and employers with add-on benefits. However posting a project or signing up as a freelancer is completely free with 5% service charge or project fee levied upon project cost and payoffs transaction. Besides generating revenue from core functionality, the huge part of revenue is shared by advertisements and referrals in terms of project banners, APIs & referrals and Affiliate programs.

Advertising Methods (for users)

1. Cash Advertising Unit Monetize using web traffic by pasting a link to specific project into your website 2. Text Links Make money by promoting your on profile in form of text link at social networking websites, blogs and chats. 3. Banners 4. RSS Feeds When a visitor to website sign up for the automated feeds, freelancers pays 10 cents per user 5. Javascript Embed a javascript of Freelancer, which shows the list of open projects on the website.

6. API Access public project information on freelancer on your programmatically and pronounce it on your own website as an affiliate.

application

Besides this revenue models, Freelancer harvest its knowledge of freelancer projects into its other subsidiaries like Freelancer Contest, FreeLancer free market, Freelancer Tycoon Talk. Freelancer Contest In this Freelancer offers businesses looking for logos and other designs to host a contest among its existing members and designers freeMarket freeMarket host as a shopping marketplace where users can host their services or files in the form of website templates or designs and buyers can purchase it selectively. Freelancer earns brokerage fee out of this. tycoonTalk tycoonTalk is forum hosted for businesses to post, share and gain knowledge about a particular domain and search for highly skilled freelancers. Freelancers generate revenue by meagre advertisements in tycoonTalk.

Financial Overview
Freelancer makes US$ 22588 each day and has total worth of US$ 24 million with Google Page Ranking of No. 6. (Estimated using Alexa Website Outlook Service)

Market Opportunity
In this era of Internet automation, every business wants to increase its revenue, reduce operating costs and achieve high profits through rigorous application of technology and innovation at every business process. Outsourcing is not a naive field anymore, with high degree of competition between developing countries to lure away projects from big organizations worldwide. However Freelancer has tapped new market of enabling both small

and medium scale industry players around the world to recruit staff and outsource globally with simplicity and safety. Freelancer.com is the largest outsourcing site in the world with millions of registered users, enabling Employers and Freelancers to connect and do business together.

Competitive Environment
Freelancer has the advantage of being the first-mover in this segment, however there is considerable amount of threat generating from Elance (377,184 jobs posted), 99designs.com (91,000 designers, 300$-350$ average pay-out per job), CloudCrowd.com etc. The competitive environment strengthens as the propagation of freelancer influence the business methodology. Several business offices have implemented their own freelance lookout for various benefits and reasons common being having creative and different viewpoint from outsiders than present workforce. Some like: 10eqs.com: Virtual Consulting firm by McKinsey to use crowdsourced experts to get research project from BFSI customers. Amazon Mechanical Turk (mturk.com): Hires temporary workers to complete tasks online

MavenResearch.com: Large online network of all specialized professionals to cater to question and calls and reflect from their deep understanding. Trada.com: Effective Search Ad Campaigns uTest.com: Companies like Google, Microsoft have turned outsource their software testing requirement onto this website to help find bugs.

Competitive Advantage
FreeLancer being generic C2B and C2C freelance service provider encompasses every major technological service category without relying onto a niche service segment freelance community. Freelancer being larger among all and covers general topics of project, attracts huge number of projects worldwide and has highest number of registered users both in freelancers and employers are summing up to 2.7 million users. Availability of all sorts of experts like engineers, designers, testers, researchers, programmers, architects provide comprehensive outsourcing community available in the world. Besides several other factors like: Active Community Good Content and Projects Available tools and Utilities Specialized Dispute Resolution Centre Third-Party Assurance in terms of Payment Holdings Milestone based project work distribution and payment settlement

Market Strategy
FreeLancer positions itself as a free online marketplace exchange for freelancers worldwide and charges zero fees for posting of projects. Freelancer also helps posting open source projects like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla etc. to host their projects on their website for free to further enhance and augment open source and freelancing community development around the world. To increase its popularity and demand, Freelancer patched up with Social Coding sites like gitHub and Google Code. GitHub is the largest social coding site with over 5 million active programmers. Freelancer has tapped this opportunity, before anyone else. Other strategy that can be considered is allowing various site developers to use their APIs. Freelancer API is a real-time web service that makes use of the same search engine that it uses. Freelancers Project listings data is returned to site in XML (other formats are available too). It also provides Freelancer Widgets, which are a copy and paste pieces of functionality

with limited customization. This way, Freelancer is able to reach more people through other websites.

Management Team
Freelancer has over board award winning entrepreneur, technologists and lecturer, Matt Barrie who is also CEO of Sensory Networks Inc. high profile network security processor a manufacturer. Freelancer has Dr. Darren Williams (CTO) and Neil Katz(CFO) having degrees from reputed universities abroad.

Conclusion
Freelancer is a largest outsourcing community and has its revenue models based on premium service offerings, Advertisements, Referrals, Affiliate Fees and transaction fee. Freelancer connects over 2

million professionals over 234 countries and regions where they can hire or do work in areas such as writing articles, softwares, data entry, and designing through to engineering and the sciences, sales and marketing and accounting & legal services.

Reference
Bloomberg. (2011, August 17). Twelve Sites That Will Put You to Work Now. Business Week. Freelancer Home Page. (n.d.). Retrieved August 2011, from Freelancer: http://freelancer.com Informatics, A. W. (n.d.). Website Overview. Retrieved August 16, 2011, from Alexa: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/freelancer.com