I am officially deactivated. For the past six months, I’ve had a profile set up on ifreelance.com. Before then, I have never used any freelance marketplaces to field-in work. I had a contracting job for over a year with a VC company out of Washington. When the contract dried up, I signed up.

Having a profile up on ifreelance worked out well, overall. However, I began to notice the different types of buyers out there, and wasn’t left with the best impression in the end. (Side note: I will say that ifreelance is one of the better marketplaces around. Inexpensive and they don’t take a chunk of your earnings on awarded projects.)

Types of Buyers: The Chicken, the Fox and the Wolf

The Chicken

The chicken low-balls on the budget, is cryptic in the description and broods over the few service providers who actually do bid on the project. Because of these traits,  the chicken brings out the worst in service providers (messes with their Qi), managing to offend more than a few who then lose their professional face and heckle the project, the budget and the chicken.

These projects generally end with a big red Project Canceled notice. Waste of everyone’s time. Continue reading…