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Top 5 online services to work from home

27 Nov 2019 Developer News
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Dreaming of working from home? It’s never been easier than today. Read our article about the top online services for freelances. Working from home has been the dream job for millions of people for as long people have worked, but for years was limited to only a few occupations. Technology and the Internet have changed all of that so that working from home is now possible for many people in many different fields. The way it all works, of course, is primarily through online services, or platforms, that host freelancers looking for work. Here are the top five:

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1 Guru – This is a freelance service that acts as a hosting platform for both employers and freelancers alike. It works like most others: there are contracts posted online which people can then apply for through a bidding and application process. These range from entry level writing jobs to advanced data entry contracts. The biggest advantage of Guru is that it offers ten free applications per month to all of its freelancers. After that, there is a charge for, but it is minimal. Guru was founded over twenty years ago, making it one of the earliest online freelancer services. What separates Guru from others is that it has learned the lesson of keeping things simple and inexpensive. Guru doesn’t bring in a lot of red tape to its clients and payment is simple. Its take on contracts is about nine percent, which makes it among the lowest ones out there. Guru has also managed to keep itself away from the temptation of hidden fees which can give freelancers the feeling of being nickel and dimed to death! Its system is streamlined according to category and is easy to use. The only problem with Guru is that the allowance of free applications per month has resulted in some users crowding out certain jobs.

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2 Freelancer.com – This freelancer based marketplace site was created a decade ago and is based out of Australia. Its popularity has resulted in buying out others and continues to expand. Freelancer’s biggest pro is its pricing formula. For contracts that are fixed or hourly, Freelancer charges just three percent of the total or three dollars, whichever is higher. It’s other pricing options are a flat rate that may or may not be competitive, depending on the size of the contract. A featured project on Freelancer has a flat rate of twenty-nine dollars and a rushed project is nine. The disadvantage to the website is the additional fees that one can incur such as a charge for removing a contract or to extend bidding. One of the pluses that people have noted is the easy to use the system. The negative aspects included posted contracts getting bids from fictional freelancers and a kind of possessiveness towards freelancers on the site. An example of this is that employers can’t contact a freelancer outside of the system. If they do, they can get banned from the site!

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3 IFreelance – This website takes the “free” in freelance to heart! They don’t charge for bids. The good news ends there, however, as it does charge a monthly membership fee, but it is only $6.25 a month for the basic package! This does seem like a good thing at first, but the basic package does have limitations in the number of listings one can put themselves in and limits the number of entries in one’s portfolio to five. Those numbers go up with the nine-dollar package and the twelve dollar premium package allows a freelancer to put up as many portfolio and listing entries as they want. The good side of this is that IFreelance doesn’t charge a commission on work done, nor do they charge transaction fees when someone wants to get paid. The downside of this is that they also don’t guarantee anyone’s pay. That means that a freelancer can get stiffed on a bill and employers can pay for a contract in advance only to get little or no work for it. Overall, IFreelance is a use-at-your own risk sort of platform which can be worrying for some, but freeing for others.

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4 Simply Hired – Simply Hired is one of the newer employment sites, having been founded less than five years ago. This site offers more than the straightforward freelancer contracts that most others do. This website attempts to be the jack-of-all-trades site that offers online employment for jobs from many different sites. It’s essentially a go-to place for people who want to look for customer service opportunities, for instance, but don’t want to have to check through multiple websites. It does offer its services for free, but as always, it offers a paid service that allows people access to more opportunities. For employers, they can go for a premium package, which includes advertising by way of the trusty pay-per-click approach. Overall, the jury’s out on how people feel about this one. More than half of the people who reviewed in on Trustpilot rated it as excellent. A quarter of them, however, rated it as poor, which is a little disconcerting. It seems that those who like it, like it a lot and those who hate it, really hate it!

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5 Flexjobs – Overall, FlexJobs does have a good reputation. It also tries to give its members discounts and deals for choosing them including Dell, Grammarly, QuickBooks, Costco, and Six Flags. These are great perks, but there is some bad news:

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The biggest issue with joining Flexjobs is that they do have a monthly membership fee, but it does try to give bigger savings with longer memberships. One month, for instance, is $14.95 a month, and a full year’s membership is $49.95. The monthly subscription fee is a little steep, but it does offer some limited options for free, which are available to everyone. Be aware of additional charges, however, when it comes to this site. Reviewers who love this site point out that it is flexible and everyone is quite nice. The less than glowing reviews, however, pointed out that they felt like there was a bit too much micro-management from the top.

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As always, using these online services means taking a bit of risk, but many of them have supplied people with full and part-time work remotely. Just that reason alone makes it worth it to take a look at them and consider that dream job of working from home!

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