OK well I’ve managed to find two bugs so far, the RSS for the All Jobs isn’t yet working and some of the jobs (illustration and misc) are miscategorized! I’ll get that sorted first thing tomorrow morning

This reads like a good idea to use to try and provide better services for both the freelance job hunters, and the freelance job posters. The only concern I have is that the word paypal came up and they don’t accept my debit card even after I register on their site. I’ve emailed them several times on the matter, but never gotten an answer other than to get a credit card I don’t need, or give them access to my bank account, which I think isn’t a sound move to make when there’s no explanation for the debit card refusal. Is there any alternative to a paypal subscription option that’s better than writing a check and putting it in the mail?

Grace, you are too cute!

Congrats with the launch guys. I support it 100%!

I remember Collis mentioning this during some email correspondence—frankly I think it’s a wonderful idea. Any serious applicant will be more than willing to pay a measly $7/month. More serious applicants also means the quality of the job postings goes up in response.

Also, I’m assuming this is $7USD, if it’s Australian dollars, sign me up yesterday.

Also, in the navigation, when you click on Contact, it takes you to http://freelanceswitch.com/contact.php instead of http://freelanceswitch.com/contact

And I also don’t see any where to sign up/pay for this service.

And saying that, I haven’t paid, and I can still the see the contact details for the job.

From past experiences I will bet the quality of the applicants will go down.

I also agree with Deborah that it is simply not worth it to pay to get contact information. Odds are if it is free to post the job here they will post the job elsewhere for free or pay for it. There are too many free options out there. Maybe if you offered some special member only content as part of that package it may help.

Best of luck though.

Hey Michael! Can you really see the contact details? As in can you see the text in the “How to Apply” section? Most of the current jobs are old jobs which might have had contact details in the body (something we’ll be screening for now that we’ve switched systems) Could you be seeing that maybe?

@Deb + Brian: You guys may be right, the thing is I don’t think we would have had much success charging for job boards, as you have surmised there are plenty of job boards around, and some are starting to go south (visit jobsandgigs for example). So the alternative is what we are doing or just have a completely free job board. So we’ll try this, in six months if it’s not working, we’ll try something else. Nothing ventured, nothing gained I say

I’m really sad to see this happen. I’ve posted ads on the job board several times, and I always thought it was really great resource. I found some really great people as a result of ads I placed here, but I also had plenty of applicants who couldn’t have found their way out of a paper bag with a machete and a Zulu guide.

A lot of other sites mirror jobs listed here; actually, all the people I’ve hired as a result of ads I placed here had seen the listings mirrored somewhere else. Obviously, with the contact details hidden and a subscription fee in place, people aren’t going to mirror the ads anymore, and if the responses I saw in my inbox are any indication, things are going to be really disappointing for people who advertise here.

I’m sad to say that I won’t be advertising on Freelance Switch any longer - I think the good candidates will find plenty of free listings elsewhere, and it will be the paper-bag set that will be left over. Pardon the term, but this really, really sucks.

Hey Collis! For some reason I was viewing the old Job Board. Everything seems perfect now!

This just sounds stupid to me.

“By charging subscriptions we can stop outsourcing companies and recruitment companies writing to our job posters”

Is there a need to ban overseas workers? I work from Argentina, didn’t knew this site was “US only”. I won’t pay to see a contact name, besides that, I don’t know if I’ll get the gig with him anyway.

Goodbye FreelanceSwitch from my NetNewsWire.

Good thing that Cyan is taking time to read listing.
…but as Rodrigo sayd above… we should, at least, see a part of the contact, like the country…

Again, I think it’s important to be POLITE and share CONSTRUCTIVE criticism here. Not just name-calling.

If you really want to attack this a new way you charge the employer based on the total cost of the contract with a cap at a certain point. Like a head hunter who gets a piece of they pie.

What make it difficult is employer lying about the size of the contract but that would end up hurting the job posting because people won’t work for free or smaller job size so they would miss out on talent.

Add a box to the job posting what is the total contract amount … maybe1-4 choices … with a few price points. Pro Bono/Volunteer is a free posting then you go up a little.

Now if you want to charge jobseekers maybe any gig over $2000.00 has blocked out contact information and these are for paying jobseekers only.

Use a blended system.

Think a little different here. Selling jobseekers is a tough sell, Ive been in this space for 10 years, CampusCareerCenter.com, CampusRN.com, Monster.com to name a few. But blending the freelancer sites that use bidding on jobs with normal postings could be a good solution here that would satisfy more people.

I think this was an extremely stupid idea.

I wish you the best of luck with your job board pricing schema. Having to pay for the contact information for a position, that I may or may not receive, for a budget I cannot pinpoint, for a company I cannot research to see if we are a good match is not good business sense.

While I can appreciate the argument, “Isn’t $7 a cheap price to pay for a $2000 gig?”, I must counter with the question of how many gigs like that are likely to be posted on this system? Having watched this site since near it’s launch, I am sorry to say that I doubt very many.

I know running this site isn’t free and therefore there must be revenue streams coming in to make it worth your while, but I am sorry my friends I do not think this a viable business model for the audience you have or are likely to attract.

I’m curious - what has been the result in the change for the job board? Are there more applicants for jobs? Are there more job postings? What have prospective employers said about their FreeLanceSwitch job postings, and interest from FreeLanceSwitch visitors?