LinkedIn Rolls Out Its Freelance Marketplace To Compete With Fiverr and Upwork

LinkedIn is rolling out a new platform for freelancers to help it better compete against the likes of Fiverr and Upwork. TechCrunch reports: Today it is taking the wraps off its Service Marketplace, a new feature that will let people advertise themselves for short-term engagements to those looking to hire people for such roles, competing against the likes of Fiverr and Upwork for sourcing skilled knowledge workers. The launch of its freelancer platform is coming alongside a few other key updates from LinkedIn around other job-hunting tools, underscoring how the company is looking to adapt to new currents in the job market and how we work. They include new search filters to find jobs (permanent jobs, that is) that are remote, hybrid or on-site; and these can also now be indicated on your "Open to Work" indicator if you have that turned on to invite recruiters to contact you. Alongside this, you can now also check out companies' vaccination requirements as part of how you evaluate jobs (if the employer has indicated those details itself).

Service Marketplace was first leaked out as a small test in February this year. Since then LinkedIn has been running a quiet beta of the service in the U.S., which has already picked up 2 million users from among the nearly 800 million users (as of yesterday's earning report) that LinkedIn now has globally. As of today, Service Marketplace is going to be turned on for everyone globally: to set up a freelancer profile, you go to your own profile page, find the button near the top and follow the script to set it up and flag what you might be interested in working on. [...] Although Service Marketplace is not currently charging any fees, as it does for its other recruiting products, this will lay the groundwork for how over time LinkedIn can. The Service Marketplace is launching with 250 job categories, and the plan is to expand that to 500, product manager Matt Faustman told me in an interview.

"We are barely scratching the surface," he said. Marketing has been one of the stronger categories to date, he added. "Barely scratching the surface" may be the operative phrase here: For now, there is no way of negotiating a fee for work, nor for invoicing, and those looking to find people are not required to give any specific guidance on fees until they get into a deeper conversation with a candidate. When it comes to reviews, clients can review those they have engaged, but the individuals cannot leave a review for the clients. And, those listing themselves on the Marketplace have no way of finding jobs themselves: they are there to be discovered, not to search for work themselves.

*roflcopter*

[Aighearach]

Only if they agree to pay me per spam that I get for "applying."

Third Route to the Bottom

[coofercat]

Fiverr and Upwork, Freelancer, Rentacoder, codementor... They all suffer from the same problems. That is, the majority of jobs are specified really poorly, the majority of respondents to jobs are poorly qualified or have no experience in the thing they're applying for. The rates get pushed down, so the only people who want to work on those sites are the lowest quality. Even if you spent the time to write your job spec really well, and are paying top dollar, all you get are low quality applicants who are all "chancing their arm" to see if they can get the work, even though they don't really deserve it.

If LinkedIn can do any different, well good on them. The only thing on their side is that some people have spent a long time building their profile, and so don't want it tarnished with crappy work reviews, or even a history of taking on (or advertising) crappy jobs. But then those sorts of people don't use these sorts of sites because they're mainly frequented by bottom feeders - which they don't want to be associated with. We'll see how LI handles this.

Re:

[JKanoock]

Race to the bottom so someone else can make a buck off your work. It's the Middle Man economy not the Gig Economy.

Flop story? Or flop discussion?

[shanen]

And why?

Freelancing with LinkedIn

[clarimaemag]

This is great, freelancers can have more references when it comes to job-hunting. This time LinkedIn will be focusing more on white-collar services such as design, marketing, and software, which is a big differentiator compared to any other freelance platform. - https://surgedigital.agency/ [surgedigital.agency]

Service Marketplace (LinkedIn)

[Carmela25]

Wow! This means that freelancers should really rock on building their profiles for them to be spotted by potential clients. Well, this could be a great marketplace for business owners/entrepreneurs looking for highly-qualified people for the job. This marketplace will never be a good starting place especially for those aspiring freelancers or for those newbie freelancers (like me who only have a little experience). Well, that's life! Nowadays, you gotta be different from others so maybe that's the reason

More Opportunities

[varamea]

This could be very helpful especially for those who have been working remotely since the start of the pandemic, though more opportunities, more competition. https://virtualhelpbyrm.wixsit... [wixsite.com]