Freelancer: World’s largest freelancing marketplace
Freelancer.com is the world’s largest marketplace for freelancers by user base, with over 67m registered members spanning 247 countries, regions and territories. The number of freelancers on the platform ensures high liquidity, with 73.5% of projects receiving their first bid within 60 seconds of posting (end Q123). Exhibit 4 demonstrates how the majority of the source of jobs is from the Americas and Europe whereas the source of freelancers is weighted towards Asia.
In H123, the company processed A$87.6m of gross payment value (GPV) through its platform (A$65.2m in GMV plus A$22.4m in revenue) and the division is now operating EBITDA positive (ex Loadshift).
Exhibit 4: Freelancer’s online economy
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Source: Freelancer ltd. Note: Pink lines represent jobs posted and blue lines represent jobs done.
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Freelancer specialises in enabling the fulfilment of customisable job requirements and to a high standard at relatively low cost by leveraging its deep pool of freelancers globally. Project sizes range considerably, from a US$10 logo design to as large as a US$10m project for NASA. Freelancers can select from over 2,700 skill areas, meaning that almost any job requirement can be fulfilled on the platform. Exhibit 5 shows that over half of completed projects fall into the categories of ‘websites, IT and software’ or ‘design, media and architecture’.
Exhibit 5: Bar chart showing completed project categories by volume, FY22
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Management has spent significant resource and time developing validation and rating systems to support project reliability and quality, instilling confidence in the client and supporting higher engagement. Competitions, rather than standard project tenders, enable freelancers who are new to the platform to build a reputation and high star rating. Discussed below, competitions can also be a lucrative alternative for freelancers and can allow them to collaborate on groundbreaking projects, such as the National Institute of Health’s and NASA’s US$10m award for gene editing in the central nervous system.
Investment in improving the user experience is key to driving freelancer and client growth on the platform. Management’s current focus is on design as well as personalisation and collaborative functions to improve communication, drive conversion and retention, as well as increase average project size, including:
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Chat Requests: intended to replace the ‘HireMe’ funnel, clients can now initiate a conversation with a freelancer to discuss scope and pricing, rather than setting out the specifications beforehand, which can be a vector for spam. Following this the freelancer sends through a quote for the work.
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Project Clarification Board, rolled out in Q123, provides an open forum for verified freelancers to discuss the project with a client prior to bidding, reducing negotiation friction and mispricing of jobs.
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Groups: freelancers can bid for projects as a group, which is either created through a group admin, public community or as an official group created by one of Freelancer’s Administrators. Bidding for projects as a group can increase average project sizes, driving GMV.
Its enterprise package allows individual organisations to develop a custom platform, based on Freelancer’s proprietary InSource enterprise product. Management believes there is significant latent demand, particularly from multinationals, for customisable platforms that can connect either underutilised internal pools of talent or external pre-qualified freelancers to a particular project.
At the core level, management monetises the platform by taking a share of the value of projects posted: 3% commission from its demand-side clients and 10% from the freelancers. Freelancer then offers memberships and several value-added services, allowing it to expand its take rate of the GPV. Management rarely sees disputes between its clients and freelancers, but has a three-stage process to ensure optimum satisfaction among its membership base. We discuss the process and cash flows below.
For clients:
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Post jobs, review obligation-free quotes, chat with freelancers and review samples of their work and portfolios – all free of charge.
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On the award of a project, the total payable will be 103% of the project size; 3% project commission to Freelancer (paid on contract award) and 100% to the worker (20% paid upfront to Freelancer, the remainder according to agreed milestones).
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Projects can either be a fixed value or an hourly rate. Clients can add additional requirements onto a project once it has been awarded. The company’s quotation function allows clients and freelancers to discuss a project fee before it starts.
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Clients can post jobs of any type, also including local work such as hardware repairs or building work.
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Freelancers go through a Know Your Customer (KYC) verification process once they have earned over US$30 on the platform, providing a robust first layer of security for the client.
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Freelancer.com’s technical co-pilots (project managers) provide an add-on service that can help evolve a client’s idea to a full project.
For freelancers:
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Freelancers can view projects posted, bid on projects, chat to clients, fill in a profile, upload a portfolio and provide samples of work – all free of charge. Freelancers can also select from over 2,700 skills sets to help match the freelancer to a project.
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After a project is awarded and accepted, the freelancer pays a 10% commission to Freelancer. Freelancer can also take a share of the project fee upon completion, rather than at the start, but charges 15% for this service.
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Freelancers can also be recommended for a project through Freelancer’s recruit function, which can increase Freelancer’s commission to 15% if freelancers are part of the preferred programme (these would typically be higher-value projects, justifying the higher commission rate).
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Becoming KYC verified ensures that freelancers are paid faster upon completion of a project and has historically allowed for faster dispute resolution.
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Multiple freelancers can also collaborate on a project following the launch of the Groups feature in Q322, which has driven efficiency and engagement.
In addition to the free version of the platform, the company offers membership programmes that provide freelancers with a host of benefits including increasing the number of bids they can make, exclusive access to higher value projects and daily cash withdrawals. The four programmes are Basic, Plus, Professional and Premier, and as an example, in the UK they range in price from £4.45 to £59.95 per month. Management believes that freelancers convert to being paid members as it elevates their chances of being awarded a project, particularly at the higher-value end. For the company, memberships provide stable, monthly recurring revenue and the tiers provide upsell opportunities.
In addition to memberships, management has a selective Preferred Freelancer programme (PFP), where freelancers are chosen on reputation and previous quality of work. Benefits for the freelancer include exclusive invitations to high value projects, preferential fee payment plans for Recruiter projects and premium support. To join the PFP, amongst other things freelancers need to be in the top 3% overall ranking in their chosen skill sets, be verified by Freelancer, have a professional profile and portfolio of work suitable for enterprise customers and be certified (ie rank in the Preferred Freelancer entrance exam).
In addition to its PFP scheme, Freelancer offers a higher-level verification process to KYC, including a video interview, confirming that the account is authentic – this service costs £96/$99. Once verified, the freelancer earns a blue tick by their name and has instant access to projects worth more than $2,500 and hourly projects worth more than $50.
Competitions: High value prizes and supporting new freelancers
Competitions offer an alternative way of posting a project on the Freelancer.com platform, where freelancers can compete against each other to win a monetary award from the client. Management introduced competitions to its platform in 2011, providing several benefits to its clients and freelancers. These benefits include:
For clients:
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Competitions allow them to assess a range of concepts, creative ideas and freelancers, most applicable to projects that are easily visually comparable, such as logos, visualisations and artwork. They are particularly beneficial if the client does not have a clear picture of the desired outcome.
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It is free to post a competition, eliminating the 3% project fee.
For freelancers:
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Newly joined freelancers can access competitions more easily than standard projects, to help them build their reputation on the platform (winning competitions earns reputation points at 5x the level of a standard project). A better reputation on the platform increases the likelihood of being awarded a project.
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Competition awards may also be higher than for comparable project work, particularly for new freelancers to the platform.
For management, using competitions is key to expanding the number of high-quality freelancers globally, without having to incur the marketing costs of recruiting freelancers through traditional avenues. By expanding the ways in which they can post work, competitions are also important to growing its demand-side client base.
Enterprise: A growth lever
Since 2018, management has developed several avenues to work with enterprises of all sizes, including:
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Custom marketplaces: Fortune 500/1000 companies are the target. Custom platforms are built on the company’s proprietary InSource product.
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Government, which publishes tasks to the public, normally through a competition.
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Field services: instead of going through local agencies/contractors, multi-nationals can use the platform to remove costs by connecting the customer directly to a local, vetted field engineer.
In FY22, the company reported that enterprise services (not including GMV-linked revenue) generated revenue of A$3.3m, up 21% y-o-y (contributing 7% of Freelancer divisional revenue and 6% of group revenue).
Building in-house platforms: InSource
In May 2022 (H122), management deployed the MyGigs platform developed for Deloitte, a collaborative product built on Freelancer’s enterprise platform, InSource. MyGigs provides Deloitte’s staff with access to external PFP freelancers or connects to internal teams worldwide, which may have the capacity to provide additional resource. MyGigs is integrated with several of Deloitte’s internal systems, including SAP Fieldglass, creating an end-to-end product allowing internal staff to hire freelancers, manage projects and process payments at scale. At the end of H123, over 48.6k consultants had been onboarded to the platform, a 13.8k increase from the time of its AGM on 17 May 2023.
MyGigs generates SaaS recurring revenues based on the number of staff using the platform and Freelancer takes a commission on any external project work completed through its PFP freelancers. At the end of FY22, Freelancer noted that the average external project size was $1,469 and that liquidity was higher externally than for internal projects, with average bid counts of 8.3 and 3.5, respectively. Freelancer’s dedicated team of product managers and engineers also saw engagement double from October 2022 to end Q123, as it continues to see demand for further customisation and for enhanced capabilities. Management believes that by embedding itself deep within Deloitte, MyGigs has become a sticky product solution for Freelancer.
Exhibit 6: Deloitte’s MyGigs user interface
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MyGigs is Freelancer’s flagship product for InSource, which was built alongside MyGigs over several years. Following completion, management believes that InSource can now be customised and integrated into an enterprise within a few months to a year.
Helping governments to innovate
Working with governments is a second core growth driver for Freelancer’s enterprise operations. In 2020, management jointly won the US$25m NASA Open Innovation Services (NOIS2) tender, giving the company responsibility for crowdsourcing talent to support the next era of space exploration. Since winning the tender, NASA has increased its allocation to the NOIS2 programme to US$175m. Freelancer’s NASA tender currently underpins the government source of revenue for its enterprise offering, where management penetrates other areas within the US government through NASA (which acts as the lead organisation for government crowdsourcing). Exhibit 7 provides examples of the task orders won on the Freelancer marketplace in H123, including National Institute of Health’s A$10.6m Genome Editing competition – the largest competition ever posted on the Freelancer website. In Q123, a total of A$16.9m has been awarded across 13 competitions as part of the NOIS2 tender.
Exhibit 7: Sample of task orders won in Q123, through the NOIS2 programme
Sponsor |
Skills |
Value inc prizes (A$) |
Task order purpose |
US National Institutes of Health |
Genome editing |
10.6m |
Develop delivery systems to deliver genome editing machinery to target cell types or specific tissues. |
US Department of Commerce – National Institute of Standards and Technology |
UI/UX Design, software development |
1.95m |
Advance incident command dashboard technologies to allow for real-time tracking of assets, personnel and objects of interest. |
US Department of Commerce – International Trade Administration |
UI/UX Design, software development |
1.07m |
Promote cross-border data flows through the creation of a data privacy certification software program. |
US National Institute of Child Health & Human Development |
Data Science |
624.4k |
Identify factors and interventions that impact maternal morbidity and severe maternal morbidity. |
Bureau of Reclamation |
Computational Fluid Dynamics |
721.5k |
Optimise and speed up the sparse matrix linear equations solver for computational fluid dynamics models. |
For NASA and the US government, crowdsourcing expands the pool of talent they can access and can substantially lower costs by providing access to lower-cost labour markets. Given the award sizes, these contests can attract large research institutions and universities, as well as any qualified freelancer. The company monetises the work through project fees that include engineering and design as well as running the contest. The US is its primary source of revenue, but the company has generated some revenue from several countries in the Middle East and states that it has a strong pipeline including a finalised proposal with a state-wide government organisation in Asia-Pacific, announced in Q123.
Streamlining global field services
The third prong of its enterprise work is field services, connecting Freelancer’s qualified field service engineers to customers in those regions for local work, such as hardware repairs. For an enterprise, using Freelancer provides a low-fixed cost and trusted way of locating specialists, replacing the work and potentially high variable costs of finding and managing local specialists or agencies. In Q123, Freelancer completed its integration with a global computer and printer company’s CRM and workflow management system, which is now fully operational across India, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia (see Exhibit 8). Freelancer believes there is a near-term growth opportunity in penetrating the much larger US market and expanding into installation work for the company, which is less capital intensive than hardware repair.
Exhibit 8: Geographic presence of field service engineers for computer and printer client
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Management employs the same 3% fee from its clients and 10% commission from freelancers and can provide other value-added services to expand its take rate, such as additional levels of security or reach. Expanding into new geographies and specialist project areas is also a key objective for the rest of 2023.
Separately through the platform, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can also post projects at a company level, rather than as an employee of a company, and may be able to reduce commission if volumes are high enough.