Here: https://contra.com/discover/jobs
But it is still in waiting list if you are not a Contra Pro user.
Looking forward for its public launching
Contra is making a freelancing job board
Contra has copyediting too.
Looking forward to trying it out.
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I don't spend money for something that I'm not familiar with so I went with the non-pro option.
After spending some time in the waiting list, they asked me to resubmit my profile. They recommend watching a video which is a screen recording of a lovely lady who talks like she's on crank. I'm sure she'd be happier if she breathed between sentences.
She basically asks you smother your profile with catch phrases, .gif covers and other eye-candies. All fluff, no substance seems to be the main theme in Contra.
I've had my reservations but Contra already makes me feel like a wind-up monkey with a never-ending application process.
Maybe I'm too jaded at this point but I seriously doubt that I'll fit there. Still, I may push myself a little bit more, as I'm curious about how (if) the platform works.
Is it? There have been some interactions with someone from Contra on the Upwork reddit site (https://www.reddit.com/user/gajus0/) where they kind of say that it isn't. That it is meant to be a freelancer reputation site or some such nonsense I can't understand.
There are almost no jobs on there from what I can see. The job posting are like days apart and that is basically useless unless they only allow like 3 people in each category. It's still "early" I guess but it has been around like five years.
Mark I decided to give it a shot (I'm always a latecomer, why not be extra-early just once?), but man, the onboarding process is opaque as heck and after a day of picking at it in free moments I'm not even done. I still have no clue what I'll see when I'm done... sounds like probably nothing, but I'm forging ahead.
One thing I love (that will change if they grow)—HUMAN INTERACTION. I write a question to CS (because their Help section is opaque and wildly incomplete) and they READ it. Then they respond TO IT, and not to a question I didn't ask, with some "Response A" button they push. And it gets SOLVED. And it doesn't go through three to ten reps who each start from scratch without reading the thread—one person pays actual attention, as if I'm worth helping out and not a dumb child they're trying to punish with a day or two in Customer "Service" prison.
I may end up hating the platform and think I wasted a couple of days, but BY HEAVENS the humans in CS are worth it.
I miss when Upwork had enough humans on staff to behave like humans.
Mark With the hubris of Upwork, it seems possible that some come-from-nowhere little guy might eventually get a toehold. Possibly not this. But in the meantime, I sure enjoyed real service from Customer Service.
These days, I can't even get through to a pharmacy without a bot first trying to "help," wasting double the time the call needed to take.
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Petra That's a logical view. Yet, the same can be said for humans and it would be logical too. "Humans are expensive."
The current corporate trend has some ominous tones and I hope to live another year without bot freelancers...
Kelly_E I've had a similar experience with Contra support. Yet once I was accepted in the system, I thought that the current quality of service is high due to a certain "freshness" I didn't see many projects in my niche and I have the impression that the client-freelancer interaction is rather limited in Contra at the moment. Limited number of job posts may translate to fewer problems and a lighter workload for support agents.
Petra I don't think I'd feel the need to call myself smart and resourceful but I get by with my abilities. I contacted Contra support because of a bug in the application process. There wasn't any issue with my cognitive skills.
5 days later
I just gave Contra a shot but they have no categories that fit what I do (paralegal services, medical records summaries, etc.) so they clearly are not geared up for my niche. Sigh.
Has anyone had any luck with Contra? I read alot of negative reviews. I signed up as a freelancer and client. As a freelancer, I'm on the wait list with something like 1,700 folks ahead of me. I got right on as a client ofcourse and posted a job for free. Received about 4 replies. None were qualified. It was a pretty niche category. Upwork had 10-15 proposals for the same job posting.
20 days later
I have been a Contra member for about a year. I have never had a job via Contra. I do mobile application development and consulting. For comparison, I have over $1M in revenue on UW (solo not agency) so I have a solid profile and portfolio. Contra is very pretty but very barren, at least in my area. Mobile apps are a very busy area so there really aren't any good excuses. The clients are often recycled and the rates they are looking for are a joke. Their version of a "talent scout" has reached out to me numerous times, but in all cases the rates were non-starters. They keep wanting you to pay but given how few clients they have, coupled with their poor rates, there is no way I'd pay a dime. Show me that you can deliver some value and then I'd think about it. To me, it's pretty but vapid. I would love a UW alternate option. This ain't it for now.