Pick.im Blog

Pick.im Blog

We are the makers of the freelance marketplace called Pick. You can check it out now at http://www.pick.im
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May 2010 (2) April 2010 (4) March 2010 (3)

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Curtis Miller Chris Andrew Hyde
 

Multiple Categories

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We added our most requested feature tonight to pick.im, the ability to be in more than one category (such as Marketer and Designer).  Hooray!  It is available to pro users immediately.  

Other features added include your own Google Analytics code to track just where your site visitors are doing and native stats.  

If you have not logged in for a few weeks, go ahead and see all that we have added!
Posted by Andrew Hyde
 

Pick.im Meeting!

This was a great week for Pick.im, a week of firsts.

We hit 100,000 unique portfolio views (about 130 per freelancer!).
We met as a team in person for the first time ever (Chris is in Chicago, Andrew in Boulder and Curtis in Phoenix).
We are getting fantastic feedback from our users.
We got our first big hosting bill, a great problem to have.

Thanks for the early support everyone!  
Posted by Andrew Hyde
 

Can I see some examples of your work?

This is probably one of the most frequently asked questions I get as a freelancer. Pick.im tries to make answering this question as easy as possible by providing a simple, easy to navigate portfolio of work.

Take John Chandler of Strange Idea Labs. He's added 5 projects to his portfolio that highlight the work he's done with small businesses and non-profits. By keeping the project descriptions concise, yet informative, he makes browsing his portfolio a breeze for potential clients. I can quickly
see that he likes 2-3 week projects and I can expect to pay around $1000.

Adding projects in Pick.im is a snap, so if you haven't done so, take a moment to add a project now.

Your portfolio also comes with a short, easy to remember URL, so feel free to pass it around!

Posted by Curtis Miller
 

Using Tags For Searching

Exciting few weeks here at pick.im.  61,338 portfolio views so far!

We love finding work for talented freelancers.  We currently offer six categories that the freelancers fit into.  This is tough for editors for instance, since they are not really copywriters.  

Need someone that knows wordpress in your area?  http://pick.im/tag/wordpress
Need a great local writer?  http://pick.im/tag/writing
Seeking a php developer? http://pick.im/tag/php

A simple workaround.

Also, we now have help.pick.im for all your support needs. 
Posted by Andrew Hyde
 

Why Do You Freelance?

If you are requesting an invite to pick.im you are required to answer the question "Why Do You Freelance?"

The responses have been inspiring.  

One that really caught my eye was from Alex Aguilar:

Flexibility of managing my time. 
Knowing that I'm in control of getting paid. 
And the more efficient I am the more I can collect.
Not having to deal with traffic
My home office rocks.

For me, freelance was about the challenge.  For many it is about the freedom.  For you?  
Posted by Andrew Hyde
 

Day 1 Of Pick

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What a day we had yesterday.  I have written goal of 100 freelancers and 200 searches.  

We kinda crushed that with 320 active freelancers and 7,971 searches.

We had three great press pieces.  The first from Read Write Web "TechStars' Andrew Hyde Launches Freelance Marketplace Startup"

Freelancers in fields like design, development, photography, copywriting, marketing and management can sign into Pick and create a profile to share their portfolio and contact information. More importantly, however, Pick asks freelancers to list their work availability and a price range. This allows clients to narrow their search to find freelancers in the specialty they need based on location, availability and price.

Spot on. 

Our friends at The Next Web published Check Out The Newest Freelancing Hub Pick.im

What is Pick.im? A website for freelancers and people looking to hire freelancers to meet and do business on the level. It’s about as stripped down as you can think of, making the site dead simple to use and get started with. We like minimalism.

We like the minimalism too.

Finally we had piece by Emily Goligoski

The freelancer portfolio database enables talent-seekers to search for copywriters, developers, and other specialists in their geographic area and price range. An average of 10 freelancers are currently signing up hourly for what Hyde describes as a more ethical (read: not spec work-centered) response to “sleazy services” that had previously dominated the freelance planning process.

Where we sucked:
  • We launched with a database of zero
  • Because of this many of our searches yielded zeros results (pushed a fix for this)
  • Our signup process doesn't focus on defining why it is important for freelancers to have projects
  • Many css issues (most resolved)
  • incompatible character encodings: ASCII-8BIT and UTF-8" exception, which made errors for every freelancer with a non standard character in their name error.
Where we rocked:
  • One hell of a first day
  • Met a ton of really quality freelancers
  • Captured some great data
  • Helped five (that we know of) freelancer land work
  • Our page load times averaged .09 seconds.  Quick!
Thanks for the support and checking out Pick.im (you can call us pick'em)

 

Posted by Andrew Hyde
 

Minimum Viable Product

Pick launched yesterday (hooray!) and we now have over 200 freelancers with quality portfolios.  Goal is 1000 by the end of the week, so please keep reaching out to freelance friends. The site gets really interesting when we have about 10 freelancers in the same genera in the radius of the client.  

We launched early, way earlier than anyone was comfortable.  We launched with the least amount of features that we could get away with.  Now we have freelancers using the site, we can prioritize what to release next.  

What is on Pick right now is about 1/3 of the features the site needs to really tick.  I have a good guess on the 2/3 of the features, but the last 1/3 is going to come directly from listening to our passionate freelancers and clients.  

We are pushing features and launches daily, so keep checking it out.  
Posted by Andrew Hyde
 

Notes On Launch

Launch day.

So exciting, but this is just launch day #1.  Launch day is now everyday.  

Our product is very simple, and as it stands is not a product that is going to spread like wildfire.  My goal is to have 1000 talented freelancers in Pick by the end of the week.  1000 freelancers that are now searchable to clients looking for talented freelancers in their area at their pricepoint.  

We are working on more features and launches (but will still keep it simple).  Priority #1 is making sure the portfolios are how the freelancers like them (get in touch if you want help make them better).

Thanks for checking out the site, we are quite thrilled.  Full push as soon as we get over the anxiety of brand new software.
Posted by Andrew Hyde
 

Hello World

Hello Pick.im folks.

Exciting week!  We are going to start rolling out the site. 

Freelance, we love you, lets start this journey to make it better.
Posted by Andrew Hyde
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