The team behind Crew, a freelancer platform later sold to Dribbble, writes about running Unsplash, side projects, hiring, and pricing.
HN commenters link it for the Unsplash cost breakdown, praising it as content marketing done well with no pitch, and for the side-project story.
I've been contracting/consulting for a couple of years now. Most my contracts have come through referrals (of friends) and sometimes recruiters. However, I was able to start my contracting career thanks to a contract that came through Toptal. This allowed me to quit my job and do this full-time.
Here's my list of resources that I would be looking at if
I needed to start looking for a contract immediately:
Boards:
- Authentic Jobs: http://www.authenticjobs.com/
- StackOverflow Careers: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?type=contract&allowsremote=true
- We Work Remotely: https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/search?term=contract
- Angelist: https://angel.co/jobs
- Github Jobs: https://jobs.github.com/
- Hired: https://hired.com/contract-jobs
Networks:
- Toptal: https://www.toptal.com/ (I'm a member of Toptal's network)
- Gigster: https://www.trygigster.com/ (haven't used it yet)
- Crew: https://crew.co/ (haven't used it yet)
Offline ideas:
- Approach companies at Meetups
- Meetups, meetups, meetups
- Pitch on forums
- Work with contract agencies
- Become a subcontractor
It also helps to work on branding yourself, blogging, and integrating into communities (like HN!). Generally, just becoming an authority on a topic and allowing people get to know you before they work with you helps a lot. Kind of like patio11 has done for himself around here. Then people start coming to you instead of the other way around.
I would also highly recommend looking at DevChat TV's…
Unsplash | Montreal, Quebec, Canada | Front-End Software Developer | Full-time, Onsite preferred
Unsplash is one of the world’s largest photography communities, dedicated to providing stunningly beautiful images released under Creative Commons Zero. Over 1 billion photos are viewed every month and our community is fueled by contributors who offer their photos freely for anyone to use, remixing and re-sharing in a way that has never been seen before. Unsplash photos have been used by millions of creators, from companies like Apple, to writers like Deepak Chopra.
We’re applying the principles of the open source movement to photography and what we’re doing isn’t just having a big impact on the photography industry, but the internet as a whole. We see it as an exciting chance to reinvent a major industry run by the old guard and covered in red tape. Unsplash started on Hacker News 3 years ago, and it’s been an amazing ride ever since. In 2016 we grew by over 250%, and we’re looking forward to beating that number in 2017.
Our stack is ES6 React/Redux, rendered on a Node server, and powered by a Rails API. Our team is small; right now I’m one of two developers on the JS side, and we’re looking to add a third. The ideal candidate should be very experienced with Javascript. Experience with React/Redux or contributing to open-source is a plus. Ideally, we’re looking to hire onsite in Montréal, Quebec, but we’re willing to be flexible for the perfect applicant. We can help with…
You're exactly right!
Unsplash [1] was a side-project for our company freelance developer and designer platform, Crew [2] (Crew was later sold to Dribbble; Unsplash now operates independently).
We knew as creators that finding beautiful, useable imagery was one of the hardest challenges in any creative project, so we decided after shooting some photos for our homepage header image, to give the rest of the photos from the shoot away for free for anyone to use.
We setup a $19 tumblr theme, a domain, and posted the site to here.
What happened next was amazing: the site was flooded with traffic thanks to trending on HN, thousands of photos were downloaded on the first day, and most shockingly to us, other creatives began submitting their own photography to Unsplash.
Fast forward a year later and Unsplash was the main source of traffic and revenue for the parent company Crew. I think it peaked at around 60% of our monthly revenue due to customers finding Crew from a simple 'Made by Crew' link on Unsplash. At the same time, Unsplash was doing around 1M downloads a month.
We eventually sold Crew to Dribbble to focus full time on Unsplash, so it's no longer a side project. It's grown a lot since those early days, with more than 20M photo downloads every month, half a million free-to-use photos, and is integrated into thousands of applications, including Trello, Adobe, and more.
If you're interested in more about Unsplash, we've got all the main milestones here:…
Here's my master list of remote job sites - you should be able to find something through here (my first remote gig was from HN who is hiring thread):
HN - http://hnhiring.me/
Remote OK - https://remoteok.io/
Stack Overflow - https://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?allowsremote=True
LiquidTalent - http://www.liquidtalent.com/
Working Not Working - http://workingnotworking.com
Hired - https://hired.com/contract-jobs
Gigster - https://gigster.com/
Mirror - http://mirrorplacement.com/
Metova - http://metova.com/
Mokriya - http://mokriya.com/
HappyFunCorp - http://happyfuncorp.com
Savvy Apps - http://savvyapps.com/
Clevertech - http://www.clevertech.biz/
Workstate - http://www.workstate.com/
AngelList - https://angel.co/jobs
Authentic Jobs: http://www.authenticjobs.com/
Github Jobs: https://jobs.github.com/
- https://www.workingnomads.co/jobs
- https://remoteworkhub.com/remote-jobs/
- https://www.crossover.com/
- https://remote.com/
- https://weworkremotely.com/
- https://getbetterluck.com/
- https://remote.co/remote-jobs/
- https://remotive.io/find-a-job/
- https://www.skipthedrive.com/
- https://www.outsourcely.com/remote-business-services-jobs
- https://www.wfh.io/
- http://jobscribe.com/
- https://www.remotelyawesomejobs.com/
- https://landing.jobs/
- https://remotebase.io/
Crew: https://crew.co/
NoDesk - https://nodesk.co
FreelanceDevLeads: https://freelancedevleads.com/
FlexJobs: https://www.flexjobs.com/
Job boards
* http://weworkremotely.com
* http://remoteok.io
* http://remotebase.io
* http://workingnomads.co
* http://authenticjobs.com
* http://folyo.me
* http://jobspresso.co
* http://wfh.io
* http://remotefriendly.work
* http://linkedin.com/jobs
* http://angel.co/jobs
* http://designernews.co/jobs
* http://news.ycombinator.com (monthly posts for freelance jobs)
* http://dribbble.com/jobs (only design)
* http://getonbrd.com (latam)
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With broker
Here you apply as a professional, they approve you (or not) and then assign you projects.
* http://toptal.com
* http://workmarket.com
* http://crew.co
* http://hired.com
* http://onsite.io
* http://workingnotworking.com
* http://gun.io
* http://gigster.com
I do not recommend
* http://upwork.com
* http://freelancer.com
* http://nubelo.com
* http://fiverr.com
* http://workana.com
* http://guru.com
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Slack communities
Interact with other freelancers. Usually you will find a #Jobs channel.
Free membership
* http://wearedomino.com
* http://designerhangout.co
* http://launch.chat
Paid membership
* http://join.nomadlist.com ($25 month | $75 year | $200 lifetime)
* http://workfrom.co/chat ($5 month | $50 year)
* http://freelance.chat ($25 lifetime)
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This list is from an article [1] that I wrote, hope can help!
[1] https://medium.com/@pablomassa/sites-to-get-remote-work-as-a-freelancer-16092a954e21#.mzqr3nbqo
Hey everyone,
I'm Mikael, founder of Crew (http://crew.co) and Unsplash (http://unsplash.com). Before starting these sites, I was an independent designer and I'd often get the question from potential clients, "Should I make an app, website, or both?"
While mobile might seem like the obvious choice because of how it's changing the world, building an app might not be best decision for every particular situation. Granted, down the line a mobile app may make sense. I don’t discount where technology is headed. But a mobile app might not be where you need to start.
The decisions depends on a variety of factors like your long-term goals for your idea, your features, and your budget, etc. Thinking through all these variables can make the decision harder.
To help make it easier to consider the tradeoffs between building an app or website, I took all the questions I used to ask potential clients and made this tool called (perhaps, unsurprisingly) App vs Website.
It walks you through a few 'yes' or 'no' questions and in a minute or so, you have an answer.
I hope this helps give potential clients a better idea if they should start by building an app or a website based on their specific situation.
If you have any thoughts, I'll be around to hop in on any comments.
Thanks for taking a look.
Mikael
If you're curious, here's how we made it: http://backstage.crew.co/announcing-app-vs-website/