Hirefreehands Wants to Take on Fiverr, but it has Plenty of Work to Do

Online freelancing is a huge market; companies and individuals outsource their projects to skilled persons online for a fee. Popular freelancing websites like Fiverr or Upwork offer services for a variety of projects, ranging from small website creations, app development, article writing, data analysis and even fortune-telling.

Interestingly too, in this digital age, these jobs can flow anywhere. And they’ll typically flow to any country where their citizens are skilled, literate and online.

With a large pool of highly skilled individuals, Nigeria is one country that enjoys online jobs. Unfortunately, getting jobs online is not so easy. This is not surprising as people from developing countries often find it difficult to convince clients of their skillsets and why they should pay more for the services provided.

Thankfully, one startup has emerged to fix this problem. Hirefreehands, a Nigerian startup, is keen on catering for the needs of Nigerian freelancers. The platform wants to make it easy for people to hire and work with top quality, professional, and affordable freelancers.

How Does Hirefreehands Work?

Developed by Sunkanmi Ola, the platform debuted in 2017 and is still a work in progress. Hirefreehands wants to streamline the process of getting skilled workers, negotiating with them, and managing their delivered projects.

To fulfil these objectives, Hirefreehands has developed few measures to maintain standards.

First, to combat quack freelancers, Hirefreehands verifies “all the freelancers we bring onboard, to verify that they indeed possess the skill they claim to have.”

The platform also does quite a lot to address payments problems. It has a Price Regulation Algorithm that makes it easy for clients and freelancers to reach price agreements. And it also appears to have an escrow system to help calm the nerves of weary clients and freelancers.

Plenty of Hurdles for HireFreeHands

As laudable as Hirefreehands is, I have plenty of reservations about how it works.

For one, the platform appears a bit confusing to new users. With a not so compelling homepage, the platform does not showcase jobs or projects being offered by its freelancers. To find gig offerings, all users, freelancers and clients alike have to signup first. That’s a really huge turnoff for most people.

In a country where freelancers are “OK” with platforms like Fiverr and Upwork, Hirefreehands needs to do a lot to convince people to sign-up to its platform.