The Internet has seen an explosion in so called 'lance' sites. Their service are a sort of go between to bring together clients requiring projects with freelancer seeking work. Whilst the client uses the service for free, the freelancer is charge an ever increasing fees just for the priviledge of bidding for the projects. In theory this seems reasonable but in practice the market is being destroyed by lower and lower bids as more freelancers from around the globe bid against each other, which in turn is pushing down the quality of the work.

Some of these job sites can charge up to ?175 a month to access their database of projects. This situation has become critical for the freelancer. To add to all these problems there are the students offering to work for nothing just build up their portfolio, little realising that they themselves will leave college and have to compete.

Fed up to the teeth with the freelancers 'lot' John Thompson, a freelancer himself, decide to set up a voluntary run forum / community,(Designcrowd.com), for freelance Designers, Programmers & Web developers. Designcrowd.com. In just 2 months we have been overwhelmed, he says, attracting nearly 800 members.

The ethos of the forum is to find jobs, projects, clients and offer them to the freelancers on the site for NO FEES. John says that the member join up is gaining pace daily and clients are taking a very healthy interest. I feel very happy that at last freelancers are getting a decent deal.

If you are a client or a freelancer and would like more info take a look for yourself. Its all FREE!

www.designcrowd.com

John Thompson - (Liverpool - UK) , Authoring Photoshop book, Teach/Trainer in Digital Imaging