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Alchemunity : A Platform Built Truly For Freelancers Part I

Freelancing is certainly one of the fastest growing trends in employment today and the trend is still rising globally.  It has become the new normal as a global phenomenon, as many people have increasingly been choosing freelancing to escape the rigid 9-to-5 corporate work environment, noticeably in the last five years despite the Covid-19 pandemic.  There are an estimated 1.1 billion freelancers worldwide, with over 35% of them located in Europe.  Between 2014 to 2020, the number of freelancers increased from 53 million to roughly 60 million in the U.S., represented more than a third of its entire workforce.  Since the pandemic, this number soared by 34% year-over-year in 2021 and a further 26% in 2022.  Interestingly, less than one-quarter of all freelancers in the U.S. were full-time freelancers on or before 2020.  As the pandemic enabled them to shift to full-time, by choice or furlough, this number also grew from 13.6 million in 2020 to 21.6 million in 2022, constituting more than one-third of all freelancers.  The continuing rise in freelancing has created a new kind of diversity in many organizations today, with a mix of freelancers and in-house staff collaborating on projects, sometimes even daily tasks together.  As hiring managers become more adept at working effectively with a blended workforce and companies begin to reap the benefits of a global talent pool, freelancers will be in high demand. 

This growth in freelancing and the seismic shift of talents are the exact reasons giving rise to many freelance platforms, with Upwork, Freelancer and Fiverr being the most established ones.  Despite being successful talent warehouses, many marketplaces have not been able to develop communities of collaborating professionals and create an ecosystem of freelancers.  Furthermore, issues such as work quality dissatisfaction, unreliable clients, user disputes and biased ratings are often not addressed effectively by the platforms.  This has led to disintermediation of freelancers (set up off-platform arrangements with their clients) as they are re-assessing the worth of paying so much to an intermediary.

References:
  1. https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/freelance-stats/
  2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/685468/amount-of-people-freelancing-us/
  3.  https://info.mbopartners.com/rs/mbo/images/MBO_2022_State_of_Independence_Research_Report.pdf

This gap in the market provided an opportunity for us to start Alchemunity, an online freelancing community and marketplace.  At the core of our platform is a gamified scoring system where any user can earn points which enables them to rank up and unlock features.  Freelancers can join any one or more of the communities (e.g. software programmer, writer, influencer, designer, etc.) in the platform to contribute their expertise, learn new skills or improve their existing skills in the respective fields.  They can earn points through knowledge sharing, completing projects and winning contests.  As freelancer points can be broken down into a specific skill set within a community (e.g. software programmer → full stack engineer → Python) or a qualitative trait (e.g. timely delivery, level of professionalism, etc.), it should help employers better assess which candidate fits best for their projects.  Employers are also able to earn points through their engagement with the platform and the ratings they receive from freelancers on each project.  This two-way review process is established to better address both the work quality and unreliable clients issues as any bad behavior expressed throughout the project will be tracked and reflected as part of the reviews data for users to see.  Users can make use of this consolidated data to pre-determine whether to engage with the other party or not without any unforeseen surprises.  Even though biased ratings will always exist, we hope that the two-way review process provides a level playing field between freelancers and employers.    

When it comes to disputes arising between freelancers and employers, many existing platforms either do not have a resolution process in place or simply employ their in-house teams to handle these disagreements.  Oftentimes these teams are not subject matter experts, and they tend to rule in favour of the employers as being fee paying clients.  We are adopting a gamification approach for the dispute resolution process based on our scoring system.  Each panel of arbiters are community members with expertise in the skill sets relevant in the dispute.  They will be awarded accordingly based on the arbitration result.  As there will always be users looking for ways to game the system to their advantage, keeping the anonymity of the arbiters and their stakes prior to commencement is key to ensure impartiality to a great extent.  I will provide more details on this process in phase 2 of our launch.

According to the 2022 research report from MBO Partners, almost half of all freelancers in the U.S. are Millennials (34%) and Gen Z (15%).  Since these groups are tech-savvy and are mostly digital natives, we believe having a gamification approach to create active challenges and track progress with shared metrics is a critical motivator for them.  Points, rewards, gratification and feedback are all important elements in driving user engagement and preventing them from disintermediating from the platform.  Through contests and quests, freelancers can compete while learning from one another.  Through project completion, freelancers and employers can gather feedback and data, and use that information for evaluation cycles that are key to continuous improvement.  Through continuous engagement with the platform, users can level up to unlock features and are rewarded for adding good content to the platform.  After reaching a certain level, freelancers can unlock special roles and become subject matter experts in their communities.  This is just to name a few gamification features available on the platform, and there will be more to come in the future…

In Part II of this article, we will explore how Alchemunity aims to develop communities of collaborating professionals and to create an ecosystem of freelancers.
We are currently doing our phase 1 launch (beta version) and are giving away free points and credits for early adopters for the first 3 months.  Come and register with us now!