DoNanza is happy to present you Its freelance quarterly report. This time we chose to check the trends on the fascinating and fast growing E-Commerce market, and guess what?... We have some very interesting insights to share with you. Enjoy!

Most New E-Commerce Projects for Small to Mid-Sized Businesses are Magento-based, but in terms of Budget, the Highest Budgets go to X-Cart Developers

DoNanza data shows that during the first quarter there was a 27% increase in the total number of E-Commerce freelance projects. E-Commerce platforms are used to develop and support the E-Commerce needs of online retailers.

"In the Freelance world, most projects are for the Small and Mid-Sized Segment, where we've seen significant growth in demand" said Liran Kotzer, DoNanza's CEO.

DoNanza's report reveals several interesting facts about how the rivaling SMB E-Commerce platforms fared in the first quarter of 2011.

The Top E-Commerce Platforms by Number of Freelance Projects

As measured by new E-Commerce freelance projects, Magento leads the market with 43% of freelance projects, with osCommerce a distant number 2 with a 20% share. The Top 7 E-Commerce Platforms by Number of Projects are Magento, osCommerce, Virtuemart, zen cart, PrestaShop, Volusion and X-cart; in terms of demand for professionals, Magento is peerless.

"Based on our online freelance project data, both Magento and osCommerce lead the market due to being php-based, and increasingly, their open environment. When there are many third party developer solutions, projects are simpler since they can address most customer requirements without a need to develop elements from scratch", said Kotzer. "Third party development can allow connecting the shopping cart to ERP, CRM, payment gateways etc. E-Commerce platforms that are open-source based can create a critical mass of extensions and plugins that make it easy to use, leveraging the power of many developers worldwide to offer solutions and plug-ins that were developed and tested but still meet the specific requirements of the customer", he added.

E-Commerce Developer Demand Keeps Growing

Looking at growth in terms of number of projects compared to the previous quarter, Volusion, which has a fairly small market share, is experiencing explosive growth compared to the previous quarter, at 70%. Prestashop and Virtuemart also experienced high growth rates, at 53% and 41%.

"During the last year, we’ve seen project demand expanding from US-based projects to Europe and Japan", said Kotzer. "In Europe, the United Kingdom has the most E-Commerce projects and Germany has the highest growth rate for E-Commerce projects", he added.

X-cart Professionals are the Highest Earners per Project

Looking at the average project budget, opportunities for X-cart consistently came in with an average project budget that was much higher than the average Magento or osCommerce project. This makes X-cart a winner in terms of freelance revenue opportunity per project.

"Magneto project budgets are stable, growing by 12% as the market seems to meet demand for Magento development. On the other hand, X-cart project budgets have doubled, as apparently there are less X-cart developers than required. We see more X-cart demand than available experts", said Kotzer. On average, Magento projects are 19% higher than osCommerce projects.

Discussing SMB E-Commerce platforms, Arie Shpanya, CEO of imOnline, an E-Commerce Consultancy, said:

"The E-Commerce platform market is typically divided into three: enterprise level solutions, which cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars per site, typically used by sites that have annual sales above $10M, "No touch" platforms used for small retailers, typically sites that sell less than several thousand dollars a year and are based on solutions such as Amazon Webstores, yahoo stores and other. The third platform category is the Small to Mid-Sized Segment, generally considered as retailers selling anything between several hundreds of thousands of dollars and $5M per year".

Q1/2011 - The top 50 Requested Skills

Changes in Top 50 Requested Work-from-Home Skills Show Growing Demand for Administrative Assistance and Social Media

Administrative Assistance Projects grew by 8 ranks, reflecting demand for projects ranging from customer support, to technical support, data entry, web research etc.

Demand for social media grew considerably, going up 13 places on the list. However, despite the impressive project count growth, the average budget for social media projects dropped by 36%, reflecting a commoditizing market.

Perl development also showed a 35% growth in number of projects and 115% growth in average budget per project, showing healthy demand and lack of available freelancers. Since Perl is suitable for both rapid prototyping and large scale development projects, freelancers might find it profitable to invest in acquiring a Perl skill-set.

iPhone vs Android

According to the DoNanza Universe, iPhone Application development project counts are 33% higher than android, keeping its rank on the most requested skills list, while android development moved down three ranks. However, according to project budgets, iPhone projects came in at $1490 for the average projects with Android projects are $1910. iPad projects dropped by 7 place in the list, compared to the fourth quarter of 2010.

DoNanza, the largest search engine for work-from-home and freelance jobs, released today its quarterly State of the Work-From-Home and Freelancing Economy, looking at the fourth quarter 2010 and online freelance marketing project numbers for all of 2010.

Social media marketing is on track to surpass classic search engine marketing (SEO and SEM), reflecting social media's huge impact

Online marketing projects have become a necessary tool for many businesses. These cover everything from the "classic" lead generation and public relations campaigns - to newer forms such as search engine marketing and social media marketing.

The DoNanza universe data, reflecting projects for freelancers, shows the breakdown of the channels used by businesses for online marketing and the way these channels have changed in 2010, compared to 2009.

Marketing channel share of total project count

In 2010, Social Media Marketing projects have grown by 67%, compared to 2009. The Social Marketing share of all projects has grown to 35%, compared to 29% of projects in 2009. DoNanza data shows this trend will continue into 2011.

Social marketing is a recent addition to the online marketer's toolkit, resulting from the tremendous growth of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter and the increased ability to target and segment potential customers. Although social media has been around for longer, Social Marketing became a mainstay of online marketing about two years ago. Social Marketing includes social advertising, running fan pages, social bookmarking, development of social applications etc, as marketers are trying to get viral in spreading the word about their product or service.

However, growth rates for search engine marketing projects remain high, at 33% compared to 2009, although their share of overall marketing channels has dropped from 44% to 41%.

Direct marketing like telemarketing and email marketing, viewed as old-fashioned marketing methods are at about 9% out of all online projects found on DoNanza. These methods seem to be here to stay.

"This shift towards Social Marketing indicates that businesses believe that the potential value of social marketing is higher than any other online marketing channel", said Liran Kotzer, CEO of DoNanza. "I believe there are many reasons for this: first, the huge number of people spending their time on social environments such as Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, and the fact that social networks are here to stay and people are learning how to use them for business. In addition, many social media campaigns are more visible and easier to measure and understand than some of the methods used for in search engine marketing. However, Search engine marketing is definitely not decreasing, quite the contrary. In 2010, it is still the largest in terms of projects available on DoNanza."

Social Marketing projects have the highest average budgets

Social Marketing projects typically have higher budgets than Search Engine Marketing projects. The average social marketing budget was $ 1090, compared to $ 683 for the average Search Engine Marketing project. "Social projects typically require more creativity and may involve application development and novel solutions for engaging with customers" said Kotzer. "In addition, since social projects are a recent addition, there are fewer experienced individuals that can take the job."

Facebook Dominates Social Media Marketing

As reflected in the chart above, Facebook dominates social media projects, with projects varying from the creation of fan pages to application development and segmented advertising. Twitter is number two with projects helping businesses to create viral marketing tools as well as customer communications and customer service.

Facebook and Linkedin marketing projects have grown the most

Compared to 2009, MySpace projects have dropped by 46% with LinkedIn and Facebook projects growing at 103% and 120% respectively. Twitter growth is smaller, reflecting the fact that Twitter projects tend to differ from other "classic" social marketing projects that involve applications, brand building etc.

Q4/2010 - The top 50 Requested Skills

Changes in Top 50 Requested Work-from-Home Skills Show a Rise in iPad and Android Development as well as healthy demand for writing skills

Notable changes in the list are the rise of "Social Media Marketing" discussed above, iPad development and creative writing and a drop in SQL and Xhtml projects. iPad demand grew by 86%, climbing 10 spots in the list. The average iPad development project budget is $1551, but the availability of experts seems to push budgets down, with a 11.5% decrease in the average iPad budget from Q3 to Q4.

Creative writing skills are in high demand, climbing 12 spots in the list with a 59% increase in project count. "Demand for at-home writing skills is definitely growing, according to our project data", said Liran Kotzer, CEO of DoNanza. "The availability of a variety of writing styles and projects, from creative to technical writing, means that good writers can obtain interesting and lucrative at-home work".

Groupon Clone Sites Reflected in freelance work projects

Groupon.com, one of the most notable developments in 2010, tremendously affected the freelance and work from home market. "We have seen hundreds of businesses wishing to create a clone of Groupon and other similar services such as livingsocial.com in their respective cities and countries. With an average budget of $1440 per project, barriers to entry in the daily deals and group coupon space, at least on the development side, are indeed low" said Liran Kotzer, CEO of DoNanza.

Drupal Showing the Highest Growth Rates of all CMS platforms

DoNanza data shows that while WordPress continues to dominate the market as a CMS platform, growth rates were highest for Drupal, signaling strong momentum for the platform.
WordPress continued to lead all platforms, with 6.3 times the number of projects compared to Drupal, and Joomla was a distant second, with 2.8 times the number of Drupal Projects.

Conclusion

The DoNanza work-from-home universe is showing healthy signs of growth with a 20% growth in freelance project count from Q3 to Q4, providing more people with the opportunity to make a living from home. "More businesses are posting more projects", said Kotzer "as the appreciate that many tasks can be done simply and reliably through online freelancers".

DoNanza, the largest search engine for work-from-home and freelance jobs, released today its quarterly State of the Work-From-Home and Freelancing Economy.

Most CMS Sites Use Wordpress While the Largest Budgets Go to Drupal Developers

CMS platforms enable business and individuals to launch a web site, blog or online application and to easily manage the content within. Although the platforms are known for their ease of use, launching something that is beyond basic requires professional help. In the CMS freelance world this might mean a developer, a graphic designer, an SEO expert and other professionals.

DoNanza's report reveals several interesting facts about how the rivaling CMS/Blogging platforms fared in the third quarter of 2010, most notably WordPress, Joomla and Drupal

CMS Professional Project Demand is Showing Extraordinary Growth

CMS project counts are growing rapidly, quarter over quarter, with an average growth of 49 percent. There is no reduction in project count for any of the CMS platforms.

In Q3 2010, Wordpress projects in the DoNanza Universe grew by 61 percent, with Joomla growing at 38 percent and Drupal at 26 percent.

Wordpress is Peerless in Terms of Demand for Professionals

In terms of number of projects, WordPress is a clear winner, cementing its hold on the market with more than 6 times the amount of projects in comparison to Drupal. Joomla finds its position exactly in the middle in terms of number of projects.

Drupal Professionals are the Highest Earning

Looking at the average project budget, opportunities for Drupal consistently came in with an average project budget that was more than twice as much as the average WordPress/Joomla budget in the DoNanza Universe. This makes Drupal a clear winner in terms of revenue opportunity per project.

"Growth in freelance projects for certain technologies can tell us where the market is trending even before the finished projects impact market share" said Liran Kotzer, CEO of DoNanza. "Last quarter we noticed the sheer growth in demand for HTML5 and iPad developers. This quarter, in CMS platforms, we're seeing WordPress break out of the pack, while Drupal is becoming a great skill set for those looking for programming centric at-home work that is lucrative and differentiated. This is a result of the relative complexity and higher customization levels that Drupal projects usually have".

Different CMS Platforms Call for Different Skills; Some Platforms are Easy to Use, Some, Like Drupal, Require Site Building Freelance Work, and Others, Like Joomla, Are into 3rd Party Development

Projects data also shows the difference in project type depending on the CMS/Blogging Platform.

Site Development as % of Total Projects

"Our DoNanza Universe data verifies the belief that most people start out with WordPress on their own" said Kotzer. "Only 18 percent of the total WordPress projects are site building, while 31 percent of Drupal projects are site building.It means that with Drupal people are seeking at-home-work freelance support from the get-go and not trying to build the initial site by themselves, as with WordPress".

3rd party Development as % of total projects

Other CMS/Blogging platform characteristics are also verified in the DoNanza data, as 29 percent of Joomla projects are 3rd party development with WordPress 3rd party work only at 16 percent and Drupal at 20 percent.

"This proves that Joomla have a very active market allowing people to create and sell the third party extensions they have created for other Joomla platform users", said Kotzer.

"More businesses and individuals will keep using CMS platforms as a way to express themselves and do business" said Kotzer. "Currently each of the platforms has its own relative advantages, and we are curious to see how the differences between them will play out in the future. In the meantime, all of us benefit from the competition by getting much more flexible infrastructures with and advanced features."

Q3/2010 - The top 50 Requested Skills

Changes in Top 50 Requested Work-from-Home Skills Show a Rise in iPad and Android Development

Mobile Application Development Growing at a Healthy Clip

Online Ecommerce Infrastructure Shows Virtuemart Gaining Momentum

In terms of ecommerce infrastructure projects, Magento is the highest ranking skill, at # 38, with oscommerece coming in at # 53 (not shown in the table). However, Virtuemart projects, the Joomla e-commerce platform, grew at 137 percent with Magento and oscommerce at 50 percent and 42 percent and Zen cart lagging at 29 percent growth.

Online Freelance Jobs Growing Rapidly

A key finding is that work-from-home project counts increased by a hefty 45 percent over the previous quarter. Most of the projects required skills in software development or graphic design, while marketing, writing and translation projects were popular as well.

"The freelance economy is showing strong growth", said Kotzer. "The increase in project count shows that businesses and individuals understand that finding an online freelancer is not an exotic choice to run a business. It is becoming mainstream, with the best value for money. We know this firsthand – DoNanza has tens of excellent freelancers under its hood."

With a relatively increasing number of followers and job seekers, the Donanza Team provides detailed statistics for freelance job scopes such as Web Design, Graphic Design, Content Writing, Social Networking, SEO and Sales to keep freelancers clued up on the movement of the ever changing world of freelancing.

This month’s Donanza search engine results are based on thousands of job postings from prominent freelance bidding sites such as oDesk, Elance and Scriptlance. The figures aim to serve as a guide on how ‘new’ service providers can find job from various sources in a single webpage and on how ‘tenured’ providers can commit wise decisions with regard to their field of expertise and career direction.

Last Month’s freelance job market trends report focused on the implication of the month’s statistics on the overall movement of the freelance job and outsourcing industry. Now, the statistics will be presented as is to give freelancers an unbiased feel on how to decide for their own careers.

50 Most Required Skills

This report covers 50 skills (considered most required) with rankings based on the number of jobs posted under each skill in the month of September. Our top 3 skills seem immovable from their spots. Freelancers from India will surely be most delighted on this result as news from softpedia specified India as the next largest PHP development source on the internet— with United States as its nearest competition.

SEO, however, which is currently in the fourth spot of our top 5, appears to be moving in ups and downs from top 4 last July to top 5 last August and now on top 4 again. MYSQL completes our top 5 with CSS and Data Entry always in an attempt to replace it in its spot.

The biggest rise in the list as of the month of September is Ghostwriting. The biggest dive out of the list, on the other hand is article writing with 9 steps behind its former slot. Finally, the Market Trend’s most impressive growth was recorded by Ghostwriting which is now 28 slots up from its former position in the top 100. Ironically, other skills under the category of content development recorded tremendous losses this month.

10 Most Popular Searches

In demand trends or what we refer to as our 10 Most Popular Searches are Graphic Design, Software Development, Writing, Web Development, Translation, Admin Support, PHP, Illustration, Java and Web Design. The list has not gone through much change this month except for the fact that SEO, Multimedia and iPhone are already nowhere to be found in the top 10.

As advised earlier, this report is now simply a representation of the statistics based on collected facts. It will be helpful if you will check out our online freelance job market trends for the month of July and August for a better look on the status of your field of expertise and the demands (opportunities) that it generates for you.

50 Most Required Skills

There has been a sudden turn of events for Data Entry as it was replaced by MySQL on its spot on Donanza’s last month’s Top Demanded Skills. MySQL proved to be a rising freelance job as it moved from the sixth spot to the fourth on our current list. SEO also gave way to it by moving from the fourth spot to the fifth. Indeed, freelancers who are skilled on database management, particularly on a system such as MySQL, are undeniably in for some more freelance job opportunities in the coming months.

The movement in the trend is not that drastic at all that it is best to refer to it as a shuffle. This only implies one thing: If your skill is on a high-demand now, it is highly recommended that you continue to hone it in order to be a better value provider for the freelance jobs available for your skill rather than to consider a shift to a different skill that you find interesting at the moment. This is of course just an intelligent suggestion to a freelancer who wants a constant stream of work and income. However, if you do freelance jobs for the sake of being able to use your skills and to self-gratify, this piece of advice won’t really be for you.

You may be wondering what the green and red numbers across each skills are for. These numbers are the movement determinants. Through them, you will be able to tell which skills made tremendous leaps on freelance job demands (the green ones) and which ones failed to maintain a good standing on clients’ needs. Amongst those who have made noticeable improvements are technical writing, c#, advertising and animation which number climbed up our list by 35, 34 and 23 slots respectively. Temporary poor performers for this month, however, surprisingly include link building, data processing, internet marketing and sales which demand dropped from our list from the relatively high number of 14 down to 6. This should be no cause for any apprehension though because as it was already mentioned; freelance jobs are here to stay. A favorable trend or a sudden decline on a demand for a skill is perfectly normal— what’s not is you taking it against your own career. No matter how limited your skill has to offer, you are still the manager of your profession. Look for work; they won’t look for you.

10 Most Popular Searches

Now, we’ve come to the moment of truth. What do you think is the best way to determine if your skill has its appeal to clients? Check our month’s Top Searches! Similar to Donanza’s August Top Demanded Skills list, our Top Searches list has not had much movement. It has just been literally shuffled. It is, however, notable that admin support has been replaced by multimedia on our top ten, but this does pose any possible source of worry to admin support freelancers at all. This simply appears to be a ‘seasonal’ movement to be expected from time to time. After all, freelance jobs never promised stability.

Constant stream of work and earnings are still highly dependent on the freelancer’s competitiveness and resourcefulness. Needless to say, no matter where your skill is on Donanza’s Top Demanded Skills and Top Searches list, it is still entirely up to you to be able to find and ‘bag’ freelance jobs and gigs for yourself. Therefore, equip yourself with the knowledge and proficiency your career field requires— and explore bidding sites such as www.donanza.com which collectively gives you all the opportunities available across the web— and you are surely going to be staying the world of freelancing for a long time while loving it.

50 Most Required Skills

Together with Donanza’s mission to expose all the freelance jobs available over the web comes a need to monitor market trends, provide statistics and present these data in an organized and unbiased manner. This category, together with the rest that will appear in this post, are going to be a constant content of this page as Donanza continually gives you a bird’s eye view of the freelancing industry’s movements. Below are the 50 Most Required Skills based on all the freelance websites’ job posts collected and tabulated.

Topping our 50 Most Required Skills chart are Php, Website Design, Graphic Design, SEO and Data Entry— all of which happen to be working together as a team to come up with an ‘attractive’ webpage. By attractive, we mean pleasing to the eye and search engine friendly.
An increasing trend on content-related skills (Copywriting, HTML, WordPress, Content Writing, Link Building, Blog and Article Writing) is also notable. This is obviously brought about by the increasing number of businesses with online presence which requires regular content updates for marketing purposes. Needless to say, content is a critical part of any webpage which may even determine a page’s affectivity over internet browsers and site visitors.

15 Most Popular Searches

The best part of reading this is that you get to know which amongst the 50 Most Required Skills are consistently on every prospect clients’ watch list. Here is a table showcasing the top performers in Donanza’s search engine.
Landing the top spot is writing, which is a common freelance job, outsourced by clients from around the globe. Admin Support also finds its place in our list’s Top 5 as more and more people are already outsourcing administrative freelance jobs which includes (but are not limited to); web research, e-mail correspondence, diary management, blog posting, article submission to directories and business call handling.
Our Top 5 Most Required Skills also made it in our 15 Most Popular Searches. A common factor simply implies that there is more to come for these industries for a long period of time. Therefore, if you have the gift of gab or competitive programming skills, you are surely going to be in for some great freelance job appointments!

Funniest/Weirdest/Most Romantic Freelance Job Post

The last, but surely not the least category will be Donanza’s Funniest/Weirdest/Most Romantic Freelance Job Post. Let us cut out some slack and entertain ourselves with a job post which will have you wonder how a future bride would feel if she knew that her future groom’s efforts to make his marriage proposal to her extra special has even made its way to the virtual freelancing world!

This is a proof of how limitless freelance job opportunities can be. This is not unique at all. Sure it is separable from the lot, but if you’ll care to browse some more, you will know that almost anyone can go on freelancing through the use of their valuable skills and a little self promotion.

Watch out for next month’s Search Engine Results, Rankings and Market Statistics, and continually make use of these data to be able to properly strategize and demand-proof your freelance career goals.