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".

Since our launch in 2009, we have reviewed thousands of comments and suggestions from our users, researched and tested new technologies, and analyzed various ways in which we could enhance your DoNanza experience in finding projects that best match your skills and expectations. As a result of these efforts, we are pleased to bring you My.DoNanza, a tool that lets you personalize your search experience so you spend less time looking for your ideal projects and more time working on paying projects from all across the Web.

We developed My.DoNanza to make it more convenient for you to manage project searches, get project recommendations from us that are tailored to your skills and interests, organize your favorite projects and much more.


You can learn more about My.DoNanza Here.


But first, here’s a quick look at the new features My.DoNanza offers:

Customized Project Feeds

With our new search concept, you can set up multiple project feeds and personalize them based on the types of projects of interest to you. It’s similar to a Facebook news wall, only each time you visit DoNanza, you automatically receive new project opportunities that match your skills and interests.

Project Recommendations

DoNanza constantly learns what your preferences are and what kinds of projects might interest you and sends you recommendations of new and relevant projects that you can work on from time to time.

Project Tracking

Save your favorite projects and get real-time updates when these projects are updated. Add personal notes and ratings on each project and mange them all in one place.

Search Organization Tool

With the My Saved Searches tool, you can easily save and mange your favorite searches and filters, so you won’t need to define your searches each time.

Project Alerts

Let My.DoNanza email you when new projects meet your search parameters.


My.DoNanza is the first of many tools DoNanza is planning to introduce soon to enhance your ability to utilize your skills and maximize your profit by working from home. You are welcome to join My.DoNanza and start using all of its time-saving tools for free. We also welcome you to share your feedback with us, either here at the comment section or privately on the feedback section. We read every comment, request and suggestion that we receive from our users and take them into consideration when developing our next tools and features.

We will keep you updated on each new tool we are about to launch.
So stay tuned and follow us to get updates on new tools!

Follow DoNanza on Facebook and Twitter.

The internet has revolutionized global communications to such an extent that people worldwide can fully interact with one another without meeting in person. This incredible technological breakthrough has opened up a whole new spectrum of opportunities for working from home as online freelancers.
Online freelancing is a viable alternative to traditional employment for large sectors in society. Finding work-from-home projects through the internet which they can perform online enables them to monetize their professional skills, passions and hobbies. Therefore online freelancing can suit everybody, from professionals to work-at-home moms, students, unemployed, disabled, senior citizens, and hobbyists wishing to earn money working from home doing what they are good at.

In a series of interviews, we will learn from different freelancers the reasons why they found that online freelancing was the best career option for them.





Marina, the first online freelancer to be interviewed by us, is a typical example of a highly skilled professional who chose online freelancing because of the wonderful opportunities it offers for creative young people.

Portrait of an Online Freelancer

Marina and her husband are both full-time online freelancers living in the Netherlands. Marina is a top rated contractor who uses DoNanza to find projects on online marketplaces. Her main profession is project management; buyers hire her online to manage other freelancers and make sure their work is done satisfactorily and completed on time. Her secondary profession which she really enjoys doing, is user experience design. Marina sees the possibility of working in two professions as one of the main advantages of online freelancing – “if I was employed at an on site job, I would probably not be able to take 2 very different roles at one company, so I would be forced to sacrifice one talent over another”.

Marina is a free spirit: she’s not only a full-time online freelancer but also an autodidact who learns by “reading, attending events, participating in discussions and workshops, etc”. Indeed, freelancing and learning things by oneself best suits people who value independence, open horizons, and new experiences.

Marina is also a multi-cultural sort of person who likes to encounter new places, new cultures, and most of all new people from diverse backgrounds.

Becoming an Online Freelancer

Her career as a project manager started around four years ago when she moved from Latvia to Vilnius in Lithuania. At one point, approximately two years ago, Marina and her husband decided to venture into freelancing. “We wanted to move on, so we both quit, and started looking for freelance opportunities. The only issue we had in mind is a sort of instability which is traditionally associated with freelancing.”
Ultimately, Marina’s choice turned out to be the right one. Today Marina’s and her husband’s incomes as full-time online freelancers is high enough to allow them a good standard of living in the Netherlands, which is known to be a country in which living expenses are relatively high.

How Online Freelancing can change one’s life

Freelancing enabled Marina and her husband to do what they both like best – globetrotting. “I started freelancing, and since it allows me to travel, we decided to go spend some time in Portugal, and then in the Netherlands which is where I’m based now.”

As an online freelancer Marina’s work doesn’t depend on her geographic location and she is therefore free to choose where to live. Nonetheless, Marina chose to live in the Netherlands, because it has “amazing networking and teaming up opportunities.”

When describing the advantages of freelancing, Marina repeatedly uses the words “Freedom” and “Opportunities”. Marina has every reason to be happy with her choice of career and she definitely recommends other people to give online freelancing a chance, even if they aren’t quite as free spirited as most online freelancers. “As for personality – I also believe this personality and attitude is not something you are born with, anyone can learn to be a rock star freelancer and boss in their life, just takes a bit of ambition and patience, and yes, a bit of hard work in the beginning.”

Personal Tricks of the Trade

In the course of two years, Marina has gained extensive experience and expertise in freelancing. In an interview with one of the founders of DoNanza.com, Marina shared a number of important tips and personal thoughts on freelancing.

• Being geographically near one’s clients helps in certain cases but isn’t necessary since today’s communications technology enables full client-provider interaction.




• Online freelancers should view their online freelance business like mothering a baby – “If you wake up and your baby is crying, you cannot just, you know not pay attention to it.”




• Online freelancers should establish a working routine at home, therefore they ought “to mend their to-dos, daily to-dos, and make them from the evening for the next day.”




• Any online freelancer must make it clear to the buyer that, except for urgent cases, his working hours are normal business working hours in his time zone.




• The internet offers a wide range of helpful resources for online freelancers. Two such resources are: “Freelance Apple, FreelanceSwitch – they are the sites which are providing daily blog posts about freelancing suggestions.” These resources offer “also provide very specific suggestions on how to find new clients and projects.”




• How does an online freelancer sell himself? “In terms of freelancing, it’s better to be a generalist, than a specialist.” However, the best online freelancer is a so-called generalizing specialist, which “means that you’re a very narrowly specializing expert, but you’re able to see the bigger picture.”




• Online freelancers should build up a network of professionals with whom they can cooperate. The golden rule of “what goes around comes around” is very true when it comes to freelancing. Avoid being greedy – “If you recommend other people, when you’re not available for a project or your skills don’t match the requirements, be sure they’ll remember you and recommend you.”




• Online freelancers should aim at building up a long-term relationship with their clients. Everybody in business knows that a returning client is far better than a one-time client is. Showing consideration for your clients concerns and needs will help you convert him from a one-time client into a returning client.

Web Resources for Online Freelancers

How does a freelancer find work? Traditionally a freelancer would use various platforms for advertizing his skills and the services he offers and wait for the first clients to contact him. Today the internet has vastly extended the spectrum of opportunities for online freelancers to find assignments. However, the most important platform for finding freelance work is the online marketplaces, which are specially designed for online freelancers and buyers to meet.
We have created DoNanza to help you with exactly that – One place to find the best projects, matching your skills and expectations, from all across the web. Good Luck!

As part of the partnership, Donanza’s work-from-home project board is offered as a free application for the webs.com community. Donanza’s Work-From-Home Project Board enables Webs’ users to offer on their websites freelance projects that can be done from home, and to share the revenue for both jobs posted, and jobs accepted.

Donanza’s Work-From-Home Project board application supports the unique layouts of sites that were created using the webs.com platform and the site owner can easily customize its look & feel and tailor the projects offered on his site to fit his visitor’s skills and interests.

“Donanza’s Work-From-Home Project Board can be set up in a flash, and gives you multiple ways to generate revenue through your website. It also drives traffic to your site,” explains Webs CEO Haroon Mokhtarzada.

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."

Image credits to nkzs

I am a work-at-home mom. I freelance my writing services for a living, wash the dishes, do the laundry and feed the baby at the same time. Sounds like too much of a juggle? I don’t think so.

It is true that being a work-at-home mom poses a lot of challenges, and so do traditional jobs. The only difference is that being a work-at-home mom allows you to still be able to keep a career for yourself while being able to spend quality time with your family.  This spells out F-U-L-L-F-I-L-L-M-E-N-T for me. There’s no other kind of work that would allow me to grow professionally while watching my 11-month old baby turn into a charming toddler. And for those who’d rather keep arguing about the challenges of being a WAHM, let me tell you: No pain, no gain! I was a call center agent before and I used to be a sounding board to irate callers. If you aren’t willing to sweat your way to have a good income, there’s no way you are going to get any. I am a work-at-home mom now, and I earn way better than what I earn when I was still working for others. The work is equally challenging, but I get to enjoy the following benefits;

I get to manage my own business

They say that the only way to gain financial independence is to set up your own business. This proved true in my case. Working on traditional jobs comes with investments: transportation, food and clothing allowance. As a work-at-home mom, I am able to work without all these. My desk is just within my room, I get to eat what my family eats (which is within the family budget) and I get to work even if I am still in my pajamas! Now, most of the expenses that used to burden me when I was still working outside home are already well-spent on fun family outings, business investments and/or allotted to family savings.

I treat working from home as working on my own business so there are still times when I don’t get to work in my pajamas. I still occasionally wear the ‘dreaded’ corporate attire when speaking to clients personally or on Skype. I also invest on it, but I get to keep my investment just like my laptop which allows me to work on café’s and out-of-town sans worries of losing business because of unreturned e-mails.

With it as a business of my own, I am able to maximize every earning/savings opportunity that it has provided me with. I am also able to plot my own goals for my own business. The flexibility allowed me to be the best that I can be sans the boss asking me to work harder for a paycheck that’s not even worth it.  As a work-at-home mom, I am working smarter to keep my business growing so I can be financially independent very soon.

I get to choose my clients

When working on traditional jobs, choosing a boss is not an option. You have to work with an ‘ancient dinosaur’ whether you like it or not. As a work-at-home mom, I am able to classify prospect clients as either bad or good. Of course, I only work with the good ones.

The good ones aren’t difficult to find. There are more good ones than bad in the market because the marketplace is literally crowded with professional and business- minded people who are also working smarter to grow their own businesses. In addition, work-at-home people are a lot cheaper to work with than regular employees, so if you are good at what you do, you can expect to attract good clients too.

I get to choose my projects

I prefer to work on writing projects on topics of working from home and freelancing— and I am able to observe this preference when applying for new projects. With a market as wide as the world, you are definitely going to find work that suits your taste and passion. Not to mention finding work that pays you your worth.

I get to choose my work hours

I am a night person. My brain seems to be most efficient at night. Therefore, 9AM-5PM work is simply not for me. As a work-at-home mom, I get to work on my preferred hours without hurting my timecard with absences and lates.

I get to see my family grow as I do all these

Now, the best thing about working from home is the ability to grow my own business while seeing my family grow at the same time. Life is short to spend most days at work, but you can’t earn a living unless you work. I feel so blessed to have a skill that I am able to market online. It allowed me to pursue a passion, earn a living and take care of my family without having to send my baby to day care when I work. Sure, it is challenging, but it is all worth it.

How about you? Are you a work-at-home mom, too? Or are you looking to be a work-at-home mom soon? With time management and strong desire to grow, working from home can be the best career decision that you can ever make. Leave your tips and questions as comments below.

DoNanza, the world's leading work-from-home job search engine, releases its quarterly trends statistics report for Q2/2010. The report is based on the analysis of millions of work-from-home projects, aggregated from all over the web, indexed by the DoNanza search engine.

Demand by Skill Sets

Software development leads the DoNanza demand by skill sets category with 24 percent, way out in front of any other skill category. The closest category, with 15 percent, is graphic design. Other categories worth mentioning are writing, marketing, admin assistant and translation.

Demand for HTML5 Developers Increases While Demand for Flash Developers Decreases

It seems that Apple’s decision to not support flash technology on their iPad/iPhone platforms, and go with HTML5 instead, is showing its influence. But, while the trend is toward HTML5, don’t be fooled - the number of Flash-related projects is still 11 times higher than HTML5 projects.

iPad Overtakes Android in Mobile Development Projects... in Just Three Months

The number of mobile-related projects keeps growing at a rapid rate where Apple seems to dominate this world, especially after an astonishing jump in the number of iPad application development projects after its release in April 2010, which already crossed the number of android projects. In addition, the average budget for iPhone-related projects is 30 percent higher than Android projects, which may be the result of only 28 percent of iPhone apps being free, compared to the Android market with 57 percent of its applications being free.

Facebook Trumps Twitter and the Gap Continues to Widen

With Facebook driving measurable revenue through applications, it’s no surprise to see three times more project requests related to Facebook than to Twitter. Projects on Facebook see a much more significant return on investment. It’s important to mention that there is still growth in the demand for social campaigns in both of the networks.

Location-Based Social Networks Development Are on the Rise

The world of location-based social networking is also growing rapidly, with an increased growth of 70 percent for Gowalla and more than double for Foursquare with 150 percent growth.
The average budget offered for projects related to Foursquare is bigger than the other social networks’ average budget, and might be a result of a lack of geolocation social marketers and developers. We assume that the average budget and the growth rate will keep increasing as a result of location-based social networking’s fast growth.

The Browsers Battle: Chrome is Taking the Lead for Developers

The competition in the browser arena can be traced through the demand for extensions, and Google Chrome is winning the battle against IE, Firefox and Safari. During Q2 we saw for the first time that there were more requests to develop extensions for Google’s Chrome browser than for all other browsers. In previous quarters, requests for Firefox developers were in the lead, but no longer.

PHP Dominates

PHP is defiantly the preferred technology for businesses to create websites. The request for .Net developers is decreasing dramatically even though the average budget for .Net projects remains the highest among the other programming languages. This is a result of the lack of developers, unlike PHP where the number of programmers available is much higher.

An American Designer, English Writer and Indian Programmer Meet in a Bar...

Although the Internet causes some of the boundaries to fall between people in different countries, where an employer in the US, for example, can hire skilled professionals from different parts of the world, one thing is hard to change – peoples’ nature.
Monitoring the skilled visitors to the DoNanza search engine, we can see that in the US the favorite skills are software development and graphic design where in the UK, writing is the most popular skill with graphic design a close second. And in India, software development is most popular, with the following skills a distant second.

Q2/2010 - The top 50 Requested Skills

Below is a table showing the Top 50 requested skills for work-from-home projects, based on all projects indexed by DoNanza during Q2. The change in demand, quarter-over-quarter, for each skill, is noted in the table.

Winner-Take-All vs. Best-Bidder-Wins

Not to get you confused or anything, but we are sure that a lot of independent contractors argue over this: Contests or Bidding Sites? Without plans of settling this argument to an end, DoNanza reveals that bidding sites keep their wins to 75 percent of projects available in the web. Marketplaces like oDesk.com, Elance.com, Freelancer.com, Vworker.com and Scriptlance.com, continue to make ‘bidding-on-projects’ a standard among professionals working online.

However, with the graphic design industry growing each day, we have observed an increase in the use of contest sites for work-from-home projects. In fact, the remaining 25 percent of the statistics are won by contest sites using the select-from-entries format of project award. These contest sites are 99designs.com, crowdspring.com, logotournament.com, designcrowd.com, graphiccompetitions.com and geniusrocket.com. These sites are growing in number, and so are the design contests that they host.

This indicates that the usage of contest as a way to create logos and other brand-related elements is considered as a successful way because it saves money and it attracts many people to the process and by that increases brand awareness.

Here is a free-built path to income

Are you a freelance Web Designer? Looking for some extra cash to help you attain your goal to be financially independent in the near future? No time for more work? If your answer to all these questions is a BIG YES, then read on (Don’t worry, this is not a get rich quick scheme!).

A lot of Web Designers would be delighted to know that they can ‘passively’ earn a good sum of money in the Web. What you are about to read here is not at all a secret for most tenured designers, but can absolutely be a good reference for new Web Designers with budding freelance careers. So here we go with some of the known ways for Web Designers to gain passive income;

Affiliate Marketing – This one is the most known option amongst all others listed here. This is in no way a surprise for most of us because affiliate marketing is viable money making option not only for Web Designers, but also for ‘almost anyone’ who owns a blog. Web Designers have an edge over all others however because they have been gifted with skills to alter a page’s design for an affiliate banner to blend well with the other elements of the blog.

Consulting Services – Offering a service such this is another viable source of passive income for Web Designers. We are pretty certain that a lot of ‘traditionally employed people’ would want to know how you earn at the comforts of your home. Give them a helping hand while gaining monetary benefits in return. Now, you may argue that this is in no way a passive source of income as it will require you to spend time teaching others to learn your craft. You are partly right, but just think of it this way: No matter how busy you are, you’ll need some time off work and you’ll need a social life. Spend some time socializing while still earning by sharing to others what you enjoy doing.

Resell Hosting – Now is the time to see the opportunities right in front of you! You are designing websites so why not consider being a one-stop-shop to your clients? Well, this is not at all too laborious to do. Simply tell your client that you also offer hosting (and make sure you really do!). Saves them time spent on looking for a reliable hosting provider.

Sell themes – Again, you may argue that this option is not at all a source of passive income because you will obviously need to spend hours designing a theme. But hey, we’re certain that once in your career, you’ve done some experiments and you’ve come up with some mediocre work. Why not do some touch up on these designs and sell these themes at an affordable price. Not only will this help you build a brand of your own, but will also help you raise some funds for business expanding purposes.

This list contains the options that will help you gain extra income while keeping a constant and more reliable stream of earnings through freelance jobs. This post not only serves as a resource for you to find more opportunities, but also serves as an eye opener towards seeing the web as a good start for any business endeavor.

Image credits to FOTOCROMO

A lot has already been said about how advantageous it is to be in the freelance job industry. Working at the comforts of your home and earning an attractive pay are some of the most famed benefits of being able to work home based. We are living proofs of this fortune in freelancing— and we hope you are, too.

Looking back  when we’re all still at the starting point of our careers, it can’t be denied that we have had faced our own share of risks— scammers, clients who would not pay and relatively below industry standard rates to name a few. We have learned to overcome all of these and are now at the turning point of our careers. However, another risk is left to be faced– and we are sure that at one point of your freelance career, you’ve come to ask yourself this: Where am I to go from here?

Admit it, no matter how good freelance jobs are, they still lack some of the offers that traditional jobs have. One of this is promotion. Well, without a regular employer, how can such be possible? The alarming fact about this is that we are all brought up to think of becoming CEO’s someday! We are thought to be competitive and to climb up the corporate ladder. Needless to say, sooner or later, a feeling of dissatisfaction will settle within us, which will eventually leave us unhappy and discontented with our freelance jobs.

We have given this a thought for quite some time and we are glad to tell you that there is hope. You need not be left to be a freelancer for long. An invisible corporate ladder is available for you to take advantage of.

Let us explain the concept through this scenario;

Assuming you are a freelance writer. You have your regular gigs from your trusted freelance job website and you are considerably at the peak of your career. However, despite this success, you feel all tired and weary of doing the same job over and over again. Routine is killing you, but you can’t just simply leave your freelance job.  What can you do?

Supposing this scenario is true, there’s really not a need to fret. As a freelancer, you are not only given the flexibility on work hours but a wide variety of options, too! Digging deeper into the world of SEO and establishing a career as an SEO specialist is a very good opportunity. After all, if you already have a knack with words, you might as well use it to your own and your client’s advantage by upping your knowledge about how you can make you content a certified king by ranking them well on search engines . Consider this as a promotion from being an article writer to an SEO specialist. Not only will it change your routine and make your freelance job more exciting, but it will also make you feel good about yourself because of your ability to level your skills up to meet more freelance job needs.

This scenario is not at all to suggest that you take a sudden shift. This is simple a demonstration of the tremendous options most freelance jobs has to offer. Finally, a promotion does not only apply to article writers— how does becoming an internet marketer from being a savvy internet provider sound to you? This is also possible. After all, it is not really about who you know, but what you know that will take you to the top in the freelance job industry. Too bad it is often the other way around for traditional jobs—another reason to celebrate your being a freelancer.

Happy Freelancing!