In praise of Voices.com

I have been a long time consumer of freelance marketplaces. Yet, all the freelance websites that I have experienced so far left me a feeling of half-backed design. Guru, oDesk, eLance, rentacoder, just to name a few of them.

The heart of the problem lies in the doomed attempts at supporting any type of freelance jobs with a unique web application.

In contrast, voices.com has a unique focus on voice talents. You won’t find database administrators or supply chain consultants on voices.com; but when it comes to voice-over jobs, the application is just plain great.

Basically, like any other freelance website, you post your job - including your scripts since it’s a voice over job - and within hours you get dozen of freelance offers. So far, so good, all other freelance websites are doing that.

Yet, the killing feature of voices.com is that each freelancer gives you a 30s record of their own voice over your scripts.

And this feature is plain amazing. Instead of wasting hours making desperate attempts at sorting out true talent out of the massive amount of junk proposals, you just listen to your 30s samples, which precisely happens to be the rational way to take your decision.

And the best thing is that since voice.com is putting a strong emphasis on talent through this very feature, you’re getting virtually no junk proposal at all. Among the 30 proposals that I have been getting yesterday in less than 6h, most of them were very good, and a few of them, plain excellent.

Not believing me? Just check the very nice job that Ray Grover did for us within a 6h timeframe from job posting to job termination.

Reader Comments (3)

Hi Joannes, Thanks for the kind comments. While we’ve had the opportunity to branch out into other areas, the strength of the website is our laser-like focus on connecting people like you with professional voice over talents. April 8, 2009 | David Ciccarelli / CEO

Hi David, As a minor criticism, I have found that the “weak” point of Voices.com, was navigation and communication with the freelancer. A couple of suggestions:

• as a returning customer, when I arrive logged on your home page, I would like to be redirected to my account directly.
• then in /client/account, I would really prefer to have a direct listing of the jobs with their dates and statuses, instead of have Zero Open Job, Zero Open In Negotiation, etc.
• below activity (job listings), I would expect to have a listing of my communications with freelancers (if possible indicating the relevant job).
• in /messages/inbox, I can see the freelancer names, but I can click on their name to get their profile. I can’t see the relevant job either.
• in /messages/inbox, the system keeps adding “RE:” at each reply. My conversation was titled “RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Edit file for the ‘Slidecast: forecasting with Lokad’ job” which was annoying. Good luck with your venture, Joannes April 8, 2009 | joannes

Hello Joannes, Thank you for the feedback and I’ve ensured that the comments have been documented and will be reviewed for changes to our site. Laurynda Pasma Product Manager Voices.com June 2, 2009 | Laurynda Pasma