New Zealand hub for freelancers, Freelance Village, launched.

A new hub that connects businesses with freelancers has been launched, the first of its kind in New Zealand according to founder Erin Harrison.

The Freelance Village is a central platform for New Zealand freelancers to showcase their talents and enables them to be contacted directly by any business that requires their services. The website can be accessed for free, to encourage a greater working relationship between small business owners and self-employed workers.

Founder Erin Harrison said the point of the venture was to break down barriers between businesses who need casual or on-call ‘employees’ without the hassle and cost of advertising, or having to go through a recruiter.

“For a SME business, who may only need one or two blogs written a month, it’s often too time-consuming to go to market and sort through applications.

“With The Freelance Village, you bypass this. Available contractors are all in one place so you can check out their profiles, experience and portfolios then contact them directly. There are no sign-up fees, forms to fill out or hoops to jump through.”

While some freelancing sites already exist in New Zealand, they are tend to be extensions of overseas frameworks and don’t have a lot of authority in the New Zealand marketplace, said Mrs Harrison.

“On these sites, freelancers often have to ‘bid’ on projects, essentially creating competition between individuals and pretty much forcing people to lower their rates just to get work.

“We like to do things differently in our corner of the world, and that’s where I saw a need for a website that was created by Kiwis, for Kiwis,” she said.

All that’s needed now, says Erin, is for more New Zealand businesses to understand the value that freelancers can bring to their organisations.

“There’s almost always something on the ‘to-do’ list of smaller organisations that isn’t getting done, simply because there isn’t enough money in the budget to hire a full time, or even part time employee. But with a freelancer you get the right expertise, when you need it, without any huge commitment or large financial outlay.”