UPDATE: It appears DoNanza is out of business. Please consider one of these alternatives.
DoNanza is an online job board aggregator and freelance database. The company launched in 2009 and is based in Israel. At the time of this writing they had over 370,000 registered freelancers, and over 170,000 projects or jobs from all over the world.
Where DoNanza differs from the other giant freelance marketplaces is that whey make their money from the workers instead of the employers. Elance and oDesk, for example, process every payment, take a percentage of each project, and pass the rest along to the freelancer.
With DoNanza, freelancers join for free but are encouraged to upgrade to a “premium” membership for as little as $2.17 a month. They offer a 7-day free trial on all paid plans.
Employers can’t even post their own job requirements. Instead, you can search through their database of freelancers based on their self-described skills. The interface for this search feature looks strikingly similar to oDesk, but the frustrating thing for me was that none of the freelancers had even a ballpark estimate of their rates displayed.
However, since DoNanza isn’t concerned with transactions taking place “off-network”, this allows for much more robust freelance profiles than you’ll find on the other sites. Freelancers are free to link to their social media pages and their personal blogs and websites to present a well-rounded view of their professional portfolio and online presence.
There is no built-in feedback or rating systems, though some of the profiles I saw had recommendations imported from LinkedIn.
All in all, I think DoNanza can be a good resource for doing due-diligence from the other freelance sites. For example, you might be able to find out a little more about an Elance applicant if they maintain a profile here as well.
Other than that, I’m not sure I would use it for. It would definitely be a “push” strategy rather than a “pull” strategy, since every virtual applicant you’d find would have to be searched out and identified individually by you, rather than posting the job and waiting for the responses.
The company is pulling in and syndicating jobs listings from a number of sites, including FlexJobs, Monster, Mechanical Turk, CareerBoard, Dice, and more. The aggregation idea is nice, but the weird thing is many of the jobs I found I wouldn’t classify as “freelance.” They were full-time positions in specific locations, although users can filter to only see those that are location independent.
I suspect they’ll add the ability for employers to post a job directly on DoNanza soon. They have an army of freelancers hungry for work — I mean why not feed them directly?
Have you worked with DoNanza either as a freelancer or an employer? What did you think? Please take a moment to leave a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.