What Can Freelance Jobs Tell Us about Ecommerce?

Companies using eBay's Magento ecommerce platform posted more freelance projects in the third quarter than the previous quarter, and Magento projects came in at number 25 on Freelancer.com's Freelancer Fast 50.

Freelancer.com connects businesses with over 2.8 million independent professionals from all over the world, and this week published findings that show job trends and their impact on a range of companies, from Google and Facebook to Magento, eBay and Shopify.

Freelancer.com CEO Matt Barrie said the company tracked the 50 fastest-growing outsourcing jobs for the third quarter, which he called a sophisticated indicator of the global online economy. "These quarterly reports reflect the fortunes of companies such as Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Google, and we can dig deeper, beyond companies, to identify trends in the ascendancy and those in decline."

Among the findings:

• Freelance projects for eBay's recently acquired Magento platform surged 13% following the acquisition in June.
  
  
• Projects for Magento's competitors fell in the third quarter compared to the previous quarter - including OSCommerce (down 7%), Zen cart (29%), and Shopify (52%).
  
  
• Projects for eBay itself were up 19%.
  
  
• Projects for Classifieds Postings were down 6%.
  
  
• Not surprisingly given their popularity, projects for social networking and Facebook increased by 36% and 32%, respectively. Projects for YouTube were up 21%, while Twitter projects rose 18%.
  
  
• Freelancer.com said that after Google's change to its search algorithm - called Panda - that punishes duplicate content, Adsense projects are booming. "Google's Panda Update decimated content writing jobs across the board last quarter. Now a recovery is in full swing and Ghostwriting (up 22%), Blogs (up 17%) and Reviews (up 16%) are leading the way. Product Description and Adsense projects increased by 43% and 76% respectively. Adsense projects had the largest increase and topped the Fast 50 this quarter."
  
  
• WordPress projects rose 17%, Projects for eBooks were up 20%, and Link-building projects were up 17% in Q3.
  
  
• Banner design was down 17%.

The data was extracted from 114,455 jobs posted on Freelancer.com in Q3 2011 (up from 104,000 in the previous quarter). The average job posted to Freelancer.com is under $200.