We’ve launched ODD-JOBS, a freelance marketplace alternative for e-commerce, to get overdue one-off jobs done by specialists you won’t find elsewhere.
Every e-commerce team has a list. Not the big strategic gaps, the one-off jobs needed to keep moving: a technical fix, a campaign audit, a landing page that should have been done weeks ago.
Each one too specialist for your team, too distinct to fit into an existing retainer, or too time consuming with everything else on. So it sits.
According to The Marketing Meetup’s State of Marketers 2026 report, “too much to do, not enough time” is the biggest day-to-day challenge marketers named for the second year running (38%), and 40% say they’re frustrated they can’t do their best work.
Asking agencies for some one-off help often means proposals, contracts, and a lengthy process, all disproportionate to a job that might take the specialist a day or two.
If you decide to find a freelancer, the default is usually a LinkedIn post asking “does anyone know…?” because the alternatives feel like a gamble on a stranger. The result is usually a pile on in the comments and an overflowing inbox.
And existing marketplaces are declining. More than half the businesses spending on freelance marketplaces in 2022 had stopped entirely by 2025, and marketplace spend as a share of total company budgets dropped from 0.66% to 0.14%, according to Ramp Economics Lab.
I know the agency side well, but I’ve also been the freelancer in these situations too.
Before launching WE-COM, I spent around 9 months working full-time as a freelance consultant, and because I was restricted in promoting my services at the time, I had to rely on marketplaces to find work instead.
I ended up with a few great clients and relationships out of it, but that was mostly down to luck. I won 7 jobs from 49 proposals, a 14% success rate.
My profile showed I had 13+ years of experience, and even after continuously discounting my rates, I still couldn’t get jobs I was available for and more than capable of doing.
(Hourly rate was around £54, but was quite a lot less for fixed-price jobs – total jobs and total hours are different projects)
I lost days searching through ads, finding the right opportunities, pitching, negotiating, and spending my own money to have a chance of being seen, all before any actual work was done. Then I had to wait for payments to be made, and clear through escrow before I could withdraw, which often meant weeks after delivering (or over a month in some cases).
That’s not an isolated experience either.
We surveyed 35 experienced freelancers between May and June to find out how they currently find new client work, including questions about whether marketplaces are a viable option.
- Only 1 freelancer (3%) currently finds work through a marketplace of any kind, whilst 94% rely on referrals from their own network.
- 54% have tried marketplaces but now avoid them entirely, and another 40% have never used them at all.
- 83% named race-to-the-bottom pricing as their top concern with these marketplaces.
- 80% don’t feel like these marketplaces value their level of experience, and the other 20% only said somewhat.
That’s 94% effectively opting out of the places meant to help them find new work, and the shortage isn’t good people:
- 86% of freelancers surveyed have spare capacity during an average month.
- 63% have up to one working week available, and 17% have more than a week.
It’s not hard to understand why. These marketplaces are built to prioritise by price, and AI has flooded them with cheaper output that pushes prices down further. When cheapest wins, experience counts against you. So the people worth hiring are the first to stop bothering.
So the backlog on the in-house side and the idle capacity for freelancers aren’t a coincidence. Both sides want the same thing, a referral from someone who’s actually worked with the other, and neither has an easy place to get one.
When we started the WE-COMMUNITY, our freelance and partner network, we were inundated with specialists who wanted to join. A lot more than we could realistically work with at once.
We’ve seen the same pattern more recently. The market’s tough and AI has added to the pressure as retailers increasingly assume it can do the job, or at least make it cheaper and faster, even when specialist skills are exactly what’s needed.
It got us thinking.
Our agency model uses e-commerce freelancers and partners as part of the delivery team, handpicking the best and most relevant talent for each client brief or problem. Nobody’s there because we need to keep them busy, they’re picked because we need their help to deliver the outcome.
We’re already deliberate about where to focus effort and resources, rather than spreading thinly across everything, and it’s core to how WE-COM works.
We know that our clients and other e-commerce businesses are stuck with smaller jobs that need doing.
We know that there are great freelancers with time available each month.
Solving this is a natural complement to a model and a community we’ve already built, in a way that most agencies aren’t set up to do.
Introducing ODD-JOBS by WE-COM
ODD-JOBS is WE-COM’s marketplace alternative for the one-off jobs that are overdue and your team can’t get to.
Give us the job and you’re making progress within the same week.
Every specialist is vetted to the standard we hold for our own clients on real work, not just a CV or LinkedIn profile.
We scope the brief before they see it, and we check the work before you sign it off. On a marketplace or social media, you do the finding, the vetting, the briefing and the chasing. Here, we sort it.
Here’s how it works for e-commerce teams:
- Describe the job in a couple of minutes, we’ll scope and create the brief, then choose the best specialist for it.
- Agree a fixed price up front, we’ll raise an invoice and get on with the job.
- Once it’s delivered and signed off by you, the job’s closed and the specialist is paid.
One job for one fixed price. No proposals, no lengthy process, and no commitment beyond that.
If you’ve got a job your team can’t get to, describe it on ODD-JOBS and see how quickly it starts moving.
For freelancers, it’s the other half of the solution.
The things you told us matter most when taking on new projects, fair pay, meaningful work, a trustworthy client and a proper brief, are what every job here comes with.
A rate agreed up front, real jobs from trusted e-commerce businesses, WE-COM as the client you’re dealing with, and a brief scoped before you ever see it.
On a marketplace, you pitch, bid, pay for credits, discount and then wait to get paid. Here, you’re chosen, briefed and paid on sign-off. It’s free to join (not a free-for-all).
If you’re a specialist tired of pitching into the void, apply to join the community, and read the full findings from the survey.
Sources
- The Marketing Meetup, State of Marketers 2026, 1,248 marketers surveyed April–June 2026 – themarketingmeetup.com
- Ramp Economics Lab, “AI’s First Substitution: Freelancers”, February 2026, firm-level spending data 2021–2025 — ramp.com
