The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself ~ Peter Diamonds

If a friend of mine approached me at the start of this year and she told me that, by the end of the year, I will start living life on my terms .i.e set the price for my work, sleep when I feel like it and go to the beach on a workday, I wouldn't have believed any of her words. This kind of life seemed unattainable in my 20's.

Every time I was at a 9-5 job, I felt like I was in a prison cubicle for 8 hours. I couldn’t do whatever, whenever, I desired. Two months back, I decided to follow my passion and I took on a full-time freelancing road that none of my friends had ever travelled. It was a scary path at first, but I look back now and smile because I spend my life the way I want to.

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Let us consult Wikipedia for the definition of freelancing:

Freelancer, freelancing and freelance worker are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and is not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term.

Freelancing comes with several benefits such as steering your life without restrictions, multi-faceted exposure, flexibility, freedom and many more. However, with all the beneficial impacts of freelancing, there is this unreasonable cut of 10-30% that most common freelancing platforms such as UpWork, Fiverr, and many other centralized platforms take off from the freelancer's pay.

CanWork a decentralized app that has a good rank on State Of the Dapps has come up with a subtle approach to provide free services to quality digital freelancers.

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What is CanWork?

CanWork is a freelance marketplace Dapp for digital service providers such as software engineers, graphic designers, content writers, marketers & virtual assistants. It is one of the My Ether Wallet supported Dapps with over 300 active users and 900 transactions per month. CanWork currently ranks no. 58 on the State of the Dapps platform and 20X cheaper than the incumbents.

How to get started on the CanWork platform?

On any freelance platform, there is a client (who looks for quality service) and a freelancer (who provides the quality service). If you want to be a freelancer on CanWork follow the below steps to get right on it.

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Create a Profile.
This step is as easy as pie. Simply click on "Join/Sign in" button, then sign in with your Facebook, Google or Dock account.
Choose your reason for being on CanWork
Here you have two options to choose from, either you are a client or a service provider. In this case, click the "Provider" button.
Complete your profile.
This section involves filling in the form with your name, profession, services to provide, email address, Hourly rate, location, and Ethereum address. An Eth address is needed because the platform pays in Cryptocurrency.
Submit your profile.
After filling in the form, submit your profile for approval by the CanWork team. It takes only 16 hours for your profile to be approved and the approval message is sent to your email address.

If you don't have an Ethereum address, no worries, you can use My Ether Wallet to create a free and secure wallet that stores your Ether and other ERC-20 assets.

One caveat: Never use an exchange address because exchanges are never safe for storing crypto coins long term.

If you want to be that client who hires high-quality service providers, please follow these steps to start using the Platform.

CanWork client image..png

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Create a Profile.
This step is as easy as falling off a log. Simply click on "Join/Sign in" button, then sign in with your Facebook, Google or Dock account.
Choose your reason for being on CanWork
In this case, click the "Client" button.
Complete your profile.
This section involves filling in the form with your name, email address, location, and Ethereum address. An Eth address is needed because CanWork accepts credit cards and cryptocurrencies based on the Ethereum blockchain. However, the client also has a choice of paying in fiat.
Create a job post.
This step involves completing a job details form where you add a project title, description of the work needed, provider type. i.e a content creator, virtual assistant or graphics designer. After filling in the details you then click on the "accept the CanWork terms and conditions and then you are ready to hire your prefered freelancer.

What are the Pros and Cons of the platform ?

Pros	Cons
No fees on digital freelancers	No thorough information available on the internet i.e CanWork explainer videos.
Low transaction costs	Potential for security breaches
Transparent	Volatility in cryptocurrencies
Compatible with My Ether Wallet	low traffic to the website so the number of jobs are low compared to centralized platforms.

Conclusion

The CanWork concept is attractive because it allows both freelancers and clients to make more money without middlemen profiting from their work. The team has also created a good UX for its users which gives it an upper hand in the market.

In my opinion, the CanWork team should consider marketing this Dapp to the public, it is a silver bullet to the exorbitant fees charged by the centralized freelancing platforms.

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