I need advice on launching a freelance website.

Thanks all for your help, I just received an email stating that Amazon will release a marketplace of their own which will attempt to connect cloud engineers with their existing client base.

https://aws.amazon.com/iq/

My partner and I thought about it for a little bit and we have decided to pivot out of this idea since it requires us to compete with AWS in an area that is with their core competency.

Hi gth824c,
As a part of YouTeam, a marketplace for building remote teams of world-class engineers, I am able to say that two-sided marketplaces are all about finding the perfect balance in-between the supply side and the demand side. If you cracked one side, you have to crack the other one to accelerate growth. I believe you cracked the supply side (developers for hire), as your question here is about finding clients. Cannot share much but can definitely say that both outbound and inbound marketing activities matter.
Btw, we also list cloud engineers here https://youteam.co.uk/results/cloud-engineer

We tried upwork (as developers) and the experience was not good. The main reasons it failed for us was because:

1. people posting jobs wanted bells and whistles without wanting to pay for any of it , i.e. generally very high expectations without understanding what the realistic cost was

2. non-technical people writing (overly short) requirements, that did not clearly nor fully describe the needs which also lead to them thinking it would somehow be okay to have a low budget

3. much effort required to filter through the post and reply and communicate with potential clients that never amounts to anything tangible -- it ended up being a serious time sink with zero benefit.

We left that platform after 1 month trial. Horrible.

How are you solving these issues with your platform?