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Update: Bringing Dash to South Asian Freelancing: An Accessibility, Research & Education Project.

LASTEST UPDATE REPOSTED ON TOP

Hi There!

Greetings from the Dashlancer Team!

This project update is crossposted from Dashwatch to ensure continuity on this thread.

The first part of the project dealt with Researching the Global Freelancing Industry and understanding different challenges faced by Freelancers.


The main Findings were:
a) Global Freelancing Trade still runs on legacy systems like Paypal, Wire Transfer and other Money Remitting Companies.

b) The cost of transmitting money remains high at between 8-10% for cross-currency transactions.

c) Platforms like Upwork and Fiver profit heavily from additional Fees around Money Transfer and Currency Conversions, in addition to their own Fees..

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE DETAILED RESEARCH REPORT

The second part of the project was a digital course focused on teaching Freelancers about Dash.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE DIGITAL COUSE

The third part of the course focused on marketing this course to Freelancers in South Asia with a small budget.

Facebook, Linkedin, Quota and Youtube were the different channels used to promote this campaign.

The course videos were viewed nearly 800,000 views on Youtube Alone.

tcDxy4JpAaG4erWCOZI_3GreBHhBmtWknLj6Y37yn2WoX7uF4lsbLUtjBQWewrnNr8swGyYdY6yerv_YGXBhMf0lZNcEiinh_XgsFnz6BUiMn52PD1_OCqxdSUXTPp0n2bmFK3jD


Here is a snapshot of the youtube advertising campaign.

0tcG7g_wYusKT3uNjsyQzmkM67sjcBZmoeLoqHlI21o7PbZDybbqhYI6_JuCmUW9sz8qXJvH4x6lymgX9Gs5QjBYPoIbDfQotCqReOoyUTExa-bInrTNVSn2UhZ_sfK4JmN3pe7T



Nearly 800 Freelancers signed up to learn about Dash through direct and indirect marketing methods.

The platform attracted nearly 22,000 clicks over the course of the campaign.

*Since the dashlancer platform is focused on education, it remains unaffected by recent policy changes to Facebook and now Google.

Here is a tweet that found some twitter love!

l57YbeXC8sn_g9OIMkGtewBO5i9uEt5iXLnT7BmgUCgMiqNuriWcNiOsUReCBnOTWEpwsOSriSh-Km4BuD6uPAcM1C8v7SkoiYuCXFYMTK5h-LGXEFlObKOF12BOO8vcw12Qwq3M


We will be presenting a new proposal this round to continue building upon this endeavour.

We seek to organize and educate the vast market for crypto-jobs and bring services commerce to Dash, eliminating the need to convert Dash into fiat to pay for salaries. Our initial focus will be to aggregate all jobs relating to widely used services like Engineering, Marketing, Animation & Design and attracting a large number of freelancers in the process.

Look forward to presenting this to the community this month ! :)

Best,
Gaurav Gupta
Team Dashlancer !

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE 1

Hello! 


Here is the current detailed status of our project after 1 out of 4 planned sprints :


COUSE DEVELOPMENT:

For the Freelancer course, we have chosen a custom-color illustrated animation style. This style has high resonance with users and is readily marketable.

We are targeting a total runtime of about 6:00 across 4 videos. The videos are designed in a way that they can also be used as standalone ads.We aim to keep the course crisp, to ensure high interest levels and lower bounce rates.


While it can be tricky to build high quality animation, we have got a good team together that is working on this. The script has been finalized and the story boards are undergoing final revision after two draft submissions. We have hired a top voice-over artist with years of industry experience to narrate the course.

We will put out the complete course together form start-to-finish for users to access.

PLATFORM DEVELOPMENT

The web development on the Dashlancer Platform is being actioned on and we are targeting a launch of the platform before the end of December. The requirements were earlier spec-ed out and the roles and tasks were divided for the development team. We are on track to launch this. 


CONTENT MARKETING

We are currently drafting and reviewing short actionable content pieces for our upcoming marketing campaign. Some content pieces include short write-ups, ads and content pieces for Linkedin. We have two team members framing this.

RESEARCH

We are done with about 60% of the research part of the project. We are through with researching the Remittance segment and also close to finishing researching freelancing platforms.

We are compiling data from multiple sources and collating them for analysis.
We expect the research documentation process to be completed by 10th of January, a little ahead of our original schedule.

More Updates on our Launch soon.

Wish you a Merry Christmas !

Gaurav
 
Last edited:
Could you please add some tags in the title of this thread that they will describe in key words what this approved proposal is all about?
 
**********PROJECT STATUS UPDATE 3/4)************
Hi!

Here is the current detailed status of our project at the end of the 3rd Sprint.

COUSE & PLATFORM DEVELOPMENT:

The platform was launched towards the later half of January and is live at DASHLANCER.COM

Here is a Video from the course:


The platform features 4 custom illustrated animated videos that educate freelancers about:

a) Challenges Faced By Freelancers
b) Introduction to Dash and Blockchain Technology
c) How to install a Wallet
d) How to transfer Dash

The platform is laser focused on Freelancers and acquired users can apply for $15 in Bonus Dash.

The profiles are verified and approved Freelancers are accepted into the program.

MULTI-CHANNEL MARKETING & ANALYTICS

A multichannel marketing campaign is underway and is targeting Freelancers from Multiple Angles
  1. Facebook Marketing: Our advertisements have not been affected by the recent changes to Facebook policy since we are largely promoting education. We have multiple ads live and constantly being tweaked as data comes in.
  2. Quora Ads: We are utilising Quora to advertise to Freelancers
  3. Community Posts: We are posting about the platform on various Freelance Community Forums. Getting a strong response from this campaign.
  4. LinkedIn Ads: Targeting Freelancers through Linkedin Ads.
  5. Youtube Ads: Youtube ads targeting India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka are live.

This campaign is being A/B tested and tracked with tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel and Hotjar to optimise results

We have had 257 signups so far from various channels, including referrals. These numbers are expected to scale up along with the campaign

RESEARCH

We are done with about 90% of the research into Freelancing Platforms and the Money Transfer Business.

The data sets have been collated and documentation is nearly complete.

We will be releasing the first part of the research on the 18th of February.

More Updates Soon!

Best,
Gaurav Gupta
Dashlancer.Com
 
Hi

As part of our project we are excited to release our research report on the money-transfer industry for Freelancers.

Here is a video that explains the industry and gives some context.


The project researched some of the existing payment related challenges in the Digital Money Transfer Industry for Freelancers.

Despite advances in financial technology, a large majority of Freelancers continue to utilise legacy systems like Wire-Transfer, Paypal and Bank Transfers to move money.

Despite a compelling use case, Blockchain based payment systems lack awareness and a general fear of new technology create impediments to its growth.

With instant, private and near-zero fee transactions, Dash practically solves a large part of these problems today. These payment challenges neatly overlap with Dash’s unique strengths, creating prime conditions for Dash to find greater use-case adoption in the Digital Services Industry.

Look forward to feedback / comments!


Best,
Gaurav Gupta
Dashlancer.com

*CLICK HERE TO VIEW REPORT*
 

Attachments

  • Dash Research Report.pdf
    503.6 KB · Views: 137
SUMMARY UPDATE: 02/16/2018

With an outlay of 88D/Month for two months, our previous proposal set out to:

  1. Create a Digital Course to Educate Freelancers about Dash
  2. Market Dash to Freelancers across South Asia.
  3. Research the Digital Payments Ecosystem in the Digital Freelancing Industry
  4. Understand payment challenges faced by Freelancers.

Here is a Brief Snapshot of the Results:

Course Development

For the Freelancer course, we chose a Custom-colour Illustrated animation style to create educational content .

The course has a total runtime of 6 minutes across 4 videos. The videos were designed in a way so shorter versions could be used as a standalone ads.We kept the course crisp, to ensure high interest levels and lower bounce rates. Click here to view the entire Course.

A video from the course is posted below for reference.


Marketing

To market the course, we ran a multichannel advertising across Facebook, Youtube & Linkedin and posted on various community platforms.

This course was targeted to freelancers across South Asia and relevant topics and interests were chosen. The response has has been overwhelming in so far, we have received over 296 signups in the ongoing campaign.
  1. Facebook / Youtube Marketing: We are running multiple ads on these platforms and scaling up performing variations while culling the underperforming ones. We targeted countries like India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and filtered traffic on interest various combinations of Freelancing and Blockchain Technology.

  2. Community Posts: We posted about the Dashlancing platform across Freelance ommunity Forums on Facebook to inform users about Dash. This resulted in targeted traffic to our platform as we were able to pick communities.

  3. LinkedIn Ads: We are running multiple variations of ads, targeting Freelancers through Linkedin. While this advertising came at a higher cost, it has resulted in high quality traffic.
The campaign page was A/B tested and tracked with tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel and Hotjar to Optimise pages.

Research

The research report can be accessed here.

The project researched some of the existing payment related challenges in the Freelancing Industry.

Despite advances in financial technology, a large majority of Freelancers continue to utilise legacy systems like Wire-Transfer, Paypal and Bank Transfers to move money.

Rather than Bitcoin or any other Crypto, these legacy continue to be the major competition as there is still relatively low crypto-currency penetration in this industry, largely due to lack of awareness, price volatility and general fear of new technology.

Freelancing Platforms like Fiverr and Upwork and Guru make upto 5% on Money Transfer + Conversions in addition to Withdrawal Charges and a number of other such charges on payments alone; Making it very hard for such platforms to move to the blockchain without compromising their revenues.
 
Hi There!

Greetings from the Dashlancer Team!

This project update is crossposted from Dashwatch to ensure continuity on this thread

The first part of the project dealt with Researching the Global Freelancing Industry and understanding different challenges faced by Freelancers.

The main Findings were:
a) Global Freelancing Trade still runs on legacy systems like Paypal, Wire Transfer and other Money Remitting Companies.

b) The cost of transmitting money remains high at between 5-7% for cross-currency transactions.

c) Platforms like Upwork and Fiver profit heavily from additional Fees around Money Transfer and Currency Conversions, in addition to their own Fees..

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE DETAILED RESEARCH REPORT

The second part of the project was a digital course focused on teaching Freelancers about Dash.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE DIGITAL COUSE

The third part of the course focused on marketing this course to Freelancers in South Asia with a small budget.

Facebook, Linkedin, Quota and Youtube were the different channels used to promote this campaign.

The course videos were viewed nearly 1.8 Million times across all channels, with nearly 800,000 views on Youtube Alone.

tcDxy4JpAaG4erWCOZI_3GreBHhBmtWknLj6Y37yn2WoX7uF4lsbLUtjBQWewrnNr8swGyYdY6yerv_YGXBhMf0lZNcEiinh_XgsFnz6BUiMn52PD1_OCqxdSUXTPp0n2bmFK3jD


Nearly 800 Freelancers signed up to learn about Dash through direct and indirect marketing methods.

The platform attracted nearly 22,000 clicks over the course of the campaign.

y2EkuJe_qOSm0bB_PFfSGwjlkvLYhTRXdfQtbUUdBIOKQHzntr5SFSov6eLCQiAQXvOh8kvcTpkN6iwYMYWyr7tZ-ax8XsV-BPh8Yhwn5pmdGCluyhZSi7ZmSpU1twWaP5FikHZS


*Since the dashlancer platform is focused on education, it remains unaffected by recent policy changes to Facebook and now Google.

Here is a tweet that went semiviral.

l57YbeXC8sn_g9OIMkGtewBO5i9uEt5iXLnT7BmgUCgMiqNuriWcNiOsUReCBnOTWEpwsOSriSh-Km4BuD6uPAcM1C8v7SkoiYuCXFYMTK5h-LGXEFlObKOF12BOO8vcw12Qwq3M


We will be presenting a new proposal this round to continue building upon this endeavour.

We seek to organize and educate the vast market for crypto-jobs and bring services commerce to Dash, eliminating the need to convert Dash into fiat to pay for salaries. Our initial focus will be to aggregate all jobs relating to widely used services like Engineering, Marketing, Animation & Design and attracting a large number of freelancers in the process.

Look forward to presenting this to the community this month ! :)

Best,
Gaurav Gupta
Team Dashlancer !
 

Attachments

  • upload_2018-4-3_2-12-33.png
    upload_2018-4-3_2-12-33.png
    265.7 KB · Views: 120
Hi all, just a quick update on this project:

The DashBoost team is doubling their efforts to extend the DAO skills pipeline down to the ground floor, they've teamed up with DashLancer.com to bring you a freelancing platform where jobs are paid exclusively in Dash!

Benefits:
- Reduce the selling pressure on Dash by providing employers with an option to pay in Dash
- On-board fresh talent to the Dash network by creating opportunities for them to be paid in Dash
- Increases the number of Dash users

For more info on the proposal, including the full technical spec & schedule please visit: https://www.dashcentral.org/p/dashlancer-matches-freelancers-employers
 
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