The Midwest company serves a community of over 100,000 freelance writers.
St. Louis-based OneSpace is a workflow management tool with on demand talent built into the platform. Currently the team works with medium to large businesses such as retailers or online media publications that have large amounts of work to complete and not enough staff.
“Some of our clients include companies like Purina, Staples and Overstock.com,” said Aaron Eversgerd, VP of Marketing, OneSpace. “For example, when they’re loading tons of products onto their site, we’ll have freelancers who review and edit their copy to make it fit their brand standards.”
How OneSpace works
OneSpace has had over 500,000 freelancers log on to the platform since it’s founding in 2010. The platform makes it easy for businesses to design their own work flow and find quality talent to complete for specific projects.
“It can be as simple or as complex as they want to make it,” said Eversgerd. “Everything is really customized around the business’s needs.”
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When a business, publication or agency uses OneSpace to connect with freelancers, the business writes its own requirements for the content including specific lengths, keywords, resources and pay for each project. Businesses can use OneSpace to create a variety of content including data collection, curating blog posts or transcribing recordings.
Quality control
Managing the quality of freelancer work was not always an easy task for the company. Brittany Corners, Director of Marketing at OneSpace, explained that the team has learned how important it is to write detailed work descriptions.
“We really learned that what you put in is what you get out when it comes to content,” said Corners.
She added that creating a rubric for editing was a game changer for their quality control processes.
“When you have hundreds of thousands of people writing content and you need it to meet specific guidelines, you have to put a strong process in place,” said Corners.
To assure quality control of freelance work, OneSpace has a series of prequalifying tests that the freelancers must complete before being considered qualified at different levels.
“Some of the tests are fill in the blank, multiple choice or essay format,” said Eversgerd. “Once they pass certain tests they get additional qualifications/credentials.”
In addition to the qualifications process, there is also the review process once the freelancer’s work is complete.
“The client will review your work and based on your performance you’ll get approved and paid for your work or if your performance continues to not meet our standards you can be removed from the project or potentially the platform,” said Eversgerd.
Connecting businesses with experts
So why would a company use OneSpace instead of hiring a full time content curator? Corners said that with OneSpace, businesses are able to connect with experts for each task.
“Where we’ve really been able to flourish is connecting companies with specialists,” said Corners. “For example, if they need someone who is an expert in music or recipe writing, we can connect them with the right person.”
Corners added that the on demand element of OneSpace also really helps businesses when they are in a time crunch.
While many big companies are using OneSpace to curate content quickly, Eversgerd explained that sometimes they don’t want to publically announce that they are using the platform.
“We find that a lot of clients see us as their secret sauce behind how they’re able to do things at scale so quickly in comparison to their competitors,” said Eversgerd. “We really have to build good relationships with our clients so that we can continue to build up our credibility.”
Building a community of quality freelancers
The St. Louis-based team of 63 has achieved many things in the last six years including raising $21.5 million in their Series A and Series B rounds of funding. However, one of their biggest wins has been creating their OneSpace qualified team of over 100,000 active freelancers.
“We’ve built this community together,” said Corners. “We even have a team that is dedicated to taking care of the community of freelancers. We have a forums and webinars, we send them gifts, etc.”
Together OneSpace has completed over 130,000,000 tasks and has no intention of slowing down. Corners explained that the biggest market the company has yet to tap into is the gig economy.
“Think about people who need their dogs walked or want someone to stand in line to buy tickets,” said Corner. “We’ve been in the digital space, but we see this other huge opportunity. We’d love to be the end-all be-all of freelance work.”
Changing the way millennials find work
Eversgerd explained that in every other company he’s worked at, it’s always been about mimicking the best practices of competition. With OneSpace he feels that they are really pioneering their own path, especially when it comes to connecting people with a new way of finding work.
“I really believe we’re changing how the world works,” said Eversgerd. “As more and more millennials want to have the freedom and flexibility with where and when they want to work, we have the ability to embrace that.”
Introducing a new option for startups
OneSpace also just rolled out a new package targeted specifically for startups who are privately held, less than five years old, have under 25 employees and have less than $1 million in revenue.
“It’s our accelerator program,” said Eversgerd. “It’s designed for startups to find a cost effective way to scale their operations with experts in their niche.”
To learn more about the startup package, visit the OneSpace Project Center page and request a demo.
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Mel Lucks is a regional freelance journalist and former intern for Silicon Prairie News and AIM.
