Is it worth to go offline ?

Today I want to talk about one aspect of freelancing world. Quite frequently either webmaster of freelancer suggests going offline. I don't think it's a good idea.

What is going offline?

Going offline in our case means you decide communicate and work using direct contacts, don't post projects on the site, send payments directly, and not via a site.
Usually freelancer suggests such things. If you agree with such "requirements", you say to freelancer "hey, cheat me!". If you are not afraid to loose money, if you want to pay and risk getting nothing - do that. Going offline is extremely dangerous for webmasters. You loose a change to get your money back; you loose a change to give a review to that freelancer. Do you really want to do that? You CAN go offline, but only with a freelancer you really trust, ideally which has been working to you in the past. Anyway, you won't be able to rate that freelancer.

Purpose of going offline is avoiding paying commissions. They are really small. But I repeat again: you loose any protection. If you use a site, you have your money protection, ability to rate freelancer for the job he done and many other features, like arbitrage.

So think twice if you plan to go offline.

As I've mentioned in some article, I've been working around 8 years on various freelance sites. There were several cases when I went offline, even with webmasters I trusted and worked some time ago. Most of them were fair. Anyway, with every job I lost a review. In total I suppose I lost about 70 reviews! Some of webmasters did not pay. So I blacklisted them. Anyway, I lost hundreds of dollars! And also lost plenty of time.