Research into the market

I've spent a bit of time over the weekend trawling the internet to get a better understanding of whats already out there.

One website, FreelanceAdvisor.co.uk seems interesting. The website contains advice for freelancers and gives its users the opportunity to work collaboratively through the network. The site seems really useful - lots of info and jobs advertised. It is different from my idea however as it is an 'open' site where any freelancers can join and use the facilities. Initially I would like my business to consist of a small number of freelancers where we all can work together and know each other. I could see this evolving in the future in to becoming a much more open network of freelancers. There are definitely a number of details I need to understand better as I can definitely foresee some future problems. How would I determine who is within the community? Would there be competition between each other for work? Who are my customers? Are they businesses? Freelancers? Or both?

FreelanceAdvisor.co.uk appears to work quite closely with freelancesupermarket.com which works more specifically as a recruitment agency for freelancers. Another interesting site, however again, I feel my business idea is far more contained than this. To someone that came across my site, I would want to give the impression of a close knit team of people that they could potentially work with - I would want my business to contain some of the values of a traditional agency but without the overheads.

bristolcreatives.co.uk, has a Creative Directory, so that members of the site can promote themselves or find others within their field. Something like this (although on a far smaller scale)is what I imagined would be included within my freelance collaboration.