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Freelancer acquires Projectlinkr assets in Spanish-language push

​Freelancer.com has acquired the assets of Spanish online freelancer marketplace Projectlinkr, with the company hoping that the move will help ramp up its presence in the Spanish-speaking world.
Written by Leon Spencer, Contributor

Freelancer.com is ramping up its push into the global Spanish-speaking market, acquiring the assets of Spain's Projectlinkr online freelancer marketplace for an undisclosed amount.

Like the Australian-based Freelancer, Projectlinkr operates an online marketplace connecting freelancers with small and medium-sized enterprises on jobs in a variety of sectors, including IT, engineering, consulting, and communications.

Freelancer Limited, listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), told shareholders on Tuesday that the assets it has taken on in the Projectlinkr acquisition includes the Spanish company's community of more than 140,000 registered freelancers.

The move is part of Freelancer's push to expand into "each and every language worldwide". The company told shareholders that the growth it has seen over the past two years in both Spain and Latin America would now be increased by the Spanish-speaking users in Projectlinkr's network.

"Spanish is the third-largest language spoken after English and Mandarin, and through this acquisition, Freelancer will be adding nearly 140,000 new Spanish-speaking users that will bring with them a wealth of experience, projects, and valuable skills to reinforce the current marketplace," the company told investors in a statement (PDF).

While the value of the deal remains confidential, Freelancer said that it will be funded from its existing cash reserves, which at the end of December 2014 stood at AU$20.2 million.

However, some of those funds have since been injected into Freelancer's acquisition earlier this month of assets belonging to Israeli online freelance job marketplace and aggregator Donanza, which closed down in July last year, three years after receiving $1 million in backing from Google chairman Eric Schmidt's VC fund and other investors.

Prior to its closure, Donanza's platform aggregated and consolidated freelance jobs published across the web, and matched them with a network of more than 350,000 freelancers in its database.

Freelancer now has a number of non-English-speaking online marketplace communities under its belt, with the company last year acquiring Poland's largest online freelancing marketplace site Zlecenia.przez.net.

Mid last year, Freelancer CEO and chairman Matt Barrie estimated that his company had picked up around 1 million new users as a result of a string of acquisitions in 2014, which included internet marketing marketplace and community Warrior Forum and online virtual content marketplace Fantero.com, as well as Zlecenia.przez.net.

The Projectlinkr agreement marks Freelancer's 15th acquisition since the company's founding in 2009.

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