A Bit of My Life » 2008

Elance and the Provider Caste System

I had a really interesting conversation today with the CEO of Elance, Fabio Rosati. Seems like my initial article on the subject hit his Google Alerts list scant minutes within my posting of it, and I believe from my stats that he is probably one of about five people who read it. His call inspired me to write this article to explain myself a little further and qualify a few of my statements.

He doesn’t usually call service providers out of the blue, but my article prompted him to do so. He was concerned about what I perceived as the lack of quality buyers on his site, and my comments on the payment structure. I found it touching that he actually cared enough to pick up the phone in these heady days of e-mails sent with thumbs from a BlackBerry.

I didn’t really have a lot of concerns with the Elance site itself, I believe it is being run as best as it can be. The commissions drawn from each provider are probably necessary – however I am still sticking to my theory that $100.00 on a $1000.00 job (or close to – the actual number is more like $87.50, with only 6% being for Elance and 2.5% for payment providers - I should qualify this as I did call it profit-taking, and it may not be so) is not a cost I would have spent in the offline world to land that $1000.00 job. There are simply too many jobs out there advertised on free job sites that are available.

I am planning on running a marketing campaign this fall in which I will be designing my own brochure and upgrading my website to a website rather than a blog layout. Let’s be totally honest here – not everyone in the world can design a print brochure, design and code a website, and write impeccable content for it. In the real world, you would probably have to pay a lot of money for one of those three things. I would say I was lucky, but it took long years of hard lessons and experience to get me here so I can’t.

In the real world, where you would have to pay a lot of money for one or two of these items, being a web designer, a graphic designer, or a writer on its own instead of all three wrapped up into one, Elance would be a fabulous investment. For me, because I can do these things, I am looking at the costs and saying that I can do better.

Yes, my award rates are lower, resulting in more time spent soliciting jobs. Once I get those jobs though, my slate tends to fill up quickly and I don’t have time to do anything else anyway. I want to make it clear that I am the exception rather than the rule. That is in no way meant to be egotistical, just a statement of fact.

Fabio has a real concern about people perceiving his site as of a lower quality, and really wants to stand out from the crowd as a higher quality site. Elance is backing this up with a few initiatives, such as advertising to American Express small business customers. Since I am planning on taking my marketing offline as well, I heartily approve of this move. I would prefer to work with a “bricks and mortar” business, even an online-only one, than an internet marketer looking to make a few quick bucks. There is no such thing as easy money, even in these wild west frontier days of the internet.

There will, however, always be a call for good content and proper copywriting on the internet. I see this market as only growing in scope as search engines become more and more sophisticated in their content rating and ranking systems. There will come a day, and some will argue that it is already here, when writing an article to game a search engine will be an internet marketer’s virtual death knell in Google’s SERPS (search engine results pages – you’re welcome).

I see freelance writers eventually falling into three distinct classes, or a caste system if you will allow the politically incorrect but accurate reference. There are the professionally educated and trained, or what I call the executive class. These are the wordsmiths that everyone is seeking to hire, and that do not come cheap. Elance is for them a launching point to build a portfolio, and will only retain their attention if it offers them perks. For example; if you have a consistent feedback rating of 4.5% or above for six months to a year, your commissions are cut by 50% and/or you are given a special ranking that makes you more recognizable to buyers as a quality provider.

The second class, (we’ll call them the white collar crowd), will be happy grinding it out for an average income of about $25,000 a year. Elance in its current form will be their bread and butter. These proles will be the backbone of sites like Elance and will deliver exactly what the customer asks for, nothing more and nothing less. They will not stoop to write articles cheaply for peanuts, nor will they reach for anything beyond the boundaries of Elance. These are the people that Elance needs to keep, and can probably do so with something resembling a bonus system – deliver so many projects in a certain amount of time, receive a refund of 2% on those projects, or something similar.

There will then be the underclass, or what both buyers and Elance consider the untouchables. This class of person will be happy to write scads of poor quality content for 1.00 per article, thus diluting not only Elance itself, but the internet at large. They will attract unscrupulous buyers, which can in turn destroy Elance’s reputation as a quality marketplace. They will be poorly trained and will regard the art of writing as a chore to be likened to cooking fries at McDonald’s.

The real question, that nobody wants to ask, is how to keep the underclass out of the marketplace? Can you? Am I evoking too much Ayn Rand for my leftist soul and therefore feeling whorish at the moment?

The only thing that can possibly be done is to allow providers with a demonstrated ability represented by projects completed, feedback received, or some other criteria to enter into a more private area of the site, or even another site on its own, where only vetted buyers who are posting projects that meet certain criteria are allowed. An inner sanctum would be VERY desirable to buyers, and they may police their own behavior in order to gain access to it. Providers, in turn, may do the same. Elance Elite, if you will. While I can see the idea being controversial at first, eventually it would be embraced by both provider and buyer alike and copied by other sites.

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Posted: August 29th, 2008 under Work & Career.
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Why Elance Is a Good Starting Point

When I first began as a freelance writer, Elance was a good starting point. It let me build a reputation, showcase feedback, and get jobs for a relatively low investment of 20.00 a month and a certain percentage of each job. Now that I’ve been at it for a few months, I’ve discovered a few other places to find jobs that don’t cost money to apply to, and I’m definitely skewing towards getting jobs on my own through my own marketing rather than going off of Elance.

My problem with Elance is not the quality of jobs or the quantity, but the fact that they take a commission on top of the membership fee. If I am doing a $800.00 job, I am paying Elance $80.00 for the privilege. To me this is a little steep. I would think that the membership fees are enough to keep the site afloat and pay for everything, the commissions seem unnecessary and profit-taking. Odesk, by contrast, only takes a commission and does not take any membership fees. While I am not 100% in love with the Odesk software, I can’t help but admit it is a transparent way to work for the buyer that may just give them an extra measure of confidence. That being said, the pool of decently paying gigs on Odesk is very small compared to Elance.

I have found the quality of jobs to be rapidly declining on Elance, especially over the past 2 months or so. This may be because everyone is on vacation, but I am concerned that it may represent a long term trend of people seeking $5.00 articles that take 2 hours to write and research. While we do live in a free market economy, I’d rather let those willing to do this work for so little cash bid and stay out of the pool.

It’s also not very hard to find job boards and sites that offer jobs for freelance writers. All you need to do is a few simple internet searches and you are hooked up.

I have downgraded to the free membership on Elance and will be experimenting with my own online and offline marketing campaigns through brochures and data mining. I’ll post an update on my ROI if I have time – I already shouldn’t be writing this article!

Update

Just to be fair to Odesk, I thought I’d take a look at it today and see if it has improved/declined in the quality of the jobs. It has tanked harder than Elance. It isn’t uncommon to see ads like this one: “$30.00 for 28 posts”. I think I just completely ruled out ever using Odesk again - I’ll check back in a few months to see if the quality has spiked, but I doubt that will happen.

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Posted: August 26th, 2008 under Internet Marketing & Advertising, Work & Career.
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Angela Likes to…

This is a fun little meme, as well as being a bit accurate in my case.

Go to Google and type in quotation marks your name and then “likes to” (ex. “Tom likes to”). Type in the first ten things that come up and repost in your own note.

Angela likes to wear bandanas while playing

Angela likes to read various pieces on liturgy

Angela likes to write, watch movies and hang out with friends and family

Angela likes to dance

Angela likes to say to people ‘If I can do this, I believe anyone can.

Angela likes to accept challenges both professionally and personally.

Angela likes to sing the sweet role of Michaela

Angela likes to use a label maker like the Brother P-touch 1000

Angela likes to play video games

Angela likes to discover new things

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Archive for August, 2008

Elance and the Provider Caste System

Why Elance Is a Good Starting Point

Angela Likes to…