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.

Posted: August 29th, 2008 under Work & Career.
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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!

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.  

Posted: August 26th, 2008 under Internet Marketing & Advertising, Work & Career.
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With the recent rise in gas prices, many people are reevaluating their career choices. A couple of nights ago I had the chance to speak with an HR professional who said that she had a lot of people applying at her company because they preferred to work locally rather than commute for 10.00 an hour positions.

A lot of people are casting around for justifications to change jobs right now in order to go local. Rising gas prices are certainly a good reason, but here are five more.

1. It’s The Environment, Stupid
I commuted for a year and a few months to a company that was 50 kilometres away from my house. Each day I was contributing 100K worth of diesel fumes to the environment. That wasn’t cool, and it was one of the main reasons that I left. My somewhat hippie mindset just couldn’t deal with the fact that I was crapping all over the earth just with the simple act of going to and from work every day. Even if you don’t see yourself as a hippie, global warming hopefully concerns you at least a little bit - very good reason to not commute.

2. Family Time
For me family time involves scratching my navel and petting my cat. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t need that time to stay mentally healthy (or at least keep from sliding into total insanity - that’s a little closer to the mark). For most others, family time is a little more serious and involves spending time with their children and teaching them how to live life and grow. If you sacrifice 2 extra hours of your life a day, you may want to think twice about the repercussions that this is having on your mate and children. Not that you should feel guilty, we all have to make a living, but it is definitely a good reason to quit the commute.

3. Health
If you are commuting, you generally don’t have time to hit the gym. I was smart about this and went right after work to a gym where I worked out for about an hour each day until traffic let up, then I zoomed home. However, most people with families need every second they can squeeze out of a day and don’t have time to do this. The stress alone of commuting every day and the lack of Vitamin D, which has been proven to be a major factor in getting cancer, should be enough reason to reconsider.

4. Local Salaries Don’t Suck
As more companies try to attract skilled employees, local salaries are rising. Clerical and administrative jobs are always going to be low-end on the pay scale, but if you have any skills at all over and above the usual Microsoft Office and Accpac, you may find that your pay cut will not be so deep to stay local. Before I made the decision to work from home, I was going for interviews locally that were only fractionally less than what I was making an hour away. Get your resume polished up by a more word-savvy friend and start shooting them out before you leave your current job - you never know what will happen.

5. Me Time
By the end of the day, most people just fall into bed without doing little things for themselves like reading a book, taking a nice bath, or just having some down time watching the TV. Whatever you enjoy doing, if you don’t put aside the time to do it, you won’t recharge your batteries. You have to put aside time to enjoy life, and that is almost impossible to do if you are working 6 to 6.

Posted: May 11th, 2008 under Work & Career.
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I was feeling a bit wistful that a certain company didn’t hire me. After reading reviews of the company on a “Rate My Employer” website, I don’t feel so bad anymore. It looks like they made the right decision to not hire me because I wouldn’t have fit into that environment at all.

There is a growing trend in HR of lying to employees in order to capture them into working for a company. I faced this at my last company, most definitely. I was told that I would not be in a customer service position and was thrust into one head first before I knew what was happening. When I left because of it, they tried to paint me as a charlatan that didn’t appreciate all they were doing for me. Unbelievable.

After reading a few articles on the hiring and firing process of other individuals, it seems that this behavior is quite common. They will say anything that you want to hear in order to get you in the door, as long as it doesn’t involve paying money or putting anything in writing. Once they get you in there, they consider you an indentured servant, in much the same way as a medieval serf was indentured to his Lord.

There is no company loyalty anymore to its employees, only loyalty to the bottom line. Companies have lost sight of the fact that everyone on the ship needs to pull together in order to navigate the choppy waters of a bad economy, and I think that how a company treats its employees will determine whether or not some companies will be around after the recession.

Here is a quick translation of things companies will say to you and things they mean;

1. “There is lots of room for advancement here”.

This means that they have no money to pay you, will never have any money to pay you, and the enormous profits that you have seen in the last quarter are just smoke and mirrors thrown up to ward off the evil gods of bankruptcy. Run the other way screaming.

2. “We feel that you would be best suited to a more junior position”.

Holy crap, you are overqualified and they can’t afford to pay you what you are worth. Any diminishing of your skills is a negotiating tactic meant to show the prospective employer how susceptible you are to subjugation – and how gullible you are as well.

3. “There is some occasional overtime”.

You are expected to have a Blackberry glued to your hip, and you may as well start drawing up divorce papers now. If you have a life, run the other way from this one. If you don’t have a life and you want the company to be your family, do it.

4. “We have a very casual work environment”.

While this may sound enticing, generally this means that you are being hired because other people are too busy socializing to do their jobs. Either take the job and join them, or be prepared to be very frustrated trying to get a project done while the rest of your team is on an hour long smoke break.

5. “We have an excellent benefits package.”

Excellent is relative. Most benefits packages are designed to screw the employee over as much as possible. An RRSP matching program that doesn’t match your full contributions, within reason, is not a good benefit. 80% coverage on medical and dental is not a good benefit package. If the coverage is 100%, what fee schedule is it 100% of? If it is 100% of a 2004 fee schedule, it isn’t a good benefit package.

This is a very important feature to look at since the benefits package is often reflective of how you will be treated as an employee. If the employer tries sneaky tricks like the ones listed above, chances are good that your paycheck and job will be subject to the same kind of techniques designed to get more out of you for less.

6. “We have lots of social events”.

Who pays for the social events? If the answer is you, run the other way. You should never have to pay for any social events that your employer puts on, especially when they are for celebratory occasions like a company-wide party to fete quarterly results or a Christmas party. One of the reasons I left my old job was because the employer was asking us, in a very roundabout and sneaky way, to pay for our own Christmas party.

7. “We’re non-union.”

It actually isn’t an issue for an office to be non-unionized. However, if there are a number of manufacturing or construction jobs involved, and the company is non-union, there’s a reason. Management generally has something to hide and it is not as easy to hide them when there is a union involved. A company that is pro union is pro labour, and this is something that you should pay attention to no matter what department you are working in.

Realistically, most employers are going to match with at least one of the above listed infractions. That is the landscape that we must face as employees today. If it really gets under your skin, start your own business. There is nothing better than being your own boss and nothing more fulfilling. If you can “tough it out”, try to do so with a company that respects you as an individual and doesn’t look at you as a space monkey – you’ll be much happier if you actively look for and work at a company that treats you well.

Posted: April 28th, 2008 under Work & Career.
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