A Bit of My Life » Why Elance Is a Good Starting Point

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.

Posted: August 26th, 2008 under Internet Marketing & Advertising, Work & Career.
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Why Elance Is a Good Starting Point

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