More Problems for Writers at Elance
December 17, 2007 by Anne Wayman
Filed under Jobs
I’ve never liked elance much. Although the idea of providing a market place for writers, designers, and etc. is a good one, elance’s public bidding simply means the price for projects just get driven down. However, some freelance writers have made a decent career from elance work.
Jennifer, a freelance writer who blogs at CatalystBlogger, wrote about why she was leaving elance back in November. On December 12, she talked about the fallout from much touted changes at the bidding site.
It doesn’t sound good. What I’m afraid of, however, is that elance will continue to attract beginning and desperate writers which will continue to drive the price down for many. My suggestion? Stay away from elance after you get a credit or two. You deserve better.
Write well and often,
Two newsletters:
Abundant Freelance Writing – a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings.
Writing With Vision – for those who want to get a book written.
It may still be possible to catch a few well-paying jobs now and then on Elance if you’re a well-established provider there; a lot of writers are upset by the changes but are sticking around to see how the chips fall. But for new writers, Elance has just become a very unfriendly place. I don’t recommend that anyone sign up for Elance as a newbie anymore. Elance buyers typically hire newbies because they’re cheaper than others; they don’t have an established track record of projects and client comments yet. New Elancers have to bid aggressively and underbid others to land their first few projects. With the new “connect” system the way it is, it’s becoming very expensive to adopt such an aggressive strategy. My prediction is that it will take Elance newbies longer than before to land their first projects, it will cost them more to earn those projects–and they’ll still be underpaid for their work.
When I first began freelancing, I signed up with elance. And, just like in the post and in Jennifer’s comments, they proved to be very unuser-friendly to beginners. I found more work and had better luck when I went it on my own, following online leads and referrals. This is the way I would suggest for other newbies to go. It worked for me.
Thanks for the update.
I’m with you Bridget…
Excellent advice, Anne. I too have never been an elance fan, and Jennifer’s posts (as well as Kathy’s over at Irreverent Freelancer) have convinced me that paid sites in general are just a bad idea.
By the way, I’m sending you some link love today on the goal-setting post. :)
Oh yeah, Jennifer is SO right. I’m a well-established provider there and still can pick up occasional quality jobs. That’s the ONLY reason I’m still there. For a long time I’ve felt it’s not the place for new writers to get started, and things have only gotten worse since the recent restructure.
I started at freelance and still occasionally go there when things get slow. THank god it’s less and less. I don’t want to disparage them completely because three of my top returning clients are from there- including my highest paying, best editing client. BUT those changes really screwed things up.
THE WORST PART? Technical difficulties. I am NOT getting my email notifications, or am getting them sporadically. My clients and potential cleints contact me and I don’t get it until it’s too late. I get electronic notifications days late sometimes!
I always recommended them to beginners because it’s part of how I started and it’s where I got some of my best clients, but lately…UGH!
with all these problems, wonder if it’s working for employers?
Very good question. I wonder how much their posting fees have gone up, and how complicated it’s become for them? My guess? Probably not very complicated at all. Without the job postings, ELance and their ilk would have nothing to peddle beyond our incredible talents, and then they’d have to be nice to us. ;))
It would be interesting also to know if employers stick with elance or move on… probably some do and some don’t.
I liked your stuff.But my view is quite different.Because i have such experience.
I think that “if you are not confident that you can do this, than it’s better to hire people who have expertise in that field”. From last 1-2 decades the % of outsourcing or hiring people has tremendously increased. and i have done same thing. For last few months i was working on the concept of “hiring people”.As our organization have some projects in hand and we don’t want to loss them because of lack of skilled employees.And the question is “HOW TO HIRE”? as far as i know there are two basic and trendy ways to hire virtual employees
1. Freelancers/Bidding sites
2. Job sites
But i have selected different path.i mean to say that i haven’t go through the freelancers or any bidding site.i preferred to search directly a good and reliable virtual service providing companies. The actual reason behind this is “searching and selecting freelancers or bidding site is quite time consuming”. And after placing your requisite over there it will definitely take around 1-2 months to get the required virtual employees. it means that over all process will might take 2-3 months.
And the bottom line is wastage of time as well as money.
So, i moved to marketraise (www.marketraise.com) virtual service providing company. And i am fully satisfied with there services. so i will suggest you all to carefully hire the people for virtual services along with keeping in mind the most important factors “time and money”.
Sophia
Sophia, good points – going direct often is the real key to the whole thing