Points about Elance
As I mentioned a few posts ago (Basics of Freelance Bidding Sites), I have joined Elance and thought it was time to post what I’ve noticed about the service. They are changing their fees and bidding structure next month, so things may be different in the near future but I’m pretty sure some of the issues I’ve had will still be issues.
My biggest complaint was how the projects were so poorly described. People would post their projects with terrible titles like “Writer Wanted”, meaning you had to stop and read each available project just to find out what the heck they even wanted. And within the descriptions themselves, many buyers still insisted on keeping the details to themselves. I have seen several projects where the topics would be provided to the winning bidder. Who wants to bid on a project when you don’t have a clue what it’s about? Sure, with a little research a good writer can write about anything. That’s not really the point. Would you take a job in the “real world” not knowing what your responsibilities would be? When someone refuses to tell you what they want, it’s time to get suspicious. Oh, and sometimes they won’t even give a rough estimate for their budget at all, leaving you completely in the dark about what they are willing to pay.
Now, this is not how ALL the projects were. There were loads of them with good information and details.
Next problem: so many people want cheap and fast, not good writing. This is an unfortunate problem on ANY job board, unless there is a large fee for posting in the first place. People are always looking for bulk content to help boost their website SEO. There were so many jobs looking for dozens (if not hundreds) of articles, often offering less than $5 apiece. Now I don’t mind knocking off a couple hundred words for $5, but no way am I writing a 800 word article for that.
Something else to watch for, though not a complaint per se is the time frame for a posted project. Most people will make their choices within a week (some have a deadline of only 1 day) but some people will leave their project up for 20 days or more before they decide. That’s all well and good, and really doesn’t change the nature of the project.
It can be awkward to handle a work schedule that far in advance. Who knows what other work may come up in the next month. It caught my eye when I started because I was only going to try the site for a month. Well, there are some projects that I bid on that aren’t going to be finalized until after my month is complete. So, I’m continuing my membership for another month.
Overall, I like the system but the quality of work opportunities is questionable. So far, no projects won. It’s hard to compete against people who have worked with Elance for years and have a huge portfolio of reviews and feedback.
