Thanks to everyone who commented on Friday’s post regarding Elance. Thanks especially to Kathy and Jennifer for hauling out figures and giving us a very clear picture of what they pay in current fees versus the work they bring in. I’m grateful to you both for letting others see your own experiences.
This discussion has somewhat muddled my opinion of ELance, which I will confess was a pretty poor one until Friday. I now see that writers are making money at it. While it remains to be seen whether the new fee structure will make it harder for writers to clear a decent wage, it does help to see what one can expect when signing up for a paid job site.
Despite the moderate support for ELance from others, I remain undaunted in my view that sites should not charge writers for listings. Think about it – there are zero guarantees that your cash will buy you anything more than the privilege of bidding. I respect those who make decent cash at the sites, but I’ve been burned by one such site in the past and I’m not terribly inclined to repeat the process. If we made six figures annually, I could justify finding projects there. What gets me is the low-paying jobs are soon going to take over. It’s happened on numerous free sites already and had begun happening on Guru a few years ago. As long as sites like this don’t put a minimum on what an employer’s project fee can be or be a bit more discriminating in what types of projects they will accept, I don’t feel I’m getting a whole lot for my money.
If there’s a site out there that charges and has some decent parameters around what writers can expect (and employers, too – remember, they’re also paying) in terms of value for the dollar, I’d sign up. I thought Guru was like that. I found out otherwise. ELance sounds like it came close, but the new payment structure may make it economically unwise to join.
Back to searching the old-fashioned way. (sigh)
I think that these sites are constantly in danger of being overrun by bottom feeders–both buyers and sellers. The changes on Elance seem to be an attempt to screen this out as much as possible by raising the cost of doing business there. The thing is that the cost of doing business on Elance was already high, and there were still low-paying jobs and people willing to take those jobs. I think careful policing and regulation is probably a better solution than raising prices past sustainable levels for legit small businesses. Elance does have bid minimums, but they’re not very well enforced and buyers can get around them easily by posting for “bulk” work that pays a very small per-word or per-article price.
There’s no reason to pay for listings when, with a little bit of creativity, you can not only find listings on your own, but create jobs with the companies for whom you’d like to work.
I’m not interesting in boring corporate crap. I create my own niches with companies that intrigue me.
Jennifer, it’s always been my worry that I’d pay yet another premium (and now it sounds like a higher, more complicated one) and get access to just one more load of crap jobs. That ELance has a bid minimum is good, but that the employers are successful circumventing them bugs me.
I appreciate very much your firsthand experience you’ve shared here! It’s now easier, thanks to you, Kathy and Devon, for folks to make more informed choices in where they locate work.