Freelancing and More!

I have heard a lot of comments about various work at home opportunities through blogs that I’ve read, Yahoo Answers, and any other numbers of locations (including Helium) and many of them either (a) are negative about oDesk (more about this later) or don’t refer to them at all as a source of potential work.

First I’d like to address some of the negative things I have heard/read about oDesk.

1.  My work is monitored – I am a freelancer because I don’t want someone monitoring my work

Let’s start with this one first because this is the one that I find the most laughable.  First of all if you work on fixed rate jobs (which are not guaranteed payment by the way) you never have to run the monitor.  Even if you are working on an hourly rate job this thing isn’t exactly what I’d call intrusive.  Sure it monitors your keystrokes and it takes a snapshot of your screen but so what.  I worked as a telecommuter for years and they monitored my activity all the time. If you have a real problem with this then don’t accept hourly jobs.

2. The rates are too low

OK first things first – you set your own rates, you bid on jobs and you set the per job rate.  If you can’t get a job then fine lower the rates a little bit, but don’t sell yourself short.  Make sure if you are bidding $30 an hour on a job that you are telling a buyer why you’re asking for that kind of money. It’s that simple.

3. There is too much competition

Fair enough, but that’s life! Basically you need to let folks know why you’re the best person for the job.  It’s not all that unusual to apply for a job and see 99 other people applying for the same job.  Make sure your cover letter is standing out from the crowd!

So here’s why I use oDesk

When I first started looking for work I signed up for job board after job board.  Elance, Linked in, you name it I have open accounts with them.  So with eLance you have to select your category and if you want to work at the ‘premier’ level you can’t do that unless you’re paying a subscription fee.  If you’re not using a subscription fee, you can look at jobs in one (1) category and you can bid on jobs up to three (3) ‘credits’ that they provide you. Additional credits cost money. The things that kill me are that you need to do all sorts of weird things to even bid on the job then on top of that the jobs are not even going to be awarded for weeks on end.   Also one other thing – when you change your job category you cannot bid in that category until the beginning of your next billing cycle.

Let’s talk Profiles – another weird feature at eLance is that they want to be paid for verifying information in your profile.  Sure, you don’t have to have it verified but frankly according to everything I’ve ever seen I think that most buyers there really depend on the ‘verified credentials’.

Without paying you’re limited to five (5) skill tests too which is another bizarre feature. And of course although eLance uses escrow they don’t guarantee payment.

OK I’m ranting I’ll be quiet now Happy Freelancing

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