What’s Wrong with Elance?

For freelance writers, the holy grail is that one plum job that makes them a lot of money in a short amount of time with minimal effort. Multiplying that scenario over and over makes for the perfect lifestyle most freelancers spend their careers striving for. While www.craigslist.com , big job boards like www.monster.com, and other freelance job boards like www.sologig.com, www.guru.com, www.ifreelance.com and other lesser known boards seem to never run out of jobs from which freelancers can choose, no one does a better job in my opinion than Elance.

I understand Elance has some detractors. And I understand why. It’s gotten more expensive to win less jobs for less money. Competition is fierce, much of it from foreign countries where $1 an article might be an acceptable deal. The fees to join and continue on in a higher level membership can seem exorbitant.

ButI still believe Elance is one if the best deals going. Let’s compare for a sec with how my day used to go. I logged on to craigslist, checked the Writing Gigs and Writing categories for every majoy city, maybe found 2 decent ads worth responding to. Sometimes, by time I found them , they were a few hours old and the person posting the job ad already had a mailbox full of inadequate responses from which to choose. There was no point even writing.

Honestly, I got a couple of decent jobs out of craigslist, though, and for a while it was the only way I found work. I tried monster.com and some of the big job boards, but, since some companies think of freelancers as on-site temporary workers, not all freelancing jobs on those boards were also work-at-home. So that was pretty much a waste of time. I signed up for www.guru.com and www.sologig.com, but they were mostly techie jobs with some low-paying, ‘give-me-your-cheapest-bid’ buyers for writing. I tried www.ifreelance.com as well. Not thrilled. When I found Elance, I thought I’d finally found the secret to what other writers were doing. And, truthfully, with all the changes they’ve gone through in the last few  years, I still think they’re the best. They’re professional. The jobs generally are higher quality (of course, you still get the low-ballers in there). They’re more responsive now than in the past. And their system overall works very well. Yes, it’s not cheap. But taking into account all the time I spent for very little return using other methods, it’s worth it to me to log on to one place, spend as much time as I want, scroll through the bids, place my bid, and check out my competition while I’m at it. Elance is safe, and although I hate to admit I have been screwed out of money owed me from craigslist and other companies, I’ve never had that problem on Elance.

I could go on. I may do that in another post. Suffice to say that, for my money, and my time (which I think is truly worth something) Elance still gets my vote. I’m fortunate that I have a great group of clients who keep me busy. So I don’t have to troll for work on Elance like I used to. But if you’re new to freelancing and you want to get started somewhere where there’s a support net to catch you when you fall, I’d give it a shot.

Hey. No one said you have to stay there forever, and if you play your cards right, you won’t.

By the way, if you’d like some help navigating Elance, bidding better or more effectively, or setting up your Profile or Portfolio, drop me a line. I’ve got some great strategies for you. Until then, Happy Bidding!