Elance
Paid Service: Yes
Membership Required: Yes
Website Address: www.elance.com
Elance is a work exchange that allows freelancers to create an easily searchable profile and compete with other writers for gigs. Clients may directly contact a freelancer for a project based on their profile, or pick from the response bids to their job posts. When a freelancer is contracted, Elance oversees the entire process between client and freelancer, and will act as a third party interventionist if either side does not live up to their contract.
Many writers find Elance useful because it allows them access to larger, more lucrative gigs. However, competition is STEEP, and freelancers are really a dime a dozen on the site. It is very hard to get noticed. Especially when a common way people win bids is by offering to do massive amounts of work for pittence pay. A recent example: in their bid, someone quoted the client a price of $100 for 100 SEO optimized articles of 300-400 words. That works out to $.003 cents a word. Yikes.
Yet the major issue with Elance is that freelancers need to pay for job leads. When you respond to a job listing, you use a “connection” to submit the query. With the free basic membership plan, you get 3 connections per month. If you want more, you need to pay per connection. There are plans that offer a range of connections per month (sound like cell phone minutes to anyone else?! Overage charges are killer!) from $9 for 20 connections to $39 for 60 connections.
Worth it? WTF says no. With wonderful resources out there like FWJ and craigslist, why would you ever PAY for leads? The idea of freelancing is to make money…right?
Have you worked with Elance before? Leave a comment and share you experience with your fellow freelancers!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Right now I pay $9.95 a month for 20 connections in the Writing & Translation category only. I like the variety of jobs offerred, that I always find jobs I want to bid on, and that the website and process is very user friendly. The downsides are that people can post jobs and never award them, you may actually not get paid-even when you a complete a job, and you will likely always be underbid because everyone is trying to build their stats and reputation.
Nice job on your site and thanks for all the good info!
@Regina: I had a similar experience as what you’re talking about. I felt like the effort I put in wasn’t worth the potential gain, especially since that potential was not getting paid! Thanks so much for sharing your experience, and keep on freelancing!