Beware Of The Job Bidding Site Sucker!
Over the last month or so I did little test drive on Elance to see what gives if a professional freelance writer stops by to wave her magic wand. Well, as you can imagine, no one gives a rats ass about Monika Mundell and her online achievements.
As a matter of fact, she had to bow low in the dirt and play alongside earthlings to get noticed and booked among the competition just like everybody else.
The rate thing:
In order to be somewhat competitive I first had to drop my standard rates: this served two purposes, for starters, it allowed me to play ball and sling some mud that ended up sticking to stand out among the $1/article Indian crowd and second, I knew that I had to garner some great client feedback before the ones with money to spare would even glance in my direction.
So I did! With teeth clenching and eyes blaring of course. Which normal person on this planet likes to drop rates for a silly idea anyway? Well, I did and what I found was interesting to say the least.
Here are some Elance stats to show you my progress:
- As part of my test I bid aggressively for a total of 60 jobs.
- From that whole batch of bids I ended up with 7 clients (just over 10%).
- However, as my feedback increased, clients were more inclined to book me and pay me the intermediate rate, rather than the shitty base rate I started out with. Which was $10/article by the way (I knew you’d ask).
Introducing the Elance sucker!
While the stats above were somewhat expected, they did show to me that one could indeed book him or herself to the rafters if they were prepared to spend time and money on the initial bids. When you sign up with Elance you get given a set amount of bids each month and once you used them you need to buy more @ $0.50 a pop.
For someone with no money this could be and probably is a little tricky but then at some stage you need to take a leap of faith and this one could prove to be quite worthy of your time.
If you were bidding on 100 jobs that would pay you $50 on average (I’m being conservative here) and it would cost you $50 to bid for these ($20/account with 40 initial bids and 60 additional bids @ $0.50 each) and you’d book 10 clients (10%) that will pay you $500+ all up, don’t you think the demographics alone would makes this worth your while?
You bet!
But what really pisses me off is the amount of clients who are out there to suck beginners into delivering a free sample. I’m sorry but this little piggy here doesn’t do free.
So after receiving a misleading offer to write for a new client he asked me for a free 600 word sample article on a specific topic. How dumb do YOU think I AM?
Listen up! Why do you think you have to provide free samples? This is what a portfolio site is for! Plus, your local electrician and plumber don’t do free either, do they? Stop being sucked into the belief that you need to work for free to angle new clients, most of the time it is a trick to acquire free articles and never pay a dime to a freelancer anyway.
As you can see, I really have no time to give people candy which they then can unwrap and play with on their websites without ever booking a single freelancer. They simply keep going back to these job bidding sites time and time again to ask for free samples from dozens of providers, and never pay a single dime for the work they receive.
NO, NO, NO!
How you can protect yourself against the job bidding site sucker!
In order to avoid this type of scenario on sites like Elance you absolutely must have samples. These are the works you will give those potential clients and NOT a custom-written article/blog post.
Further to this, you have to nail your job bidding template to make an impression. If after 20 bids you haven’t booked a minimum of two clients you need to tweak your template to be better. Continue to do this until you have a 10% success rate. More is better of course.
In closing, I honestly believe that job bidding sites are still a great tool to earn your income from if you do it the right way and not the Indian way (figuratively speaking). It is simply not possible to work for $1/an article if you live in the developed world and you shouldn’t.
Even as a total newbie you can start your bids for $10/article because there are plenty of clients on sites like Elance who pay these rates. I know because I just proved it to myself in the last 30 days. So if you currently look for more income, head over to sites like Elance, Guru and oDesk and barter as if there is no tomorrow.
With 7 clients I earned just over $1,200 for an investment of $50 all up ($20 membership and 40 extra bids @ $0.50 each. Plus I did invest time which of course is money. But keep in mind that when you are new or a struggling freelancer, time is not as important than it is to a person like me who is booked to the rafters most of the time.
When I break down my earnings into the time it took me to complete all of these jobs then it took me around 7 days to earn this amount. Do you still think job sites suck?
Monika
About the Author: I'm a passionate freelance writer and problogger. To further build my business I'm also in the process of building my own niche empire which pays me residual income.
Allena | Oct 1, 2009 | Reply
I like your experiement. You do have to be aggressive and perfect in your bids. One thing I’m concerned about, or would at least counsel to newbies: seven clients for 1200 is not a great numer, because, with each client, there’s a fair amount of administrative work, emails, billing, etc that is KIND OF counted in your price, but never totally. I guess what I’m saying is 7 clients and 7 projects is way too many of your hours to be juggling around for only 1200. Better one client for 1200 bucks:) Lot’s less work!
But, I realize this was an experiement, and you can’t get that one pop client for 1200 without significant feedback on Elance.
One other thing, I think someone once did some stats and found out that the bid site average was about 2-5%. Or maybe that was overall writing job apps?
Oh, another random thought on elance. This is why I am pro-bid sites. Once you do great work for one client, that client will often grab onto you and re-use your services OFF elance, AND raise your pay, to boot!
Nisha | Oct 1, 2009 | Reply
Hi Monika,
I am an email subscriber to your blog, so I read all your posts in my inbox and do not usually get to the website per se. But I thought this post deserved a comment
I am a freelance writer too and I am barely 4 months into writing full time. I have just a few clients now, whom I treat like gems and serve to their satisfaction. I have instinctively turned away from bidding websites, though I did create a profile on Elance when I started freelancing and my bidding template was bare. I am appalled by the bidding amounts there and I don’t think anyone in their right minds would or should be willing to work for the rates some clients seem to expect, newbie or otherwise.
Incidentally, I am Indian, and I do understand what you mean when you say that you should not do things the Indian way. No offense taken. $1 is barely 50 Rupees which can buy you a good snack and a bottle of coke, that’s it. There are several freelancers who are willing to work for $1 an article, I have never been able to understand how. A dollar doesn’t go far in India either.
Though your experience serves to renew my interest in jobsites, I still am a little wary. Even as a newbie, my rates are higher than the ones that clients in Elance expect. And as you said, time is money indeed. However, your post has set me thinking and maybe I will try one of the sites again
Thanks for sharing.
Nisha.
Chris Anderson | Oct 1, 2009 | Reply
I’m currently working on elance as well. It isn’t entirely easy when starting out. But I notice people are a bit more receptive the more jobs and feedback you get.
I think bid sites should be used in conjunction with other ways of getting clients. Such as searching Criagslist or some blogs that offer job opportunities.
At least until the ball gets rolling. I know some people make a living off of elance, but I think after awhile it wouldn’t be hard to get clients outside of it.
I’m going to make a couple bids today, wish me luck!
Monika | Oct 2, 2009 | Reply
@ Chris: Here comes your luck… ready… catch! Ok you’ve got it now. I totally agree with you about fishing in various ponds. It is never a good idea to stick with the one method of earning money, one site, one client, blah, blah… As you well know, things can quickly take a bad turn with any of these income generating demographics and therefore we always have to cover for eventualities. The smart freelancer is the one having several streams of income – just in case. Thank you for stopping by Chris, it’s always great to see you around. No go get ‘em!
Monika | Oct 2, 2009 | Reply
@ Allena: Thank you for your input. I hear you and totally agree with where you are coming from. As a matter of fact that pay also incorporated the time spent emailing, getting feedback and invoicing these clients. When it boils down to strict work I would say the rate I got was actually quite good since I do not work for peanuts in general.
But having said this it is good you mentioned those points because these are exactly were many freelance writers go wrong. They don’t pay enough attention to demographics which is key for anyone wanting to raise their rates.
It’s good to see you got that down pat yourself. Hopefully more writers will realize the potential of these sites rather than bagging them for crap.
Monika | Oct 2, 2009 | Reply
@ Nisha: First of all welcome to being a first time commenter on my blog. It is always great to see new faces.
I’m glad you took my comment about ‘the Indian way” the way it was intended. I never meant to offend anyone because I do have several Indian friends. It’s just that so many people try to compete with the $1 crowd when in fact you can get work for $10/article right from the start if your bid correctly and with the right approach.
While even $10 is barely a good rate it certainly can be if you can write 4 articles in one hour. If you bid on topics you know well this is easily achieved. Most of the clients there are looking for keyword rich articles and I can write a great article on any topic I’m familiar with within 10-15 minutes (this is without doing research.)
Naturally, you couldn’t hold up the speed or the pressures of writing 20 odd articles a day for a long while. But even then there are solutions:
1. Outsource and cash the difference.
2. Use a speech to text software
While I have to admit I haven’t used a software like Dragon just yet it is in my possession and if I can only get my machine to accept it I could even keep bidding on these $10 ‘jobbies’ and still make tons of money each day. With Dragon you can write several articles an hour once the software is configured and that alone will save you a lot of personal sweat. In my eyes definitely worth a try. Hope this helps. I certainly wish you good success with your bids and hope to see you around.
Mark | Oct 3, 2009 | Reply
Well done, Monika. This is a great insider’s view of the industry and exactly why blogs like this should exist. Certainly not for the garbled nonsense I write.
Monika | Oct 3, 2009 | Reply
@ Mark: Garbled nonsense? I don’t think so. People like you are desperately needed to shine some light fun to this world full of doom and gloom. Keep it up buddy.
Benjamin Hunting | Oct 6, 2009 | Reply
Great article Monika – nice to see some other writers encouraging newbies to investigate bidding sites.
With regards to free samples – asking for them violates the Elance TOS. I regularly report project posters who ask for free work, and Elance is fairly good about removing the projects promptly.
$10 per article is only the beginning for people willing to work hard to find clients on Elance and other sites who are capable of paying solid rates for high quality work.
Monika | Oct 7, 2009 | Reply
@ Benjamin: Thank you for your feedback and welcome to my blog. I didn’t know that free offers were against Elance TOS but thanks to you I learned something else now. I’m with you on the remuneration part too. I already have clients who pay me what I want on Elance after having had to step low to get my initial essential feedback.
Job bidding sites are a great source of income for any freelance writer if one knows how to advance through the pay ranks. I’ve always been a strong advocate for them because they helped me to go from zero to full time writer in a relative short seven months. Without job bidding sites I might not be where I’m at right now, therefore if more freelancers recognize them for what they are – a potential gold mine – more can eventually kiss their offline jobs goodbye for good.
Venkat | Oct 10, 2009 | Reply
I fail to understand why Indians write for a pittance. One dollar for 30 minutes work is not good money even in India. If the article is well written with adequate long tail keywords, they can earn at least $1 every month and that is good business. They need to read Robert Kiyosaki.
Karen Garcia | Oct 28, 2009 | Reply
This was a very timely post for me. I haven’t yet started to do the bidding “thing”, but was anticipating trying my hand at it within the next week or so. I’m one of those “newbies” you described and was very curious to know more about how effective and lucrative the bidding sites are. Thanks for doing and reporting on your experiment.
Karen
Avery | Nov 6, 2009 | Reply
It seems like I constantly come across articles about job bidding sites but, strangely enough, this is the first that I can recall in which the writer has actually taken the site for a test drive before passing judgement. Thanks for the info!
Monika | Nov 7, 2009 | Reply
@ Avery: You bet I took them for a spin.
If you want more detailed info on these sites I recommend you buy a copy of my Freelance Superstar eBook. I have taken the biggest ones and tore them apart. It will help newcomers save a ton of time right from the start.