Comments on: Beware Of The Job Bidding Site Sucker!

By: Monika

Monika — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:14:37 +0000

@ 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.

By: Avery

Avery — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:12:55 +0000

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!

By: Karen Garcia

Karen Garcia — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:29:15 +0000

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

By: Venkat

Venkat — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:44:45 +0000

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.

By: Monika

Monika — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:29:46 +0000

@ 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.

By: Benjamin Hunting

Benjamin Hunting — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:06:55 +0000

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.

By: Monika

Monika — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 01:56:25 +0000

@ 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.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 22:39:08 +0000

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.

By: Monika

Monika — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:56:24 +0000

@ 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.

By: Monika

Monika — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:48:16 +0000

@ 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.