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When I go on oDesk I often look at other providers’ profiles. It not only helps me get a better picture of the competition, but also lets me see where my profile can be improved.

One thing I can’t help but notice is that almost every provider rates their English skills at 5/5; I don’t think I have ever seen a lower rating on any provider’s profile. That’s good isn’t it? Besides, I’m mostly looking at writers’ profiles so they should be good at English: That’s their bread and butter.

Unfortunately, some of these profiles didn’t seem to reflect a 5/5 level of English. Many were rife with spelling and grammar errors; some would alternate between ‘I’ and ‘i’ as a personal profile. I was seeing some of the same errors I see in my daughter’s writing — and she’s in kindergarten.

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I was reading the oDesk community forum when I came across post I didn’t agree with. According the post author, the biggest problem on oDesk is that there are too many providers. You can read his argument here, where he explains there are “too many fish in the pond.”

I disagree.
It doesn’t matter how many of the wrong fish there are in the pond.
Not everyone on oDesk is going to do well at every job. Programmers, designers, and writers are all going to be looking for different jobs. That takes out the majority of the “competition” (other providers) right there. All it leaves are members of your own category: In my case other writers.

I’m not in competition with all of them either.

Some of them are going to be looking for completely different jobs than I am.  They’re looking for things that I wouldn’t want to do, so there’s no competition there.

But what about the people directly competing for the jobs I want?

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I’ve heard it a thousand times, “The way to health, wealth, and happiness as a freelance writer is by finding a niche and exploiting it.”

Great. Wonderful. But what it fails to mention is that some niches are worth more than others, much more. Like the difference between big dollars and nada. Here’s the no-brainer guide to getting some traction as a freelance expert.

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Unless you’re crazy-happy to have any sort of work at all, you’ve probably done a job that you absolutely hate. I’ve had a couple here and there. The work goes slow, and it makes it very hard to get motivated. Once you’re finally done with said project, you don’t really feel a sense of accomplishment–you just feel like you’ve wasted time.

If you’re a freelancer, chances are that you want the job to improve your quality of life financially as well as through freedom, but if you’re doing work you despise, it’s self-defeating. Also, doing jobs you hate can hurt your career more than improve it. How? Either by making it a chore to log on and start work on that blasted project again or by reducing your quality of work and earning a poor rating.

What’s a way to avoid harming your career? Keep reading.

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So, you signed up for oDesk, got yourself a profile and now all you need is that first job. But how do you get it? What can you use to convince a buyer that you are the one best fitted for their project?

Sure a good profile helps, and …

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There are many times I’ve been looking for a provider to do a specific task, but because there is special software or techniques needed, I’ll go through a hundred profiles and never find one where I’m convinced that the person knows exactly what I need.

In the interest of illustrating what …

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Fernando is our first contestant on the game we call “oDesk Profile Reviews.” Take a moment to glance over his oDesk profile to get the context for the rest of this review.

At the time of this writing, Fernando’s profile headline reads “Linux Administrator, PHP/Java Developer, MySQL/Networking Servers”. While it clearly sums up his many skills, I think that the title doesn’t do his skills justice.

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The answer is usually “no. ”

You probably saw this answer coming (because what a short and depressing post this would be otherwise!), but let me tell you the two top reasons why I believe that cost is not the primary issue.

From a buyer’s perspective, the ideal outcome is to get their job done well at a reasonable price. If the job is not done well, no matter how low the bid, the buyer doesn’t get what they want.
Low-quality providers with cheap rates often present themselves so poorly that buyers start to avoid the lowest bidders.

I tried an interesting experiment recently as part of the process of writing the oDesk Insider book. As a buyer, I know what catches my interest, and I know what makes me immediately reject a candidate, but before giving advice to providers based solely on my experience as a buyer, I wanted to test that advice from a provider’s perspective. So I set up a provider account on oDesk.

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Profiles are one of the two areas where new providers seem to have the most trouble (the other area is cover letters). As a buyer on oDesk, I’ve seen a huge range of profile quality, and know that while a profile doesn’t always reflect the quality of the provider, a …

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oDesk announced a new feature called “oConomy” today, and I’ve had some fun checking it out.

What’s the oConomy? It’s a collection of statistics (nicely presented in graphs and maps) that give details on how people are doing business on oDesk.

Many of the graphs are fun …

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