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I was on the oDesk forums recently and came across a comment from a new provider who was worried by the ratio of working to registered providers.

She couldn’t find the page, which was probably the main oConomy page here which currently shows 248 providers working and 95,545 registered int the system.  I admit that those numbers weren’t calculated to put a new provider in her happy place, but they don’t tell the whole story either.

It isn’t showing how many providers on the network have jobs, but how many people were actively logging time on the oDesk client at the time the numbers were generated.   Given that oDesk is a 24 hour global marketplace those numbers will fluctuate throughout the day and really aren’t anything to worry about.  They certainly don’t reflect the number of providers who are currently employed.  (I expect they’re short by at least one or two orders of magnitude).

Now let’s look at some other numbers from the same page.  There are almost 100,000 providers, and together they’ve earned just under 40 million dollars, which works out to an average of almost U$400/per provider to date.   Since not every provider on oDesk has worked, and that some profiles are so incomplete that the providers are never going to work, the numbers have nowhere to go but up.
When it comes to getting a job, none of those numbers matter.

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Job sites need to make money too.

oDesk wouldn’t exist if it didn’t make money, and neither would its competitors.  The business model is simple, connect buyers and providers and take a cut off the top.  There’s more to it, but that’s fundamentally how they all work.

It’s much like an agency …

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How much attention do you pay to the oDesk Community?  Do you ignore it unless you have a problem?  Freelancing is generally a solitary occupation, so I imagine many of you just like to focus on your own projects and ignore the community.

For some of you it probably works.  Every …

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In my last few posts I’ve been focusing on how you can make money on oDesk.  However, as I read the oDesk community I’m coming more and more to the conclusion that not all the providers really understand how oDesk works.

Let’s start with what I consider the three most important factors:
oDesk is a free market
oDesk costs money to run
oDesk only makes money when providers make money.
Understanding those three points is vital if you want to understand how oDesk works.  Yes the oDesk Readiness Test is important, as is knowing how to work the oDesk Team, but there’s nothing really all that hard about either.

So, join me on the other side of the fold and we’ll discuss our three factors:

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I continually discover new, exciting ideas in writing. This is because I was not formally trained as a writer. I had the usual college composition and creative writing courses, but I was never exposed to the real secrets; the secrets writers use constantly in their craft. Here are a few I’ve picked up.
Nominalization
What is it? Nominalization is the process of making abstract nouns from verbs and adjectives. Some examples:
verb -> nominalization
discover -> discovery
oppose -> opposition
believe -> belief
adjective -> nominalization
hopeless -> hopelessness
careless -> carelessness
different -> difference
Take a look at this pair of sentences-

The opposition found among many voters to coal-fueled power plants is based on a belief of the threat to the atmosphere.

Many voters oppose coal-fueled power plants because they believe these plants threaten the atmosphere.

The abstract nouns become verbs, subjects get pinned directly to their verbs, and clarity increases.

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I bet that title got your attention; I know it would get mine.

I’ve been writing about money a lot lately, and not just because it’s one of my favorite things.   Today’s topic is a grab-bag of tips that can help you make more money for your work on oDesk.

Let’s start …

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Just the other night I received an email inviting me to join a Provider Company on oDesk.

Regular readers may know that I have already decided that I like being an independent contractor, but I decided to open the email anyway.  It was an automated invitation saying that person ‘x’ had invited me to join company ‘y.’   Maybe it was someone who was overloaded with work who had a little extra to throw my way.

I didn’t recognize the name, so I decided to do a little digging.  Research never hurt anyone, at least not really, unless you count Marie Curie but that was different.

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By polishing your image, I don’t mean cleaning the mirror so you can see yourself better in it.

I mean you should always try to make yourself look more appealing to buyers. Don’t make it seem like you are better than you really are, though. The key is to actually make yourself better and allow that improvement to show through when you’re interacting with people and working with them.

People in the States are especially bad about this. People of the younger generations are even worse about it. There’s this nasty misconception that people should like you for who you are. That you’re unique, special, and anyone who doesn’t appreciate you is just jealous.
Your Mother Was Lying to You
If you’re a blithering idiot with absolutely no ability in your chosen field, people won’t like you. You’re not special, you’re hardly unique, and the reason people don’t appreciate you is because you’re rubbing them the wrong way in ways you can’t even imagine.

The good news is that you can change that. It won’t be easy, but you should do it.

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I was writing a post about the oDesk community when I saw something that made me realize there was something more important I needed to focus on first:
Money.
I bet that got your attention; it gets mine.

We’ve talked about rates before, but what I want to discuss today is setting them.  One of the best tools for setting your rate on oDesk is the oConomy.  It lets you see just how much people in your field are getting paid so that you can see what the market can actually bear.

I’m a writer, so let’s look at the writing category:

This graph shows how provider’s hourly rates break down against the number of jobs.  I got this information from the very useful Rate Distributions by Job Category section of the oConomy.   If you haven’t looked at it already you really need to.

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When I worked in a Call Center I had a supervisor who always used to talk about the importance of “Being in Integrity.”

I didn’t always agree with his English, but it’s hard to fault the sentiment.

If you’re a long-term reader of the blog, and I hope you are, some of this may sound familiar.  That’s because I’ve posted on a similar subject before.  The reason I’m posting again is that it’s a topic that keeps coming up in the oDesk Community and I wanted to bring it to people’s attention one more time.

Let me put it another way:
Don’t lie in your profile
Don’t lie to your buyer.

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