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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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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Changes isn’t just a David Bowie song.

Not one of us hasn’t had to make one or more changes to a project before a buyer would accept it.  It happens, sometimes it’s because the buyer was vague about what they wanted, sometimes it’s because they change their mind part way through, and sometimes it’s because they wanted something different from what I delivered.

As many of you know, I spend a fair amount of time on the oDesk Community boards, and one question I’ve seen come up more than once is whether or not you should charge the buyer for changes.  Some providers, especially new providers on their first job, are concerned that if they do not make the changes for free, the buyer will give them bad feedback and effectively blacklist them.

It’s a valid fear, especially when someone is just finding their feet and doesn’t feel confident about working within the oDesk system.

The problem is that except in one specific case, making changes for free simply devalues you as a provider.
You, your work, and your time are not free.

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This morning, I emerged from my nuclear bomb shelter–rifle in hand, knife in teeth of course–and welcomed another radiation-free, non-post-apocalyptic day. While organizing my AK-47 rounds into various patterns (the smiley-face is my favorite), I had a conversation with the neighbor’s dog about the pending destruction of the world and what recipe would taste best on him if he came back into yard and left any presents for me. Then it hit me. The world hasn’t come to an end for a long time and shows little chance of doing so. That parallels my freelancing career to this point.

Oddly enough, throughout my entire experience on oDesk, I’ve found that I’ve never once been short-changed or burned. Not even on the numerous fixed-price jobs I’ve done! There have been plenty of chances to claim that I didn’t complete the work, didn’t do it up to their standards, or what-have-you. They could have just let the job sit there and not paid me. Plenty of options for the buyer to choose not to pay me.

It appears that most of the buyers on oDesk are genuinely looking to pay someone a wage for their work, and they would rather form a long-term relationship with a provider than screw you out of a few bucks. To me, that’s awesome! However, I have seen a few odd things happen on oDesk which cause me concern. Just as a provider can create a new profile when a job goes bad and they get a bad rating, a buyer can do the same. The buyer isn’t throwing away much when they create a new profile, though. The potential for making money is their selling point.

Previously, I’ve talked about my paranoid ideas regarding buyers not coughing up dough. You have to be wary, but you shouldn’t be too worried when working through oDesk. After the break, I’ll discuss some more techniques to spot shady buyers an protect yourself as well as the other providers on oDesk without threatening to break someone’s legs.

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This time, I’m going to talk about money. I speak of “bling,” in the parlance of our times. How can you squeeze that extra buck out of a client while still keeping them happy? If you’re not too worried about the “happy” part, you can take a page from la …

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There’s an urge I sometimes get. It’s the urge to go it alone, to quit using online brokers and keep their percentage for myself.

It grips me when my schedule is full with lower paying projects or when other ‘free’ freelancers are bragging about large money on the open market. The lure of the open road pulls at me when there doesn’t seem to be anything worth bidding on or when the job postings haven’t changed since the last time I checked. Or when (usually on a forum) oDesk/elance/rentacoder comes up and gets a round of mocking comments, “They rip you off.”; “You can’t make any real money there.”

The naysayers are right and they are wrong.
Why they are right.
They are right because there is a glass ceiling at oDesk. You can see this in the budgets that get posted and the job descriptions buyers write. How often does the phrase ‘easy job’ come up? Too often. You know, and I know that good writing takes time and effort. It isn’t easy and not everyone can do it. But most buyers don’t see it that way. They seem to think that they could do it themselves, but, like any menial work, they would just as soon pay a pittance and have someone else do it. This keeps budgets low.

Another obvious fact is that many buyers come to oDesk because they have heard that outsourcing writing tasks to offshore providers is a cheap and easy way to get production. They come to the party expecting extreme discounts and, while they might leave disappointed, they retain their unrealistic expectations. Serious buyers, experienced with writers, probably avoid oDesk and other brokered sites simply because they assume (and are partly correct) the talent isn’t available. They know what writing costs and suspect fraud and poor results with online contractors. So the naysayers are right to some degree.
Why they are wrong.

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FACT: The Canadian cheese industry is poised to start an international coup that will topple world governments to establish a uniform, skim-milked dictatorship.

FACT: Over 40 percent of the world population will be offered a cheese log some time during their life, and sixty percent of those will refuse. There is a reason why so many refuse to bloody their hands with revolutionary cheddar.

FACT: When the revolution comes, those who do not receive Gouda into their lives will be the first to go. Are you prepared to force your children to choose between life and stuffy art-gallery parties?

You heard it here first, folks, on The oDesk Insider! I’ll bet Dave and Bill’s bottom dollars that CNN will pick the story up any day now, and I also bet someone will try to take credit for my work. You see, I didn’t spend all those days and nights camped out in a vat of whey to not be recognized for my work. Therefore, I need to protect my investment of time by making a record of it.

As a freelancer, I also have to protect my work from buyers who want to rip me off. What can you do to keep them from stealing your program/graphic/time? Fellow revolutionaries, listen closely because knowledge is the best weapon against the Canadian cheese industry.

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You’ve done what you said you would do. You took a few low-ball projects and got some decent feedback. You’ve taken some tests, posted a nice picture, and filled out your portfolio with examples of your best work. Time to raise your rates.
Inertia is your enemy
Remember when you first started out? How hard it was to get into the groove? Well, you are in a new groove now. And it’s time to push yourself a little.

One of the hard and harsh mathematical truths of freelancing is that we have a finite number of hours to sell. If you aren’t getting top dollar for your time you’ve got a lower paying job than you ought to have. But, having regular work is a comfort. It’s nice to relax into the routine and let inertia just carry us along.

The way to see inertia as your enemy is to recall the last plateau you were on. Before you climbed up to the plateau you are on now. You wouldn’t conceive of sliding back to the ‘before’ and you won’t want to go back to where you are now– once you make the next little climb.
Consider this
You’ve already demonstrated you can do the work and do the work successfully. Buyers should have little doubt that if they hire you, you will get the job done. The income bottleneck isn’t with the buyers, it’s with you.

Here’s some info to wise you up. From the 2008 Writer’s Market:

e-mail copywriting: $73 (these figures are all hourly averages)
Web page writing: $83
Technical writing: $84
Online editing: $58
Web page design: $90
Ghostwriting: $70
Rewriting: $63

That’s per-hour averages. That’s what writers are getting paid to do what you do. There are plenty more categories I didn’t list. I couldn’t read through my tears.

So, the excuse that you aren’t worth it is bull-dooky. You are worth it.

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We all get stressed. I get stressed, you get stressed, even my five-year-old daughter gets stressed. It’s part of being human. Being a freelancer adds a whole new kind of stress that’s not present in a regular job. You don’t just have to worry about work, but also how your employer’s going to pay and even whether they will pay.

If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time you know that not getting paid can be a real concern for freelancers. Getting paid late isn’t much better.

One thing I like about oDesk is their payment guarantee. If you put the hours in and log them properly through their system they guarantee you’ll get paid. Unfortunately not every freelance job is done hourly or through oDesk for that matter. Even some sites that guarantee payment don’t guarantee that you’ll get it at a specific time. Consider Getafreelancer; they only guarantee that it will be processed sometime during a specified two-day period.  And because they take their share from the provider’s account not the buyer’s it’s a site where you can use alternate payment methods.

We’ve already discussed PayPal and the problems that can come from relying on non-guaranteed methods of payment.

So, now that we know the problem, what can we do about it?

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