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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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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