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I haven’t posted here in a while. A long while. There’s one reason why: I went into full shutdown from freelance writer burn-out. I couldn’t even log into oDesk without getting a sick feeling in my stomach. The danger of destroying yourself from overworking is very real, and as part …

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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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This is just a quick post to mention something I saw recently online that I didn’t like.

I was on another site and someone was hiring members to take and pass the oDesk Readiness Test for them.  Don’t do it.

Just don’t.

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When I’m not writing (or I’m avoiding work in general) I like to read about writing. So I haunt a few news groups and forums. A few days ago I ran across an interesting thread in CopyWriter Mastermind.
What they say about us.
The thread started with someone who wanted to sell writing services to Marketing Directors. Marketing Directors, or MDs, are huge users of writing services and in the off line freelance world MDs are high grade targets. What caught my interest was the responses and advice from former MDs. Especially the gripes about freelance writers. Here’s the list:

Freelancers who focus on money and contracts over a working relationship. “Don’t talk money before we even get the details hashed out. I want to be convinced you are the right person for the job before I have to think about the mechanics. I know you have to get paid, you seem like an amateur if you jump into contracts and payment too soon.”
Freelancers who aren’t committed. “I managed my local staff, my cross country staff and my overseas staff. If one dropped the ball, I had recourse by going over their head or impacting their salary review. I could manage their behavior because we were on the same team.
If my freelancer dropped the ball, I had no recourse. Sure, I could deny payment but I still looked bad to my bosses. Since most of them didn’t seem to care if I ever hired them again, I had little power to get the work done…well.”
Freelancers who lie. “Maybe they need the work, and that’s why they lie. They tell you they have skill X or Y and it’s plain, after you get started, that they just don’t. Samples are a good start, but there’s no substitute for having something done for me directly. And too often, for whatever reason, they just can’t produce what they claimed. Along with this comes the excuses. Unlike ‘real’ employees, freelancers seem to feel they can just stop work or do a poor job if they have any sort of personal or equipment problem- it’s a disease.”
The Prima Donna Syndrome. “I write, and I hire writers. I have to- there is plenty of work; more than enough. But some writers think they are the be-all and end-all of writing. As if I couldn’t hire another two or three whenever I wanted. I’ve got lots of things in the works, I don’t have the time to deal with wannabe Stephen Kings (if you are Stephen King, I’m not hiring you anyhow). Bottom line: You work for me. So work.”
Whiny, needy freelancers. “Pretty much the same as above, but presents as: ‘The job is too hard. I don’t have the resources or the time.’ These folks have an endless series of complaints and excuses. And if I have a criticism, don’t take it personally. I can’t stand it when freelancers don’t listen, when they get piqued because I need a change. I’m not out to offend, I just want the final product to meet my expectations and my vision.”

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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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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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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 scam has been mentioned before, but I want to highlight it in this post. It has been thrown at me a few times (even recently), and I bit the hook a couple times when I was younger. Also, it’s not just on oDesk–it’s widespread across the freelancing networks and …

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