Flying Solo I

Table of contents for Flying Solo

Flying Solo I
Flying Solo II

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.

They are wrong because they misunderstand what oDesk does for writers and programmers. oDesk acts as an agent for us. That’s what the 10% is for. By handling bids, collecting and distributing money, and facilitating communication, oDesk earns their fee. The nightmare of invoicing and hounding clients is largely avoided for we oDeskers. oDesk doesn’t rip me off at all. They provide me a useful service and a place to compete for work.

Tips to get the best of both worlds.

The trick to flying solo is marketing yourself and your abilities. But you don’t have to go completely on your own to do this. You can have your oDesk cake and eat it too.

If you are of a mind to get off brokered sites, you don’t have to cut all your ties, all at once. Here’s how to test the waters and ease into the transition.

Link your marketing to your oDesk profile. I do this with a .name (that’s ‘dot’ name) identity. If you go to my .name identity (www.william.morrison.name) you’ll be taken to my oDesk profile where you can read about me and hire me if you like.
Get a .name to use in your signature. You can get your own .name to use for three months free. And you can link it to wherever you want on the internet. Go to: FreeYourID and check it out. You can re-direct your name to oDesk or, after you start getting a bit more independent, re-direct to your own domain name. This also works for email: william@morrison.name sends you to one of my email accounts.
Use a signature file. This is the little add-on that appears beneath the last line of emails you send out. Take a look. If you use Yahoo or Hotmail for email, they are happy to add their own material at the bottom. They know it’s valuable real estate; you should own it yourself. This is an excellent place to put your .name link. Right now, of the free email hosts I use, only gmail (at Google) doesn’t add an ad to my emails.
Post your resume on Monster.com and anywhere else that will take it. Again, you can link to your profile at oDesk and let them broker the job for you.
Contact old clients and almost clients. People you have worked well with in the past are a great source of new work. Remind them who you are and let them know you are free to take on new projects. Don’t forget the clients you interviewed with but who didn’t hire you. They may have other work you can do for them.

I’ll cut this short and save some more tips for part two… stay tuned.

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