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.
Aug14
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 relationship and it works very well. Most sites take between ten and fifteen percent and provide various services ranging from escrow and payment through oDesk’s time management software. The benefit to this method of payment is that it’s performance based and so sites make more money by getting more work for providers.
Some sites have a second revenue stream–
Paid Memberships
Providers pay the site a monthly fee in return for additional benefits over the standard free membership.
On the surface it doesn’t sound like a bad idea, but in practice it does have one major drawback. It’s a significant change to the business model. It’s often easier to get a new provider to pay $10-15 per month than to get a buyer to pay $100-150 for a project. It also extends the site’s revenue stream to include funds form unsuccessful providers as well as successful ones.
Businesses reinforce success. This means that if they’re getting more money from subscription fees than project fees that’s where they will focus their money-making efforts.
There’s nothing wrong with this from a business perspective, but from a provider’s perspective there is a problem here: it dilutes the focus on getting new jobs.
Before we go further, let’s look at some examples of membership systems: eLance and GetaFreelancer both use paid subscriptions, but they take very different approaches.
A free member on eLance gets three bid points per month, and depending on the size of the project it can require anything up to four bid points to put in a bid. An individual membership is $9.95/month and gives the user 20 bid points and a lower commission percentage rate in addition to other benefits such as a greater number of keywords and more contact options.
A free member on GetAFreelancer has more bid points (I have 25) and pays a 10% commission on all jobs. The paid membership costs $12 a month, and not only provides more bid points, but also eliminates the commission. I’ve also never seen a job on GetAFreelancer that required more than one bid point.
Here’s where I see the difference: GetAFreelancer is rewarding paid members, while eLance is penalizing free members.
I’ve had a paid membership on GetAFreelancer, and only let it lapse because I haven’t been working there lately as my oDesk clients are taking up the majority of my work time. Should I shift focus back toward GetAFreelancer I will definitely restart my membership.
I haven’t gone for a paid membership on eLance, and part of that is because the free one is so restricting. My preference is to bootstrap my first job on a site to getting a membership, and with the restrictions on free members, I don’t spend much if any time applying for work on eLance.
That’s the real pitfall of paid memberships, they often make it hard for new providers to get started on a site.
Some might argue that it separates the serious providers from the frivolous but I’m not so sure. There are other ways to limit bids that don’t involve paid memberships and they seem to prevent frivolous and spam bids just as well as the memberships do.
Alternatives
oDesk uses a combination of skill tests and buyer feedback to limit the number of bid points available to a provider allotting anywhere from five to twenty points a week. The big benefit of this is that it’s possible to get to the maximum number of bid points right from the start just by taking skill tests, which helps new providers get started. Once a provider builds up a history it’s all based on feedback, but the skill system really helps get people in the door.
Rentacoder allows people as many bids as they can reasonably make. I don’t have a lot of experience at the site but I haven’t seen any complaints about spam bidders there.
Personally, I prefer the oDesk approach, but I don’t have a problem with the idea of paid memberships that reward paid members.
Just remember, it’s your time and your money, so be careful.
And for writers remember Yog’s Law.
Aug8
Today’s guest post is by Nick Usborne of AskNickUsborne.com, originally part of his excellent newsletter and shared here with permission. Nick coaches freelance writers, and you’ll see that the article focuses on writing, but I think you’ll find it equally valuable regardless of your particular expertise. After all, every one of us needs to set ourselves apart to succeed at freelancing.
I often receive questions from freelance copywriters asking me to help them find the “right niche”.
That’s a reasonable request.
Finding the right niche for your freelance copywriting or writing business will help bring some focus to your marketing, and will help your prospects identify you as an expert in that area.
For instance, if you choose to become a specialist in the insurance industry, prospective clients within that industry will be reassured that you know their business and speak their language.
However, there are more ways to “niche” yourself than simply by choosing a particular industry or industry sector as your area of specialty. Continue reading »
Aug7
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 minute you spend surfing the boards is a minute you aren’t searching for work or actively earning money, and there are some providers who just can’t spare the time.
If you’ve been reading this blog regularly you’ve probably noticed that I am an active member of the oDesk Community. I not only read the message boards but I also try to post fairly often too.
What I’m going to try to do in this post is explain why I spend my time on the boards.
The first reason is simple: Most new features are announced and explained on the community boards and by reading them regularly I can keep up with the changes. That becomes particularly important since I try to post those same changes here too so that those of you who don’t read the community boards can also stay in the loop. Besides, it gives me something to write about.
For example I discovered the new Message Center by checking the Community Forum.
It provides a single place to view all of your oDesk related communications so you don’t have to go digging through your email. I have to admit that I’m torn on this one. I can see definite benefits to it, but at the same time, I already have my email open so do I really want to keep the message center up too?
I’m really not sure.
At least for the moment I think I’m going to use the Message Center as a supplement to email, not a replacement. It might be different if I could reach it from any tab on the site, but we’ll have to see.
Speaking of email, oDesk has recently stopped sending out job application confirmation emails. They have also stopped notifiying people they have applied for jobs in the message center. As of July 15, 2008 if you apply for a job the only confirmation you will receive is that it will show up under “My Candidacies.”
I think it’s a good idea. You don’t need an email to tell you you just applied for a job. I don’t know about the rest of you but I generally remember my job applications.
Both of these changes are things I would not have been aware of had I not put some time in on the message boards. They can be a very good place to go for both assistance and information.
The only thing I would watch out for is the negativity. Some days you see a lot of it on the boards, and it can really get you down. The truth is that the people complaining the most are usually, not always but usually, the ones who have not yet figured out the best way to make oDesk work for them.
Many of them don’t know the economics of the site either, and think all jobs pay the very low rates that someone is always complaining about.
In the meantime I recommend you use the boards, but don’t let them use you.
One last bit of news before I close.
Things are always changing, and one of the things that’s changing is the oDesk Insider. One result of these changes is that you may start seeing fewer updates that you’ve been getting of late. It’s not a bad thing, but other things are forcing us to put this blog on the back burner for a while.
Anyway until next time (and it won’t be that long) I wish you all happy and profitable freelancing.
You can always reach me at dave(at)odeskinsider(dot)com
Aug6
Table of contents for Make more money
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:
Aug5
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. Continue reading »
Aug3
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.” Continue reading »
Aug1
After getting paid, the most important thing for many freelance providers is their reputation. It’s essential to maintain a good reputation if you want to keep working at decent rates.
oDesk indicates your reputation in a few ways. Everyone should know how the feedback system works, and if you don’t just drop me a line or put in a comment and I’ll be happy to expand on it here. The other aspect of your reputation is how well you rank when buyers do a search.
The basic system works pretty well, it sorts by whatever criteria you specify, and uses the number of oDesk as a weighting factor. So if you are searching for providers with a perfect feedback rating, you’ll see all the 5.00 rated providers with the one with the most hours listed first.
I like that as someone with a very large amount of hours has demonstrated their reliability.
If you need to you can also filter providers by anything from pay rates to hours worked or even whether they’re affiliated with a provider company. In all cases your results will show up based on your primary search criteria weighted by oDesk hours.
It’s a good system, but it does have flaws: Continue reading »
Jul31
Table of contents for Make more money
- Escape the Commodity Trap
- You’re Worth How Much? Prove It!
- How to Get a Buyer to Pay You More Money
- oDesk, How it Works
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 with one obvious fact that doesn’t always seem obvious to some of the posters in the Community:
oDesk wants you to bill high
That’s right, it’s in oDesk’s best interest for you to have as high a billing rate as you can manage to pull in. They don’t want you to get jobs by underbidding everyone else, they want you to get jobs by proving you’re worth more to the buyer than everyone else. oDesk gets paid by the buyers just like you do. They want you to make more money because the more you make the more they make.
They have an even greater incentive for providers to raise rates than most providers do because they only get ten percent of the bill rate. So if I make ninety dollars they make ten. If I’m working at a charge rate of $1.00/hr they only get $0.10/hr and that’s not really worth it for either of us.
So if someone tells you there’s a conspiracy to keep rates low just laugh at them. oDesk isn’t going to have anything to do with a conspiracy to make oDesk less money.
Okay, now that we have that squared away, on to the tips:
Tip 1) Don’t Do Data Entry
Lots of people put data entry down as one of their skills, and in some ways it makes sense. for the most part it’s a job anyone can do if they just take care and pay attention to what they’re doing.
It’s also the lowest paying job category on oDesk
One reason it’s low paying is that it’s essentially commodity work. There’s no way to put your own unique stamp on data entry so you cannot build a reputation as being the best person for it the way you can with some other fields.
It also doesn’t require any special training or even skill at the English language.
I don’t mean to disparage the job, but if you want to make a lot of money on oDesk it’s one category you should avoid. The money isn’t there.
Tip 2) Don’t Lower Your Rate On An Invitation
Here’s an example of how lowering your rate can come back to bite you. A provider with a very high rate (twice the category average and it’s a high average rate category) received an invitation to a position. When they accepted the invitation, they offered to do the job for about a quarter of their billing rate.
What happened?
They were turned down because they charged too much.
Personally, I never lower my rate on an invitation and here’s why: Anyone who invites me to do a job has already seen my rate before making the offer. They wouldn’t have offered if the rate wasn’t acceptable, so why should I drop it?
Also, if I do drop my rate, I’m sending at least one of two messages: a) I’m desperate; b) I have no confidence in the value of my work.
I don’t want to send either message. The other thing that might happen is that if I do drop it the buyer may push to see how low I am willing to go. If I drop my rate by seventy-five percent, maybe I’ll drop it by eighty percent, or possibly even more. I don’t want to get caught in that trap.
The other problem is that the amount you were paid stays on your profile. If you quote $50.00/hr and all your jobs are at $15.00/hr there’s no reason any buyer will ever pay you $50.00/hr. You’ve sent the message that your real rate is $15.00/hr.
Lower rates on past jobs don’t hurt you if they show a steady pattern of increasing rates. There’s nothing wrong with showing a few jobs at $5.00/hr, then $10.00/hr, $15.00/hr and so on. That shows a normal upwards progression and doesn’t make the buyer think you’ve been undercharging all along, but rather that your rate has been increasing with time.
Tip 3) Let Your Profile Fit Your Description
Provider profiles are a huge subject, and I could go on for hours about them. Right now though, I just want to focus on one aspect.
Make sure your skills reflect your area. If you’re a writer who dabbles in programming, list your writing skills first, not your skills coding Flash or debugging HTML. Further to that, if you have multiple areas of expertise, list the one you most want to work with first. That’s the one you should be focusing on.
This doesn’t apply if your preferred skill is data entry and your other is voice-over, since those have the lowest and highest average pay rates respectively. If one skill is going to pay you much more, focus on that one.
Okay, I’ve started you off. If anyone has other tips for raising their average rate feel free to send them along. Everyone wants to make more money and as long as your work is worth it there’s no reason you shouldn’t be working at the top of your category.
Jul30
Table of contents for Editing for Money
- Editing for Money
- Editing for Money II
- Editing for Money III
- Editing for Money IV
In this series, I’ve been trying to encourage providers of writing services to try editing. In this post I hope to illustrate the process with an example.
Over the transom.
I still hear the ‘plonk’. Even though it’s a virtual manuscript hitting my in-box, I hear the sound of a ream of paper falling solidly on my desk.
You never know exactly what you are going to get, but if you’ve done the prep-work well enough, you have a pretty good idea. The initial sample you received from the buyer and the subsequent discussion gave you enough information to set your rate. But there’s still the plonk.
Here’s an example:*
Creating a Healthy Mindset
Do you feel like you could have a healthier attitude toward life? Would you like to change your attitude or simply approach things in a different way? It can be difficult with all of the stressors in your life to lead a healthy lifestyle, but the way that it needs to start is through a healthy mindset. Many people think that they are just meant to be a pessimist or they just aren’t as optimistic as a lot of the other people in their life. You can achieve a healthy mindset; you just need to go about it in the right way.
How You Can Have a Healthier Mindset
Many people sit back and look at their lives and wish that they could look at things in a more positive manner. Instead of working toward being positive they beat themselves up for being negative or not having the responses or attitudes that they wish they would have naturally. This is a typical response, but it doesn’t do any good. Instead of getting mad at yourself for responding the way you do, go about the desire to have a healthier mindset in a positive way.
What the buyer had to say.
“It’s too smooshy, too loose. Can you punch it up and have it read better?”
A little Q&A revealed that this was written to be SEO friendly. The original writer had her hands tied. I explained the trade-offs between readable and machine readable. The key phrase was ‘healthy mindset’, and I promised I would try to keep as many instances as I could while still keeping in mind that actual humans were the target audience. Continue reading »
