Comments on: Jobs from Bidding Sites

By: anjeeta

anjeeta — Sat, 23 May 2009 20:31:12 +0000

Hi, I have used the bidding site ifreelance.com quite successfully for the past three years. I have managed to land long term clients through the site who pay a decent hourly rate. Yes on ifreelance.com as well you have buyers who want you to work for peanuts but the writer community on that site is quite strong and they vociferously denounce those jobs in the general discussions. However you will be surprised to learn that many of those jobs tend to get bidders from various parts of the US itself not from overseas. I recently bid a $1000 to complete a particular project while some other US based bidders bid as low as $300 to complete the project. The editor who had posted the job in fact posted a follow up post advising bidders to read the requirements before bidding. I won that particular bid but was really surprised at these bidders.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Fri, 22 May 2009 11:46:58 +0000

I would say no, simply because most people willing to use those sites are probably better off just checking the sites themselves rather than checking here.

Just for note, I do use Elance and my experience has been quite positive, I bid my rate (and I almost never the cheapest bid), I check providers out before bidding, and I read the job description thoroughly. I don’t really consider $30-$60 an hour to be a particularly bad rate for a freelancer with less than a year of experience, as well. On an hourly basis, I would make less money actually using my engineering degree.

I think for generic writing assignments, the pay is pretty abysmal most of the time. However, if you have experience in the actual area you are writing about, pay tends to be a lot better unless they are the people looking for hundreds of low quality articles.

Still, I don’t really think it is necessary to post that sort of stuff here. Anyone using those sites can quite easily search the jobs there, so having them here is hardly necessary.

By: John H

John H — Wed, 20 May 2009 23:26:06 +0000

I see no need to abet a crime. The bidding sites give employers an opportunity to hire someone at a rate that is below the minimum wage in most states.

By: Elise

Elise — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:16:30 +0000

No bidding sites please. This is the place I can count on that doesn’t have those jobs and they never benefit me. I almost feel like their spam their payment is so low.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 20 May 2009 16:50:28 +0000

Another resounding NO vote. I think what separates this board from others is that you weed out leads that are not especially beneficial to the average writer (low pay, term paper mills, “internships”, etc.). I’d put bidding sites in this category and don’t think they fit in here. Anyone that wants to use a bidding site shouldn’t have problems finding one to search for leads on, so I would vote for continuing to leave them out of this community. I’ve never personally used one given the low-ball pay. After reading some of the experiences of others it seems that low pay is just the tip of the iceberg. Sounds like bidding sites really attract employers that don’t especially value their writers and are looking for a lot for a very little. No thanks.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:57:34 +0000

Count me as a no.

By: Robert Palmer

Robert Palmer — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:41:56 +0000

Another thing, Just reading through these folks’ bad experiences with Elance, it sounds like most of them were not very careful when choosing the provider they wanted to work for. You can usually tell from the way the proposal is written whether or not somebody will be Okay to work with or not.

I steer clear from proposals that mention “price will be considered before quality,” proposals by folks who clearly don’t speak english as a natvie language, proposals that includes list of “rules,” or proposals where the poster includes a set price within the project descriptuion (usually well below Elance’s minumum bid of $50 per project.)

I would love to “break away” from Elance but I still haven’t quite figured out how to get clients outside of the bidding site.

By: Robert Palmer

Robert Palmer — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:27:27 +0000

I use Elance quite a lot and I usually get a pretty decent rate (at least I think so) though it seems to be lower than a lot of you folks are getting–or say you are getting. I stick to bidding on projects that sound reputable and the folks who post them are looking for quality. Some of the projects I’ve “won” have paid 10 cents per word. Most pay around 5. If any of the posters are looking for less, they just don’t choose my bid and I’m happy with that.

Funny story, the second project I “won” on Elance was to write 15 pages of web content which turned out to actually be closer to 30. I bid some ridiculously low rate ($100 i think), spent two weeks busting my behind for peanuts and vowed I would never do that again. Two months after I finished, the fellow who posted that job contacted me outside of Elance and wanted to know if I would work for him in a non-writing capacity (cutting and posting news content to his news ticker–all above board and no plagerism as he signed up to “buy” those new articles from the Kyodo News Service) Sure, I said. I’ve worked for him on and off for six months and the pay rate is insane–it works out to $45 per hour!

However, I don’t think bidding jobs belong here.

So I vote no.

By: adrie

adrie — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:40:30 +0000

I’ve gotten some great ongoing gigs on bid sites, but it seems that even the better ones are being taken over by people in other countries offering to work for next to nothing which usually wins out even if the quality is terrible, so I’m with most of the others and don’t think those bid projects should be listed here.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Wed, 20 May 2009 03:05:25 +0000

I have completed hundreds of projects on the bid boards without any problems, though I do agree that you have to sort through several low-paying jobs to find thhe gems. So, while I appear to be a minority in that I am happy with the bid boards I use (RAC and GAF), I don’t see a benefit to posting leads from the bid boards here. The boards send out emails on a regular basis with available work, so I think those of us who use the boards can easily look through those emails rather than cluttering up your space with jobs that most readers don’t seem to be interested in. Besides, I think you have better things to do with your time. ( : Although, I believe you could possibly generate some extra income if you post the jobs as affiliate links and your readers win bids after being directed to the job through your site (not quite sure how that works). So, it might be a good financial move for you.