I think I admit on the site somewhere that Elance.com is where I have been finding freelance writing job opportunities for the better part of my (short) career. I say “admit” because as I look around at other sites for writers, a lot of them seem to have a problem with the Elance site. In fact it was through one author’s(Sharon Hurley Hall) complaining about Elance that I found my way over to the site.

I will be the first to admit that this is one bidding site that does have its flaws, but I have to temper that with the fact that it has definitely helped me springboard into full time writing for a living.

There seems to be some confusion among writers and those who offer writers advice on the changes that Elance first put through their system (check out webwritinginfo.com). I’d like to offer my take on this subject; as usual I see a few different angles to what Elance is doing.

The Good

Well there’s one thing I certainly can’t complain about, and that is the fact that Elance has changed their pay structure so that individual writers, like myself, are on a more even footing with the big companies.

My monthly fees are half what they used to be because I can’t keep up with companies who use ten writers to produce content, and I don’t need the full allotment of bids.

The Mixed

One grey area for me is the new Premium Provider program. It used to be that you paid a fee and got a Premium membership that let you bid on certain freelance writing job opportunities.

Now Elance has changed the process so that providers have to have over 90% positive bids over a period of six months, have had to have at least two original clients in the past six months, and have to keep their membership fees updated.

The last requirement I have no problem with, nor do I have any problem with the idea behind the first requirement.

Still, I think Elance needs to do a lot of work in clarifying their feedback system and making it a little bit more fair for providers if they truly want to reflect the merit of companies (currently what any client says goes, no matter how demonstrably outrageous the claims and feedback scores).

The Bad

When it comes to finding more than two original clients each month, though, as an individual writer I take exception. Just as with the feedback, this seems to be tailored to give the writing mills an advantage over the individuals on the site. Easy enough to get new clients every week when you are willing to bid $5 for a 500 worder!

The Confusing

For reasons that are not very clear, Elance has decided to call bids “connects”. It sounds nice but still, what really is the point?

Also, the new sponsored bid program is a bit of a joke. Under his program, you can use two of your “connects” to get top placement in the bid section. Only two sponsors per posting though; I don’t really see how this idea works for anyone but Elance, who of course want providers to purchase additional connects as often as possible.

Conclusion

So the changes that Elance has made are not all bad, in fact the price change in particular is great for individual writers.

Still, Elance really has to take a look at their feedback process if they really want to be fair both to buyers and providers, and this still has not been addressed. In fact, it is a problem that may be exacerbated under the new rules.

Even though, I still use Elance to find freelance writing job opportunities.

When I started looking for writing jobs online, I could not find any solid information about what to expect and how to go about it.

I have since had a lot of success using bidding sites to find writing jobs online. In under two years I have managed to grow a business to around $50,000 per year. Most sources I have seen state that as the high end of the average freelance writer’s pay scale. (Now I am happy with that, but you might think it seems like small change. There are freelancers who earn yearly wages in the six figure range, but hey, it hasn’t even been two years yet and I am still hopeful).

I wasn’t really optimistic about making even this amount back when I started. A lot of the writing jobs online were incredibly low paying, many through individuals who were unreliable. It was a lot of work for not much in exchange. That all changed the day I discovered www.Elance.com. Now I know that that line sounds like the start of a glowing testimonial trying to convince you to use the site, but it isn’t. I assure you I have many issues with Elance (which will be apparent shortly), but in the end it works for what I need to do, which is make money from home by writing for a living.

For organization’s sake, I have decided to break the reviews I write on different online bidding sites down into different categories. I am going to avoid assigning a “value” to sections on a site, simply because I think that the words should be able to determine what is good about a site and what you need to watch out for. So let’s get started!

What you can expect to pay

Elance is a site where you must pay in order to get a “Select” membership. Ostensibly the Select membership allows you to bid on jobs that are of higher value than the others, and I have found that in most cases this happens to be true.

I have paid for the Select Membership. My most lucrative contracts (and best clients too) have come in the Select category. You don’t have to be a Select member to bid on other jobs, though, so if the idea of paying rankles you, then you can go for the other jobs, although you won’t have a feedback section, which allows you to gain credence in your bids.

Aside from that monthly fee, Elance deducts a percentage of the fee paid to you on every project by a client. This part of the pay structure is pretty annoying, because you end up coughing up close to 8% of the money you make on every project. If it’s a smaller project, you can end up paying even more, because Elance demands at least $10 off of every single project.

What you can expect in return

We have already kind of touched on what you can expect in return for signing up on the Elance site: access to a lot of writing jobs online. There are plenty of buyers who use Elance, with dozens of writing projects being posted every day.

Where Elance really fails is in their service to the people who are paying their fees. The site is free for people posting projects, thus it is only bidders who are contributing to the site’s financial well being. Elance seems to think that the opportunity to make money is thanks enough, and are very neglectful or downright rude when a bidder needs help with a client. Their negotiation process is so convoluted as to be useless, and as we will see in the next part of this article the feedback program is a bit of a mess.

Feedback program

Elance states that feedback is the backbone of their system, and this could not be stating the truth more clearly. Writing jobs online, landing them and continuing to get more, depend on good feedback from past clients. Most of the time if you do a good job, there is no issue with this, but all the feedback is opinion, and although Elance provides guidelines as to what the feedback categories mean, buyers usually don’t take the time to read it.

A good example of this is in the “Project Cost” section. Clients rate a provider on a scale of 1-5 according to criteria set out by Elance. The Cost section states that this feedback is based on “the client’s ability to complete the project within the stated cost of the bid”. I have not once asked a client for more money than I bid for, even when the project turned out to be more time consuming than I had thought. Still, several clients seem to think that this section refers to cost, period. If they think I charged too much, they will deduct points. I have brought this up with Elance, but they say that it really doesn’t matter what the criteria states, feedback is the opinion of the buyer.

The upshot is, you can end up with a score that doesn’t always give an accurate reflection of the job. Elance will not remove feedback unless ordered to by a court, and my guess is that they are fully cognizant of the fact that not a lot of freelancers can afford to retain a lawyer and foot the bill even when they are justified in their complaints. It’s a big weakness in the Elance system, because everyone runs into a client at some point that just cannot be pleased within reason.

The quality of the clients

You will find a great range of projects and topics on the Elance site when it comes to freelance writing jobs online, from books to press releases to reviews, articles, and everything in between. Moreover, these are on virtually every topic under the sun, so if you like to learn and earn you’re in luck, and the more diverse your knowledge base, the better.

Of course, the range of buyers runs from those with ridiculously low expectations in the area of pay to the more reasonable. Whenever freelancers are competing for writing jobs online, it will be hard to really command the prices that the jobs are truly worth, and that is in evidence on Elance. Still if you like working in bulk, there is good money to be made.

The competition

We kind of touched on this above, but it bears repeating: when you have a bunch of writers, or writing companies, competing for work, you are going to find a situation where the pay may not be as good as it should be. Elance, like other bidding sites, will take money from anywhere, no matter how well that individual or company does as a writer.

In addition, there is international competition on the Elance site. Keep in mind that when it comes to outsourcing, you have to compete with people living in countries where the average cost of living is much lower than the UK, Canada, the US, Australia, and so on (a bottle of Coke in India costs 15 cents. Justify that one!). As a result, they can afford to bid a third or less of what you need to earn on a given job. We talk about how to deal with competition in the form of poor or international writes in another section; the point here is to demonstrate that you will encounter this on Elance.

The upshot of it all

If there were a lot of options out there, I think that Elance would end up sinking. They charge very high prices for services that are not all that great and when it comes to dealing with issues their bidders have, they might as well be non existent; they are more or less just a processing company.

That being said, I certainly have no complaints about the number of writing jobs online that can be found on the site. If you are discerning in your bidding, and in your choice of clients, then your problems with Elance should be few. Sooner or later, though, everyone runs into a client who just can’t be satisfied, and it’s in these situations that the flaws of Elance are made very apparent.