By Lorraine Cote
The Trials and Tribulations of Finding Writing Work in theFreelance Work Marketplace
There are many ways to find freelance writing work on the net.The most popular method is by signing up to one or more of themany freelance work sites available. There are a ton of them tochoose from. Take Elance.com for instance, it is the site that Iam known as a “service provider” and it's where I get most of mywriting projects. While I do also have offline clients, mostlycorporations, Elance is a good supplement to my writingbusiness.
However, there are some things that you should be aware ofbefore you go rushing off to sign up to one of these sites. Takea look! (I will use Elance as an example because it is the one Iam most familiar with).
Costs: Many of these sites don't charge a signup fee, however,many charge either a monthly fee (can be quite steep likeElance, writing category, $75 per month for select providerstatus), or they charge a transaction fee for each project youaccept. Many charge both (again Elance does this, 8.5% of totalproject amount).
Categories: Many of these sites break out their projects intolevels such as basic level, where basic providers can bid onbasic projects and select providers, where select providers canbid on any job, basic, or select. They also have a category inwriting called professional for $40 per month where you can bidonly on basic projects as well. Of course, as you may haveguessed, you pay a higher price for select as you are looked atas an expert in the field, whether you are or not. Elancedoesn’t check, so if you are willing to shell out the $75 permonth, you too can be a select provider.
Bidding: Now this is where it really gets competitive, the realdog-eat-dog stuff. The reason is that, say for instance that youare paying $75 per month to bid on projects plus an 8.5%transaction fee for each project you bid on, then along comes aprovider that underbids you and gets the project, regardless ofyour skill level, portfolio or client references. It isdisheartening and frustrating. You’ve just been passed over forwhat is known as a “low-baller.”
Low-balling is a frequent practice on these sites, especiallyfrom foreign providers whose cost of living is a lot lest thanthe US. Also, you will find “newbies who have no experience,portfolio or references stoop to this to get the project tobuild these things.
You may be thinking that this may be understandable in somecases because everyone has to start somewhere, right? Wrong!Actions like this devalues our skills as a writer and says toprospective clients I work cheap, use me like slave labor!
Additionally, you will always find providers who will underbidyou simply because they outsource the work and get a percentage.So they can make money without ever doing the work themselves.They can afford to bid less because a piece of the pie, which isbetter than none at all.
This also undermines the skills of writers trying to make aliving off writing. They are basically deceiving the client bynot disclosing that they have a "team" or writers that the workwill be outsourced to. Again, this prevents you from gettingwork. My personal belief is that if you have a team of writersand you are a legitimate business, then you owe it to the clientto disclose it. It will also help the other providers biddingagainst you to swallow it better. It becomes more of a way ofdoing business and less of a sneaky tactic.
To top it all off, a lot has to do with the way the contractedwork site markets itself. Elance, one of the largest freelancework marketplaces on the net, markets themselves as basically aplace where customers can get "cheap labor." This preventsproviders from being able to place a bid based on what they areworth in terms of skills, experience and expertise. Theybasically have to bid what the Elance marketplace will bear,which in most cases is peanuts in comparison to what writers inthe real world make. Providers on Elance are literally at themercy of customers because they flock to Elance to get a500-word article written for $5 or a 100 page ebook for $300.Both absurd prices by the way and a fraction of what writers inthe real world get. This type of marketing makes it so hard formore seasoned writers to bid higher, because so many providerson Elance are willing to offer these ridiculous prices.
There are times when you will come across a potential clientthat is willing to meet your price, but it doesn’t happen asoften as you think. It would be great if this continued andclients would wake up to the fact that they “get what they payfor.” Many have found the cheap labor source to be unreliable interms of content and delivery. I have been contacted many timesby Elance customers who paid one provider their low fee to writesomething, only to ask me to rewrite it at a higher price (Iwon't bend on my prices, work or no work) because the providereither: Took a down payment for the work, did half of it anddisappeared, or Plagiarized entire work, word for word, or Justdid shoddy work.
It appears on these sites that customers have to learn the hardway sometimes. So when they contact me for a rewrite, I chargemy going fee, and you know what? They pay it without blinking aneye and you can bet they learned a valuable lesson the hard way.
Unfortunately these kinds of actions on the part of theproviders give good quality writers a "black eye." It causescustomers to be skeptical and leery of what we say we canprovide them in terms of our skills and expertise. So it makesthe bidding and negotiation process that much more difficult.
Unfortunately I am only familiar with Elance, however, I dobelieve that the actions that I have described here, do exist onother sites as well. You can visit any one of them and see howlow the bids are for various writing jobs. It appears to be thenorm out there.
Signing up? Take a look for yourself, visit these sites andlearn all you can about them before making a decision to forkover your hard-earned money on a subscription. It may be quiteawhile before you will even see a small return on yourinvestment!
Elance.com Guru.com Getafreelancer.com Freelanceyourproject.comContractedwork.com Rentacoder.com
Now, luckily I have been with Elance since 2001 and have builtup a portfolio, a long list of client references and even madesome decent money. But it hasn't been easy and I would hate tosee anyone else jump in thinking that their troubles are overand the money will start rolling in. I have branched out andobtained corporate clients that have become long-term clients.
You may not be so lucky or it may take you just as long if notlonger to get to that stage. So keep in mind before you shellout high monthly fees coupled with a percentage of the projectamount that trying to eke out a living as a freelance writer onthese contracted work sites is rocky going at best. It may takemonths before you are awarded your first project from a client.Don’t quit your day job just yet! Good luck in your writingendeavors!
Copyright 2005 Lorraine Cote
This article may be freely reprinted as long as the author’sinformation and copyright notice remain intact.
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