Thread: Experiences freelancing?

I've never used Elance but I know TextBrokers.com actually allows the client to select the quality of the article upfront, so you can actually get an article written VERY cheap, but you, the client, are also accepting a lower quality article in return. It's also a good system because people like you who do good work and know your time is valuable can only accept the quality jobs and get paid for your work.

Does Elance have any kind of rating system like that?

Hi Lisa,

That sounds like a great system on Textbrokers.com.

There is a rating system on Elance, showing the number of jobs that a Freelancer has worked on, their average rating (1 to 5 stars - obviously a freelancer with a low average rating is going to produce low quality work) as well as a list of feedback received for the freelancer (again, a freelancer with good feedback is going to provide higher quality work than someone of no feedback).

As a side note the other day I received a couple of frantic PM's from a client on Elance, who I had submitted a proposal to on a project, who had gone with a freelancer with a much lower rate than I offered but had received very poor quality work. Unfortunately, I was offline that day so I was not able to help her out. Anyways, this shows that you do sometimes get what you pay for. I emailed her, asking if she had found someone, and she said she had, but she did not meet the deadline for the project and she ended up paying a lot more than she would have had to pay if she had hired me to begin with (she had to pay the original freelancer for his poor quality work and then another freelancer at a much higher rate for a "rushed job")

Yep you do get what you pay for. And I often wonder how many people use those services and hunt for cheap jobs just to get content up on a website in hope they are going to make easy money. It just doesn't pay to take shortcuts on any level.

Originally Posted by lisa

Yep you do get what you pay for. And I often wonder how many people use those services and hunt for cheap jobs just to get content up on a website in hope they are going to make easy money. It just doesn't pay to take shortcuts on any level.

I think you hit the nail on the head Lisa. I think there are a lot of people that think they don't have to do any work, spend very little money on subpar content and the money will just flow in. I have visited a lot of sites like this, that were obviously just quickly put together with cheap farmed out content. Some of the syntax errors and just plain misinformation or very poor quality content is laughable.

way back years ago, ive tried having a freelance work in DP forum...its a forum posting task, a review and product labeling a decent additional income though its not that much...

It doesn't take me long to decide whether I am going to finish reading an article or watch a video. After the first short paragraph or less than the first minute of a video I either move on or stay to the end. There is just far too many people out there who want a get rich quick scheme and toss anything together.
I don't like wasting my time.