Is anyone on Elance?

HepiSmajli said:

I am a member on Elance for a year and cant get a job because I don't have a reputation. Employers never pick a begginer with no reviews. Anyone knows a "short" way of getting first few good reviews?

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You mean the short white hat way?
Good pitch + low price.

lancis said:

You mean the short white hat way?
Good pitch + low price.

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I even tried offering people doing a job for free, only to have them leave me positive reviews, and still nothing. No, I mean the bad black hat way.

^ Post fake jobs from fake accounts, it may cost you few bucks for the fees.

vworker has been aquired by Freelancer.com last year and that changes everything. I was happy as a freelancer on vworker.

lancis said:

Wondering why no one uses vworker.com?

I used to freelance there about 7-8 years ago, when it was called rentacoder.com. Had only positive experience. Did something change over the years?

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HepiSmajli said:

I am a member on Elance for a year and cant get a job because I don't have a reputation. Employers never pick a begginer with no reviews. Anyone knows a "short" way of getting first few good reviews?

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Well too bad to here this. Am an employer and also a freelancer in Elance. We can work something out, you know. Pay me i make a contract for you and leave you first feedback. PM me if intersted.

I have about 5 good reviews (in 1 year) on Elance but still very hard for me to get new jobs.
There are lots of users with huge reputation and also offering very cheap prices. So it's pretty hard to get in for newbies.

Elance is awful for me, I find freelancer to be much better both as a buyer and as a seller. Elance just seems very static and cold...it doesn't facilitate the deal making process as well as freelancer.

pishty said:

I have about 5 good reviews (in 1 year) on Elance but still very hard for me to get new jobs.
There are lots of users with huge reputation and also offering very cheap prices. So it's pretty hard to get in for newbies.

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I don't know how bad is the situation in your category, but in mine (translations and article writing in Spanish) I get approximately 1 or 2 out of 10 projects I reply to. I have been working there for some years, and I guess I was lucky when I started, because, yeah, it is difficult to get your first job if you don't have any feedback, but with 5 reviews you shouldn't have problems, imo. Plenty of translators and writers with good reputation and a lot of jobs in my category too, but I'm doing well nonetheless.

Try to browse the previous projects the client has awarded to get an idea of how much they are willing to pay, spend some time writing your proposal and try different styles to approach the clients, to see which one works best. But well, you never know. Lately I've been thinking about posting a project using a fake account to see what are my competitors doing, but I don't know if I'll do it. It could help you improve your chances in the future.

Last year I was even running a shitty python script to know the bids that the rest of the freelancers were making, as you can see the number of bids, the name of the freelancers and the max/min and avg bid for the project. You can even do it by hand refreshing the page to get a general idea; if your price is higher than that of a fellow freelancer with better feedback and/or more past jobs, it'd be difficult to get the job.

There are tons of jobs on Elance. Even though it might seem difficult to compete with low priced providers in third world countries - clients are looking for communication skills and being a native English speaker is relatively valuable if properly leveraged. Get hired by a personal client (someone you already know) to build up feedback.

The most important part is having a great proposal - use formatting to standout and create a flexible template. I'm going to create a guide here eventually, will keep you updated.

use formatting to standout and create a flexible template.

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Exactly what I am doing. Great tips

If you're willing to use Elance and trade feedback send me a PM.

mickeymouse2 said:

I've tried freelancer but i find it's hard to use

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I stopped working at Elance, myself. The pay is too low for someone based in the US/UK, etc. The same goes for Odesk and Freelancer. You can make much more money if you pitch to large companies/big names directly.

I have not tried Elance yet. Does anyone know what commission they take when you sign up and receive jobs?

Anyone interested in sharing elance reviews? Anyone know of a group?

InTh3Moment said:

Elance is pretty good. I've heard horror stories about Freelancer recently but I've had good experiences so far with Elance

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Freelancer is an horror story in itself! I stick with Elance/odesk

I've hired shit tons @ elance and could have not formed by teams without it. Will keep on using it for certain.

I liked the fact that you could ban certain countries, unfortunately that has been removed... Without that, the amount of SHIT that you have to go through is immense...

Elance is a good company, I have used them, people are quite decent as compared to on other freelancing websites.

I've hired on Elance, oDesk and Freelancer. I've also been a contractor on oDesk as well.

Elance is good, although for some reason it always seems slightly more expensive than oDesk. The quality on oDesk and Elance also seems to be much higher than on freelancer. I can't really comment on any other sites; I mostly use oDesk.

Even i am using elance , its a good platform to get work.

sam.hunt0710 said:

Even i am using elance , its a good platform to get work.

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Even you? Gosh and you are ?

Get a real work guys elance is for newbs