Do oDesk workers "hire themselves"?

12 years ago

There are some places in he world where you can live quite well for $1/hour.

So I wouldn't be surprised if the stats are real - there's tons of competition out there, and sometimes lowering your prices is the only thing you can do to remain competitive.

Until you've made a name for yourself of course; then you can charge whatever you want and people will happily pay.

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Caleb Spilchen

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Gec

I think I'm a bit paranoid here, but I can't help it. I get this weird feeling in my guts, looking at the profiles of some people at oDesk, they have, like, 1.000 hours worked for $1/hour (sometimes less) or so in a single job, where they have a 5 star rating and sometimes quite a detailed written positive feedback on that job, and apart from that, they have only 1-2 more jobs with 2-3 hours each. The 1000 hours job is always private or something, you can't see who hired them or how many other jobs that client had.

To be honest I get the feeling that at least some of these folks are hiring themselves from another account and pay the 10% to oDesk (which amounts to some $100) just to get the hours billed and rating, so they can apply on filtered jobs and look good on stats. I know I'm being paranoid here, at least a little. But am I?

People who are willing to work for $1/hour probably do not have the money to afford the 10% odesk fee to be completely honest.

As well, if your so worried, you know that once you hire them you get screenshots of what their doing every 10 minutes... I know someone whose outsourcer decided to do a little image browsing on the job, and subsequently they were fired. (You actually can dispute the time, and you don't have to pay them for it either).

Your protected in many ways by odesk after hiring them, so even if your unsure about their previous work, you should know that if they ARE lying, and ARE a bad employee, you have options to get rid of them.

So say they work 5 hours and you are very unimpressed, $5 is nothing when you think about it.

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Bonita T Josephson

12 years ago

You have got it right. There are a number of oDesk contractors who are hiring themselves to build a better profile for themselves. They may charge about $200 to $500 to build a profile with a big number of hours and a positive feedback which will help them to get other jobs easily. A very few people with such profile have got the real jobs.

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Gec

12 years ago

Thanks for the replies. I'm not worried about them not doing the job, in fact it's quite the contrary, I'm sure they would try to give their best, 110%. I guess I just forgot that there are places where you can get by with $1/hr (though I used to live in such a place some years ago).

edit: just saw Bonita's reply. Thanks for confirming

. I still believe it's possible to get by with $1/hr though. So probably some do, some don't.

Peace.

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silveraden

12 years ago

That's unlikely.. $1 is 1 day meal to some countries..

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therichb

12 years ago

Why they dont go like creating 20 small assignment of different fix prices & complete them in 1-2 months time & all goes private

20 jobs * $10 (average amount) per job will get them to spend $200 & woooaa they have 20 feedbacks lol

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eskimoto

12 years ago

Originally Posted by Caleb Spilchen

Quote:

I know someone whose outsourcer decided to do a little image browsing on the job, and subsequently they were fired

These people charge $1 an hour! one has to be a total ass to fire them for skivinf off for like 10 minutes at a time. As far as I am concerned for that kind of money I am happy if they only do 20 minutets of actual work per one paid hour.
Its still more than what a typical westerner will give you...for far more money...plus an attitude that stinks

Posted from Warrior Forum Reader for Android

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SeoDemon

12 years ago

Originally Posted by eskimoto

These people charge $1 an hour! one has to be a total ass to fire them for skivinf off for like 10 minutes at a time. As far as I am concerned for that kind of money I am happy if they only do 20 minutets of actual work per one paid hour.
Its still more than what a typical westerner will give you...for far more money...plus an attitude that stinks

Posted from Warrior Forum Reader for Android

i totally agree with you, i tried these odesk workers from countries as India, Pakistan,.... to finish some data entry for me, and they were real hard workers, very polite and co-operative, nothing like other westerners.

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Caleb Spilchen

12 years ago

Originally Posted by eskimoto

These people charge $1 an hour! one has to be a total ass to fire them for skivinf off for like 10 minutes at a time. As far as I am concerned for that kind of money I am happy if they only do 20 minutets of actual work per one paid hour.
Its still more than what a typical westerner will give you...for far more money...plus an attitude that stinks

Posted from Warrior Forum Reader for Android

I was referring to if they were not actually doing any work. I get what your saying, but I would prefer to pay someone triple that, to get the full hour of work... that way my stuff would be done faster.

Also, if someone offers me a $1/hour rate, they are required to work that full hour because I am paying them for it.

Caleb

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darune123 12 years ago

I have good and bad luck on odesk with assistance, however I have been unwilling to hire someone for just $1/hour - the lowest has been about $2.50/hour. They tend to work great for several months and disappear on me. But, I have always thought that many of the companies on Odesk hires their workers for padded time - I have even seen payments for less than $1/hour.
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OutsourceFactor

12 years ago

I do agree that in some countries, $1/hour is enough for people to get by. Employers do tend to notice if you've a great track record plus a low hourly rate.

I'm not sure about the whole hiring yourself to get good feedback. In my opinion, it's too time consuming and it requires effort and patience for you to complete the whole process so I don't really think that contractors are doing that.

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MattStevens

12 years ago

I'm glad you posted this because I'm having trouble on Odesk and Freelancer as we speak...

I'm trying to find the right person to fix my website..around 250 bux worth of work and I'm debating on hourly or fixed price.

i have already been burned for 300 bucks by a scammer who I did a deal with off of Freelancer (stupid I know, too trusting) I also wasted another 250.00 with a company on Odesk that couldn't follow direction.

Very frustrating, but I blame myself for not doing my due diligence and giving explicit directions.

Any tips for working with these freelancers?

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virklink 12 years ago

I have been using Elance and oDesk to find writing jobs for about three years now and, based on the feedback my competitors get from multiple clients, I can say that there are a lot of good providers from both western and eastern countries.

Sure, there is always the possibility of scams. To try avoiding scams, I would suggest that you work with freelancers who have received positive feedback from multiple buyers.
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MattStevens

12 years ago

I'm looking for web developer or programmers...The writing I do myself.

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The Copy Warriors

12 years ago

I've never heard of this but it wouldn't surprise me.

I don't know what it is but odesk is just sort of a hotbed of unscrupulous behavior from both clients and contractors. I do a lot of work there, but I'm very careful about who i work with.

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dc_publius 12 years ago

Originally Posted by tooAlive

There are some places in he world where you can live quite well for $1/hour.

No it's not. You can't live 'quite well' anywhere in the world for $1/hour.

When you hear those claims, they are averaged down from subsistence farmers and people who barter. Those people don't even use cash for survival. They barter their goods and labor and already live on some farm for free.

But it's bare bones survival pretty much anywhere unless that person puts in 100 hours weeks.

Originally Posted by silveraden

That's unlikely.. $1 is 1 day meal to some countries..

Like USA, where we have dollar menus in fast food places? Where we can buy pasta and rice and other high calorie staples cheaper than they cost even in 3rd world countries?

***

Anyway, this is why clear directions and proper milestone setup are for. Don't rely on odesk for things that absolutely need to get done on a deadline and you'll be fine.
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icoachu

12 years ago

That happened quite a bit with scriptlance as well. Not the hours thing but the BULK of the good reviews coming from repeat customers etc

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Kay King 12 years ago

They sometimes hire each other - that way "work" is delivered - and ratings given. Not uncommon for a group of writers to do it - but they often go too far and praise too much - which makes others wonder what's up.
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trevb

12 years ago

Interesting question, I hadn't thought about that before. I wouldn't expect to get quality anything for $1.00 per hour. You can avoid this issue by only using people that have a large number of reviews. You could also try contacting them and if they seem reasonable over email it would increase the likelihood that they would be good work.

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MattStevens

12 years ago

I'm having headaches on oDesk right now...All I can say is be very careful, test small and give very clear, thought out instructions. better to have more detail than not enough.

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Kate Luella

11 years ago

Originally Posted by MattStevens

I'm having headaches on oDesk right now...All I can say is be very careful, test small and give very clear, thought out instructions. better to have more detail than not enough.

Yeah I like this advice!

I advertise, I select applications that seem genuine, I send a quesionaire about the job, their skills, then from those that return it I send a set task for them to do, I short list to 3 to skype interview, then I check references and select.

This is a nice system, you only want the best on your books, regardless of what you pay. I don't pay less than $4ph.

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autobacklinkservice

Banned 12 years ago

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icoachu

12 years ago

Originally Posted by autobacklinkservice

The best solution is that. You must leave odesk and it is better to find some jobs in forums like Digital point forum, warrior forum and other seo forums.

That's actually worse. Lots of scam link SEO services out to steal your money (among other scam services like bad writing/bad graphics) in those places. Good reviews are no protection since they can be faked. The best way to deal is to complain to paypal ASAP if you get burned and publicize the bad deal quickly.

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MattStevens

12 years ago

Im using odesk because of the so called protection factor..but its not working..rather, Im to blame here as well..because i did not take my time to interview and set them up with great instructions..

Although the guy on Freelancer just flat out stole my dough..i cant take the blame for that one.

Im sure there is a good way to get work done in a safe manner for both parties on these sites..just takes some shrewd planning and careful stepping

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WojtekKruszewski

11 years ago

I'm hiring myself on oDesk right now, for $1 per hour, so that I could use it to track my work on personal projects.

You see, I'm doing a paid contact on oDesk ($40/hr) and I wanted to track both my paid and personal work with single too. This way at the end of week I get a neat report with total number of hours worked.

Non-contract work in "Classic Time Analyze" is here to stay? - despite oDesk representative's declaration they phased out Classic Time Analyze without giving an alternative. Existing reports don't show "non contract" time logged, so the only way to get reports on your work is to create bogus contracts for yourself.

FIY, I'm not posting a feedback for myself, although I admit this crossed my mind more than once

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jcoutu

11 years ago

As a former technical arbitrator at vWorker, this does happen. They don't necessarily hire themselves, but there might be a group who hire themselves to improve ratings and # of projects.

Overall ratings for contractors on the big three (Odesk, Elance, and freelancer) are useless for a number of reasons. It misses cancelled projects, projects in limbo, arbitrations, and cases like this.

In addition, another factor is that most ratings given are 4s or 5s (out of 5). An unwritten rule among the job sites are that the worker gets a 5 for work completed and a 4 if there are issues. You very rarely see 2 or 3 stars. A contractor that should receive a 0 or 1 usually has the project canceled, so not rating is given.

What are better indicators for contractor performance?

- # of projects completed
- previous work and employer feedback
- repeat hire rate
- skill tests (not self-assessments)
- their comments on their bid (probably most important)

HTH

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aerm85

11 years ago

Many Odeskers live in Pakistan try to not compare with your lifestyle and you'll be fine

.
or maybe compare the economy and you'll find that is very easy to live with two or 4 extra bucks.
Best regards

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sunny00

11 years ago

I have been on odesk for about a year or two and I never thought about this. I did not think that was possible giving you can only have one account. If people are going through all that trouble of getting another person to open an account or whatever that is way too much for some odesk hours.

I have managed to get few hours logged but not a substantial amount. I know what you mean about some having 1000's of hours and charging $1/hr it is hard to compete with that especially when you live in the U.S. but like someone mentioned some places an U.S. dollar is sufficient giving the conversion rate. That's interesting given one U.S. dollar can't even buy a loaf of bread in our own country.

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WojtekKruszewski

11 years ago

I can totally understand why someone would work for pennies initially. When I started on oDesk I also offered my services very cheap just to get some traction and considered this an investment. However, going on like this for thousand hours seems unlikely.

Anyway, on user profile you can see list of actual contracts and feedback with job titles and rates, and for some of them you can drill-down to see job listing and - most importantly - buyer profile. There you see buyer's country. If it's the same as contractor's country, this is pretty suspicious.

So yeah, average score can help you with initial filtering, but then you definitely have to do some research on the contractor.

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WojtekKruszewski

11 years ago

BTW score is weighted based on total contract value, so if you have a 1000 hours contract at $1/hour and 100 hours contract at $10 they will weight the same.

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Do oDesk workers "hire themselves"?

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