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Elance cracks me up

by JonWebContent
11 replies
Ok, I gotta get this off my chest....

I signed up for Elance about 6 months ago and have maybe bid on a dozen jobs total (got 2 of them). So I don't really have any personal beefs with them.

However.....

There are 2 types of people on Elance that I just don't understand.

The first one is the person that posts jobs with titles that say "need 50 articles written", and then says they want the articles to be 500 words and they have a budget of $50 total for the project. Yes, I actually saw this one a few days ago when skimming through the gigs. The funny part about it was she was looking for a writer that would provide her with "high quality content". I tried my best to refrain from posting in the Q&A section a smarta** comment, but I simply couldn't!

The other person that I don't understand is the provider that actually bids on these jobs. I get it that some people really need money and/or just want to work their way up on sites like Elance. But come on, have you no dignity? You could collect pop cans and take them back to the store, and make more money than that. Not only are you selling yourself short, you are also cheapening the going rate for similar projects.

Don't get me wrong, these types of projects provide free comedy for me and the friends I email the job descriptions to. But it seems like SOME people are just trying to take advantage of those desperate for ANY work. I don't care if I could get the greatest employee ever to work for $5/hour, I would feel bad paying them that small of an amount. If I couldn't afford to pay someone more than that, I would do it myself because I'm not lazy.

As I'm writing this, I am reading one description where the guy wants 100 articles and clearly states he will pay no more than $700 and is only accepting US based providers, and anyone else will be declined. I notice that the highest bid is $767 and 3 of the 8 bidders are from Pakistan!

Anyway, just had to rant a bit!
#cracks #elance
  • Profile picture of the author Orator
    I agree in theory, but taking a crappy job sometimes is what it takes to pay the bills. I did a lot of cheap outsourcing for a year to help keep me in a one room apartment, and allow me to learn about IM.

    The pay sucked, but I was my own boss, for some people that is enough to deal with a lot.
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    • Profile picture of the author JonWebContent
      Originally Posted by Orator View Post

      I agree in theory, but taking a crappy job sometimes is what it takes to pay the bills. I did a lot of cheap outsourcing for a year to help keep me in a one room apartment, and allow me to learn about IM.

      The pay sucked, but I was my own boss, for some people that is enough to deal with a lot.
      Good point. But I'm talking about the ridiculously low paying gigs. 50, 500 word articles for $50?

      Taking a crappy job to pay the bills is definitely better than ending up on the streets. But I don't see how someone could pay bills working for just a couple dollars per hour.
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      • Profile picture of the author Orator
        Originally Posted by JonWebContent View Post

        Good point. But I'm talking about the ridiculously low paying gigs. 50, 500 word articles for $50?

        Taking a crappy job to pay the bills is definitely better than ending up on the streets. But I don't see how someone could pay bills working for just a couple dollars per hour.
        You'd be amazed at how creative a person can get when the bills are due. Although to be fair I never took those kind of jobs, I did mostly write articles, press releases, installed wordpress, and anything else I could get paid for.

        I admit Fiverr was a great help at times.

        Now though I'm running my own sites, not exactly guru status but it was worth it.
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      • Profile picture of the author paulie888
        Originally Posted by JonWebContent View Post

        Good point. But I'm talking about the ridiculously low paying gigs. 50, 500 word articles for $50?

        Taking a crappy job to pay the bills is definitely better than ending up on the streets. But I don't see how someone could pay bills working for just a couple dollars per hour.
        Rates like this should be outlawed, as it'd be terrible exploitation, and in addition to that, I'm pretty sure that the end result is going to be pretty abysmal in terms of quality.

        At the end of the day, both parties (freelancer and person requesting th job/gig) lose. Why would anyone want to enter into a lose-lose proposition like this?

        It hurts everyone involved, and turns the marketplace into a disreputable and low-quality bazaar.

        Paul
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    • Profile picture of the author jglopez
      That's actually not as bad as it sounds.

      Where I come from, the minimum wage here is around $8 per DAY. That's the government's prescribed minimum wage - meaning not everyone follows this.

      I've known a few people who work (not online business) for $4 a day.

      Let's say a 500-word article takes a person a maximum of 1 hour complete (this is actually too much). Even if the pay were $1 per article, that would be $8 for the whole day if the person worked 8 hours.

      Similarly, where I come from, the cost of living is way way cheaper that's why this is possible. Just to give you an idea, I quit my job in 2011 working as an IT analyst for Procter and Gamble (Huge US multinational). At the time, I was earning a little below $1,000 per month or $30 a day. We're talking IT analyst here - I've had overseas contractors working for me who were making more money than I was! hahaha
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      • Profile picture of the author JonWebContent
        Originally Posted by jglopez View Post

        That's actually not as bad as it sounds.

        Where I come from, the minimum wage here is around $8 per DAY. That's the government's prescribed minimum wage - meaning not everyone follows this.

        I've known a few people who work (not online business) for $4 a day.

        Let's say a 500-word article takes a person a maximum of 1 hour complete (this is actually too much). Even if the pay were $1 per article, that would be $8 for the whole day if the person worked 8 hours.

        Similarly, where I come from, the cost of living is way way cheaper that's why this is possible. Just to give you an idea, I quit my job in 2011 working as an IT analyst for Procter and Gamble (Huge US multinational). At the time, I was earning a little below $1,000 per month or $30 a day. We're talking IT analyst here - I've had overseas contractors working for me who were making more money than I was! hahaha
        Interesting. Just out of curiosity, where you live, what would be the cost of normal living expenses (ie rent, etc)?
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        • Profile picture of the author jglopez
          Originally Posted by JonWebContent View Post

          Interesting. Just out of curiosity, where you live, what would be the cost of normal living expenses (ie rent, etc)?
          I'm from the Philippines. We're not actually the country with the lowest cost of living. I think Vietnam's minimum wage is like 25 cents (US cents) per day, but I'm not sure.

          Normal living expenses - we can probably compare using agricultural products. A medium-sized chicken egg here is around 10 cents. A can of coke (yeah this is not agricultural, but let's compare anyway) is around 45 cents. A classy dinner at a 5 star hotel fine-dining restaurant is around 20-30 dollars per head. You get the picture...
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          • Profile picture of the author JonWebContent
            Originally Posted by jglopez View Post

            I'm from the Philippines. We're not actually the country with the lowest cost of living. I think Vietnam's minimum wage is like 25 cents (US cents) per day, but I'm not sure.

            Normal living expenses - we can probably compare using agricultural products. A medium-sized chicken egg here is around 10 cents. A can of coke (yeah this is not agricultural, but let's compare anyway) is around 45 cents. A classy dinner at a 5 star hotel fine-dining restaurant is around 20-30 dollars per head. You get the picture...
            Ok, so everything is a tad bit cheaper than here (though I couldn't even start to guess what a chicken egg costs, or other agricultural products!), but not by that much.
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          • Profile picture of the author paulie888
            Originally Posted by jglopez View Post

            I'm from the Philippines. We're not actually the country with the lowest cost of living. I think Vietnam's minimum wage is like 25 cents (US cents) per day, but I'm not sure.

            Normal living expenses - we can probably compare using agricultural products. A medium-sized chicken egg here is around 10 cents. A can of coke (yeah this is not agricultural, but let's compare anyway) is around 45 cents. A classy dinner at a 5 star hotel fine-dining restaurant is around 20-30 dollars per head. You get the picture...
            Well, it seems like many of the prices you quoted are pretty comparable - and some items are even cheaper here in the US. Last time I checked, large chicken eggs here (the US) cost around 10 (US) cents a piece (and even less if you buy in bulk), and a 6-pack of Coke cans costs around $2.00 (so around 33 cents per can). While a 5-star fine-dining establishment meal would cost significantly more than $20-$30, you could certainly eat in a pretty nice restaurant and have some pretty decent (and fairly bounteous) food for $20-$30 in many cities in the US.
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  • Profile picture of the author affilorama-portal
    Where the cost of living is lower, you can be sure that the standard of living is lower as well. And that would mean lower standards of health care and social services, among other things.

    "You get what you pay for" is usually true with articles (and everything else, for that matter). You cannot really expect to get high quality articles or really-talented writers if the pay rate you offer is too low. In cases where you do get high quality for extremely low rates, I am pretty sure that there's a sweatshop being operated somewhere.

    I have also seen on oDesk what JonWebContent saw on Elance, and it's really sad, especially now that google has become more strict on content quality. The low-rate articles may turn out to be the bane of the websites they are published on.
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    • Profile picture of the author paulie888
      Originally Posted by affilorama-portal View Post

      Where the cost of living is lower, you can be sure that the standard of living is lower as well. And that would mean lower standards of health care and social services, among other things.

      "You get what you pay for" is usually true with articles (and everything else, for that matter). You cannot really expect to get high quality articles or really-talented writers if the pay rate you offer is too low. In cases where you do get high quality for extremely low rates, I am pretty sure that there's a sweatshop being operated somewhere.

      I have also seen on oDesk what JonWebContent saw on Elance, and it's really sad, especially now that google has become more strict on content quality. The low-rate articles may turn out to be the bane of the websites they are published on.
      Exactly, now that Google is becoming more strict about content quality, I think website/blog creators need to pay more attention to the quality of content on their sites. They need to get out of the mindset of prioritizing quantity over quality, because that particular strategy may not work so well anymore in the near future.

      Paul
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