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StartI don’t generally post jobs from bidding sites because most I find are kind of low. Many in the FWJ community are members of various bidding sites, however. So I was wondering…
Would you also like to see jobs from bidding sites posted here? Would that make your daily hunt easier?
Discuss…
I agree with you: most of them are “low” indeed… The only decent bidding place I know is Proz.com (for translators mainly); if anyone else knows of a similar portal with similar standards, I would be delighted to read about it.
I don’t think that bidding jobs belong at FWJ. I’ve come to this site for the past year and a half searching for jobs simply because of the high-quality postings. Bidding sites aren’t what I would call high-quality. I think that it would go against what FWJ is all about – and that’s high-quality, good paying leads.
…Just my 2 cents
Wouldn’t help me at all and would only clutter up the postings.
I vote no. Leave those sites off. It’s tough enough w/content mills, or a stray “bum tip” from Craigslist now and again. The bidding sites are not necessarily a valuable source for quality companies and writing jobs. Nor should they be used as an indicator of quality work or qualified applicants.
NO.
Thank you. Good luck today.
Honestly, I’ve used a bidding site once and it was a nightmare. I landed the job at a rate I was happy with. It entailed writing general descriptions on every town in Spain. There are a lot of towns in Spain, so there was plenty to do and the client agreed to my rate of $10 for the 300 word articles which suited me fine for something generic. I used to be a travel agent and got brochures and travel guides from former co-workers making research a breeze.
Started the work and 20 articles into it,the client changed the terms. She decided she wanted each town guide to include the town’s history, best restaurants, sites and travel directions. That was a lot more work, and she wouldn’t agree to a different rate.
Elance decided since the project hadn’t been completed, I could just stop working and not take a hit on my rating and the client would have to relist the project. The articles I’d done, I could try to resell since the client didn’t want them. In the end, I did get paid for the articles I’d done, but I had to fight to get it.
I’ve never touched a bidding site since.
I’m still pretty new, so bidding sites are appealing for their accessibility, but I’m not really a fan. I glance at Elance once or twice a month, but I have only bid on a couple of items (and was too high). It would be a really time-consuming effort for you, Deb, to post from those sites, and based on the comments thus far, not that worth it for us. I appreciate you asking!
I think bidding sites are mostly bad news. It’s also annoying to have to sign up to join a bidding site and then, in the case of some, have to go through a whole process of “tests” or “tutorials” before you can even present your credentials to the client. I wish clients on bidding sites would place their direct contact information in the ads they create so that outside freelancers could contact them as well.
I’ll add my voice to those hoping you’ll skip the bid sites. In concept, they are a good idea, but tend to offer peanuts. Better to concentrate on providing leads to quality freelance openings — and tips on creating a dependable stream of work not requiring blind pitches.
I vote resoundingly NO as well. I use Elance to supplement my income when I am very slow and can’t get “real” jobs that pay a living wage (in the U.S., for those of you who might want to argue the point).
Anne G., I totally sympathize. I have a current client through Elance that didn’t like my first draft and, instead of giving me feedback so I could supply a second draft, gave the project to a different writer and now doesn’t want to pay for my time, research, and writing.
He said my writing had “grammatical errors,” but when I pressed him for examples, he said, “Oh, well I guess they’re really problems with word choice.” That’s like telling an engineer she made structural mistakes in the design of the bridge, when actually she painted it charcoal gray instead of slate gray!
Please, no bidding sites.
Another no vote for including bidding sites. They just encourage clueless employers to go for the lowest rate without considering either the amount of work the job entails or the quality of the writing. Too often the employer doesn’t get the quality they want or the writer doesn’t get the pay they deserve for their craft.
I also vote no. You always provide quality job leads and I’d personally like to see it remain that way.:)
Another “no” vote for the bidding sites. I actually use Elance quite frequently, and I launched my career from there…but I come here looking for other opportunities. The jobs here tend to be better-paying, there’s no third-party (except maybe Paypal) to take a chunk of what you make, and having them listed separately here is a big help as I try to transition away from Elance.
I don’t use bidding sites, so it doesn’t matter to me one way or another. I’ve never been a fan of middle-men…always preferred to go get the work on my own.
I don’t really use this place as a primary source, but rather one of five different sites I browse for jobs that are specifically up my alley. I’ve been being kept extremely busy from my UK-based content mill since January, so I haven’t needed to look for anything. Sometimes I’ll find something that strikes my eye, though, and I’ll apply. So for me, whether or not you include one type of job or another doesn’t really tickle me in any which way.
I vote NO as well to bidding and article mill sites. Keep FWJ top quality, Deb.
I’d say leave it alone
I agree – Leave out the Bidders. I have almost signed up for Elance twice but my better judgement tells me to find my own gigs in a private manner rather than competing with my friends. At least finding a potential job here remains private among us.
I agree with everyone else- I vote no. Too many peanuts!
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Yep – I agree with the others. I despise the job bidding sites.
NO to bidding sites.
And I sympathise with Anne G. and E. Peevie.
I started through elance and one of my earliest clients was well ‘very particular’. The job was posting relevant comments on blogs, he gave the list of blogs, and didn’t really care what you wrote in comments as long as they weren’t offensive or spammy comments. Easy job, don’t you agree?
But this client had a list of rules to follow (3 pages long). Halfway through the project, he decided I wasn’t following one of the rules (I had followed it too but one of his rules was “I don’t listen to explanations”) so I was told that if I agreed to no pay then he would not give a negative review. Also, he used to sell a list of “undependable elancers” on his site, and he threatened to put my name on it.
I agreed, because I was clueless about my options on elance or otherwise. I didn’t even know that there are more places to look for work apart from bidding sites, so I was scared to end my freelance career before it had even taken off.
Bidding sites are just so screwed in favor of the employers and writers usually get a raw deal. Please don’t include them.
I had a a potential client tell me (her potential editor) that she only used elance for her writers. I had never heard of bidding sites and only use reputable writers that I have worked with for ages. I asked why…she responded (and I quote): “I got a 1,000 word article from some guy in India for $25. Talk about a deal!”
At that moment, I knew that the job was not for me.
So: no thank you to posting jobs from bidding sites.
Another NO vote here, too. I really appreciate the leads that you post here–and the judgment that you use when deciding which ones to post. Please please please don’t water down this great site with the bidding site stuff!
I have completed hundreds of projects on the bid boards without any problems, though I do agree that you have to sort through several low-paying jobs to find thhe gems. So, while I appear to be a minority in that I am happy with the bid boards I use (RAC and GAF), I don’t see a benefit to posting leads from the bid boards here. The boards send out emails on a regular basis with available work, so I think those of us who use the boards can easily look through those emails rather than cluttering up your space with jobs that most readers don’t seem to be interested in. Besides, I think you have better things to do with your time. ( : Although, I believe you could possibly generate some extra income if you post the jobs as affiliate links and your readers win bids after being directed to the job through your site (not quite sure how that works). So, it might be a good financial move for you.
I’ve gotten some great ongoing gigs on bid sites, but it seems that even the better ones are being taken over by people in other countries offering to work for next to nothing which usually wins out even if the quality is terrible, so I’m with most of the others and don’t think those bid projects should be listed here.
I use Elance quite a lot and I usually get a pretty decent rate (at least I think so) though it seems to be lower than a lot of you folks are getting–or say you are getting. I stick to bidding on projects that sound reputable and the folks who post them are looking for quality. Some of the projects I’ve “won” have paid 10 cents per word. Most pay around 5. If any of the posters are looking for less, they just don’t choose my bid and I’m happy with that.
Funny story, the second project I “won” on Elance was to write 15 pages of web content which turned out to actually be closer to 30. I bid some ridiculously low rate ($100 i think), spent two weeks busting my behind for peanuts and vowed I would never do that again. Two months after I finished, the fellow who posted that job contacted me outside of Elance and wanted to know if I would work for him in a non-writing capacity (cutting and posting news content to his news ticker–all above board and no plagerism as he signed up to “buy” those new articles from the Kyodo News Service) Sure, I said. I’ve worked for him on and off for six months and the pay rate is insane–it works out to $45 per hour!
However, I don’t think bidding jobs belong here.
So I vote no.
Another thing, Just reading through these folks’ bad experiences with Elance, it sounds like most of them were not very careful when choosing the provider they wanted to work for. You can usually tell from the way the proposal is written whether or not somebody will be Okay to work with or not.
I steer clear from proposals that mention “price will be considered before quality,” proposals by folks who clearly don’t speak english as a natvie language, proposals that includes list of “rules,” or proposals where the poster includes a set price within the project descriptuion (usually well below Elance’s minumum bid of $50 per project.)
I would love to “break away” from Elance but I still haven’t quite figured out how to get clients outside of the bidding site.
Count me as a no.
Another resounding NO vote. I think what separates this board from others is that you weed out leads that are not especially beneficial to the average writer (low pay, term paper mills, “internships”, etc.). I’d put bidding sites in this category and don’t think they fit in here. Anyone that wants to use a bidding site shouldn’t have problems finding one to search for leads on, so I would vote for continuing to leave them out of this community. I’ve never personally used one given the low-ball pay. After reading some of the experiences of others it seems that low pay is just the tip of the iceberg. Sounds like bidding sites really attract employers that don’t especially value their writers and are looking for a lot for a very little. No thanks.
No bidding sites please. This is the place I can count on that doesn’t have those jobs and they never benefit me. I almost feel like their spam their payment is so low.
I see no need to abet a crime. The bidding sites give employers an opportunity to hire someone at a rate that is below the minimum wage in most states.
I would say no, simply because most people willing to use those sites are probably better off just checking the sites themselves rather than checking here.
Just for note, I do use Elance and my experience has been quite positive, I bid my rate (and I almost never the cheapest bid), I check providers out before bidding, and I read the job description thoroughly. I don’t really consider $30-$60 an hour to be a particularly bad rate for a freelancer with less than a year of experience, as well. On an hourly basis, I would make less money actually using my engineering degree.
I think for generic writing assignments, the pay is pretty abysmal most of the time. However, if you have experience in the actual area you are writing about, pay tends to be a lot better unless they are the people looking for hundreds of low quality articles.
Still, I don’t really think it is necessary to post that sort of stuff here. Anyone using those sites can quite easily search the jobs there, so having them here is hardly necessary.
Hi, I have used the bidding site ifreelance.com quite successfully for the past three years. I have managed to land long term clients through the site who pay a decent hourly rate. Yes on ifreelance.com as well you have buyers who want you to work for peanuts but the writer community on that site is quite strong and they vociferously denounce those jobs in the general discussions. However you will be surprised to learn that many of those jobs tend to get bidders from various parts of the US itself not from overseas. I recently bid a $1000 to complete a particular project while some other US based bidders bid as low as $300 to complete the project. The editor who had posted the job in fact posted a follow up post advising bidders to read the requirements before bidding. I won that particular bid but was really surprised at these bidders.