Why Elance is an Industry Necessity (Despite those Fees)
Every now and then someone asks me where I find my work. I usually tell them “Elance” even though I actually get about 75% of my own work from repeat clients at this point. But my partner gets most of his work through Elance and if I’m out of work for any reason I start bidding too.
So, what is it about Elance that makes me willing to pay $40 a month and almost 10% in project transaction fees (that’s more than sales tax almost everywhere)? It’s a necessatiy. No matter how you look at it, if you’re a freelance writer who makes their money on the Internet, you need this website to survive. You might go three or four weeks without using it at a time, but when you need it, you really need it.
The nature of writing freelance (or programming, designing, or translating for Elance’s many other users) is that you never know for sure that the next month is going to bring in enough work to pay your bills. You could line up more work for the next six weeks than you’ve ever seen in your life and you could still end up broke a month or two later. It’s just how the job works – you never really get to relax. So, having a profile on a website where you’re trusted, respected, and have plenty of experience is an absolute must. Think of it like your safety net – you hope you never need it, but you damn well better make sure it’s there.
And while there are other websites out there that offer services very similar to what Elance provides, none of them do it quite so well. In any given week, the Writing and Translation section alone will have more than 8,000 unique jobs. That’s a huge volume of content. If you have a good profile and bid realistically, you can usually expect to land around 15% of your bids – you’re going to get work. If you just sit back and wait for repeat clients, craigslist ads, and poorly posted projects to get back to you from the other websites, you might be so lucky to get enough work to pay your bills.
It’s expensive, it’s a bit confusing (they redesign that site every other month it seems) and it can be incredibly frustrating to outlast the underbids from overseas or the project listers who think Elance is a place to get where they can get $1 articles, but the site will keep you afloat when you need it. If nothing else, it’s just nice to have a security blanket of sorts to keep you semi-comfortable with your work because there’s nothing more frustrating than constantly having to worry if you’ll be able to pay your bills or not.



