Elance is kind of disgusting ...

Based on your last sentence you seem to have pretty much figured out the answer to your own questions. Yes, there are tons of crappy writers and some decent but clueless ones who dive on these low paying jobs, and yes, it is annoying to those of us why want to make a living doing this. And yes, elance is kind of disgusging. There are people out there who realize that they're probably going to get what they pay for if they pay crap for writers (or other craftspeople - web site designers have this problem a lot, too). They're out there, but they aren't easy to find.

And the ones who don't get any takers on Elance (or don't know that Elance exists) post for jobs on Craigslist.

I've had some good trade and manufacturing freelance gigs off Craigslist, but the writing section is often scary bad. This last week the local board had:

A person who lamented that he couldn't sell poetry without paying someone. (I sent him here.)

A zine asking for 150-word flash fiction at really low prices.

Three writers wanting professional ghostwriting services for pro-bono.

About ten SEO and web-marketing jobs at various skill levels, all for relatively low rates.

Not to mention the fact that Elance takes a cut out of whatever the contractor receives. And their rules stipulate that even if you develop an ongoing business relationship with a client you find on their site, you have to continue to give them a percentage for (last time I checked) one year.

Truthfully, though, I found that Elance has the higher-quality writing jobs than most other websites. (Odesk, Freelancer and Guru.com are all horrible compared. The percentage of jobs that suck there is far higher)

I will agree that most of the jobs on this site are junk, but I find that the percentage and the quality is still better than most websites.

But that's just my own experience.

I stopped going to elance and similar sites for this very reason. Smarmy. I remember working for 4 cents a word as a freelancer back in the day. When someone wants you to crank out 7 different articles about how to coil up a garden hose, and pay you $2 for all of it, AND requires that you spend 6 hours a day promoting your "article" to friends/family to drum up activity . . . well . . . it's not a job, it's a joke.

CrastersBabies said:

I stopped going to elance and similar sites for this very reason. Smarmy. I remember working for 4 cents a word as a freelancer back in the day. When someone wants you to crank out 7 different articles about how to coil up a garden hose, and pay you $2 for all of it, AND requires that you spend 6 hours a day promoting your "article" to friends/family to drum up activity . . . well . . . it's not a job, it's a joke.

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This.

I applied and was "accepted" to create content for Demand Studios. I claimed a subject to write a short article about, wrote according to their rubrics and received a request for edits back. I think the pay was $7 for the completed article. And they wanted me to supply pictures from their picture gallery to go with it. When I took into account the amount of time I'd already spent working on the first draft, I laughed and let my article expire.

I'd rather write for free than create content for pennies an hour.

I had the same problem and I gave up on these bidding sites because of it. Maybe to a very poor person in India(or wherever), 2$ for a series of 1,000 word articles is worth it, but I just can't compete with that.

Ah, the beauty of those 2$ freelance jobs. Been there done that. Charged 4 cents a word, charged 2 cents a word, charged 1 cent a word. Typical income for a writer here in Latin America. It kinda hurts to see that I was part of it, but I learned.

And yes, it is disgusting.

Well what are you guys doing instead? Where can one find jobs if not these sites? (I'm still new at this)

you can get higher paying stuff off elance, but these jobs are geared for non-north american writers. I've posted stuff on there and paid 15 -25 an article when I wanted a north american for stuff I expected real people to actually read.

For grammatically correct gobbledy gock for seo purposes you get the lowest cost you can get. High quality gobbledy is about a penny a word. You wouldn't expect to be competitive making injection molded plastics toys in boston over somewhere in china would you?

If you are trying to make it as a writer these low paying elance jobs aren't the way to do it unless you're looking for good feedback for higher paying jobs or need a real subject for practice.

GiddyUpGo said:

I think I might just be venting with this post. I've found a couple of jobs on Elance and am just wrapping up a ghostwriting gig for a blogger. I'm not getting paid a ton--just $35 a post--but I think it's decent enough money that I don't feel like I'm throwing my time away. Plus it's a subject I'm very interested in and I'm learning a lot from doing the work.

But I don't think this is the norm for Elance (I haven't been using it very long). I've been turned down for many jobs based on "bid too high," and most of those bids weren't even that high.

Worse, many of the jobs I've seen sound downright exploitative. "Write 30 original crockpot recipes." Budget: $36. "Experienced writer to write a 20,000 word ebook." Budget: $25. Seriously? Do you think they get any takers? And it's really painfully obvious what they're doing with this stuff, they want to pay good writers crap money to write an entire book/cookbook for them, which they then plan to turn around and make a bunch of money off of. Now let's hope this jerks are too dumb to actually know how to market their projects but still, I can't believe any writer worth his/her salt would be desperate enough to do that much work for so little money.

So is it mostly bad writers who take them up on this stuff, or are do the good writers have a hand in it too? Because I think that frankly, it just devalues the whole profession. No wonder so few people can afford to be full time writers. There's too many publishers out there who want to pay pennies for stuff that should be worth dollars, and too many writers out there who are willing to settle for that.

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This is one of the reason's I stay away from that.
Once a market is flooded, the lowest common denominator will undercut the rest. It's a 'rule' with things of this nature alas.

Copy-writing is a better paying option I think.

Please don't tagged this as necroposting. But just wanted to say to this topic "Elance is kind of disgusting...", that it's the clients who posted those kind of jobs that are disgusting and not Elance... just saying.

Wow I just had a look at that place and the first "job" I saw was $1.50 per 500 words.Wtf?

Welcome to the wonderful world of globalization. If anyone else in the entire world is willing to take a smaller fee, then you lose the bid. Your qualifications and experience don't matter.

It's not just writing, either.

I am reading this and now wondering how anybody makes money if they are not tied to a paying website?

Russell Secord said:

Welcome to the wonderful world of globalization. If anyone else in the entire world is willing to take a smaller fee, then you lose the bid. Your qualifications and experience don't matter.

It's not just writing, either.

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Very true its not just writing.

You get what you entitle yourself to, truthfully. I spend a lot of time marketing myself and targeting the right clients on Elance. I just finished a $2000 project and I'm beginning a $3000 project now. Both about 2 weeks of work, so I'm making more than enough to support myself this month and pay the bills. It's easy to get frustrated by the low bidders, but there are clients who value quality and are willing to pay market prices for it. You just have to find them.

My problem with Elance is that regardless of how much a project there pays, I can make considerably ore doing that same project without using Elance. No one puts a project on Elance because they want to be generous.

Sturgeon's Law applies, I think.

It's several different marketplaces happening at once, I think. It's a bazaar where you've got stalls selling cheap junk and stalls selling quality luxury goods sitting right next to each other. Some of the customers are looking for one, some for the other, some for something in between. There's something for everyone, which means that whoever you are, there's a lot that's not for you.

(It's worth noting that Elance penalizes the freelancer ranking of freelancers who continuously bid under budget. After all, since they take a percentage of the fee, it's much better for them if Elance is a marketplace for quality work and clients who are willing to pay for it.)

Sparklederp said:

You get what you entitle yourself to, truthfully. I spend a lot of time marketing myself and targeting the right clients on Elance. I just finished a $2000 project and I'm beginning a $3000 project now. Both about 2 weeks of work, so I'm making more than enough to support myself this month and pay the bills. It's easy to get frustrated by the low bidders, but there are clients who value quality and are willing to pay market prices for it. You just have to find them.

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This. I don't use Elance, started my freelance career long before its inception. Even then, people tried to--and sometimes did--cheat me. I agreed to write press releases and get paid only when the company received media coverage... and then they refused to pay me because it was only a short article in a local paper and not major coverage. Another company refused to pay me because he didn't like the coverage he received as a result of my press release. Crazy.

These things don't happen any more. I learned. And I continue to learn. I also invest:

30-50% of my work week in building my personal brand, my business network (your network is your most valuable asset as a business person), and my marketing materials. Another 30% in client sessions. And the remainder actually writing. I'm estimating very roughly. And I left out the 20% I spend on professional development--meeting with business mentors, reading blogs and books on my craft and on business, etc. Yes, you're right. I spend a small fraction of my time actually writing for clients. I can afford that because:

I rarely lift a pen for less than $1800, unless it's a reliable, regular customer (who still pay market prices, just that I'm willing to take on smaller projects for clients whose business I've already done the groundwork for). I work on a flat-fee basis only, based on a multiplier of $150 an hour times the usual amount of time for that content package. Periodically I raise my multiplier to see if I get resistance, and so far the smart, forward-thinking companies have been happy to keep paying the higher prices.

They pay it because they know they're going to get expertise like they won't find on Elance (or at least, not easily--I'm sure there are some great freelancers on there, but you have to slog through a lot of bad to find the good--and then you're going to pay... about $150 an hour). They know it's going to be easy for them, that I'm going to make good use of their time when we're together, that I'm going to manage the project effectively and efficiently, and that the end product is going to return on their investment. I know exactly what my market wants, not just as a writer but as a business partner, because I've studied it.

I've had prospects say, with hopeful trepidation, "Are you willing to take me on as a client, then?"

I'm not in a tier one city. If I were in New York I would charge twice that for a start, and I'd probably have fiercer competition at the same level, too.

Anybody can do this, but you have to build it. When I started, I was happy to get $50 for an article or a press release. I wouldn't dream of accepting a fee like that now. But you have to hustle. I work 60+ hour weeks, even now, and sometimes more. I'm up at 5am and in bed... well, about now. Midnight or so. I love it--I freakin love it--but it's not for wusses.

Same thing on Elance, I suspect. If you want to use the platform, figure out how to find the quality clients, spend the time building your brand, learning your craft (I don't just mean writing--I mean writing the kind of copy that sells, and pitching it so that your writing of it sells, too), targeting the right markets. Or work locally and meet people over coffee. Take advice from any business owner who will meet with you (start with cold calling, it's what I did, and gradually you won't have to any more). Read business books. Marketing books. Making-money-as-a-freelancer books. Write for local publications, especially business publications, even if they're paying pennies--your byline and the business contacts you'll make early on will be invaluable if you make good use of them. Later, you'll drop the low-paying pubs.

Anyway. I sympathize, I really do. I used to get scared when I told a client what I would charge for blogging, knowing full well they could go get blog entries for $25-50 a pop somewhere else. And I'd cringe when they asked me if my price was reasonable. I used to hate the low-ballers.

What I've learned is that if you're good, and you're willing to learn, and work hard, you don't have to worry about the cheapos. There will always be people willing to pay top dollar under the right conditions. And savvy business owners are always willing to pay high dollar when they know it's a good investment.

Figure out how to be that good investment. See, simple.

P.S. I'm always happy to chat privately/email with freelancers looking to up their game. No charge. Just a friendly offer.

Filigree said:

And the ones who don't get any takers on Elance (or don't know that Elance exists) post for jobs on Craigslist.

I've had some good trade and manufacturing freelance gigs off Craigslist, but the writing section is often scary bad. This last week the local board had:

A person who lamented that he couldn't sell poetry without paying someone. (I sent him here.)

A zine asking for 150-word flash fiction at really low prices.

Three writers wanting professional ghostwriting services for pro-bono.

About ten SEO and web-marketing jobs at various skill levels, all for relatively low rates.

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I found those jobs ads weren't even worth the time spent reading through them. As the poster above me said, you are far better off blogging, positioning yourself as an expert in something, building your brand and finding contacts within your own city and going from there.

Unfortunately, even going that route there are people who will do work for free or next-to-nothing while building their 'brand' but ultimately I think that's not the route to go - you're setting the bar too low for yourself as well and attracting the wrong clients.

I'd do this if I wanted to focus on something other than my own creative projects.