Do you use elance or rentacoder?

[nvictor]

I'm about to subscribe to both.
I'm putting my skills to earn extra income. But I've never used something like that before.

Have you?

What are the risks?
Any piece of advice to give?

Thanks

[calluna]

I've used Elance as a writer and editor, not as a coder or technical person, but I imagine the experience is pretty much the same no matter what the category.

My feelings are mixed. One the one hand, I did build my portfolio and made at least a small profit. On the other hand, it's expensive and bidding is time-consuming.

The biggest problem is that the site is geared towards the buyer, not the seller. The "auction" format is designed to drive prices down, and there was almost always someone willing to work for less. There's a lot of foreign competition, especially from India. (It's actually shocking how little people with good credentials and lots of experience were willing to work for.)

Assuming you do have the winning bid, and get the process all the way through to completion, you also have to pay fees to Elance, cutting even deeper into the potential profit margin.

I decided to stop with them when I realized that I was killing myself for a very small amount of money. I have a full-time job and do freelance work on the side, so unless the project really interests me or I'm earning my desired rate of $30+ an hour, it isn't worth it to me.

For me, it was a valuable experience, and I got to do some things I probably would not have otherwise -- for example, copyediting an entire book manuscript and formatting ebooks. But I have been a lot happier, and better paid, pounding the pavement for my own clients.

Calluna

[duhshuh]

I agree with Calluna... Rentacoder, elance, etc do offer opportunity, but you will probably spend a great deal of time bidding, negotiating, and trying to get requirements from buyers. I have done a considerable amount of freelance work and although many of the projects have been interesting, the amount of compensation ($) does not outweigh the amount of time spent on projects. If you are lucky enough to work with a bidder who has done their planning and actually knows what they want this might not be the case. Despite shortcomings, I would recommend you go ahead and give it a go. If nothing else you'll learn something from the experience.

[and]

I've used both as a buyer.... I think it'll be pretty hard to make enough if you are from the USA or wherever else the prices of living is higher. I usually take up people from eastern europe, india or related places to do the work (programming, design). It's pretty secure way of doing business for a buyer, I'm a fan.

[tobyhede]

I've used Rent-A-Coder, it has a pretty strict process to gather requirements and manage the project.

It does tend to be very cheap, so depending on where you live, it may be hard to make a living.

[Dimitry]

So from a buyer perspective, if say I coded 80% of the insfrastructure for the website myself but want the code to be "cleaned up" and enhanced, a few security features put in place and some additional features added, would these two website be the best way for me to go a programmer to work on the website?

Can I find out what the prices are before hand and if it's still to high for me (from the lowest bidder), just walk away without paying and fees?

[tobyhede]

Originally Posted by Dimitry

So from a buyer perspective, if say I coded 80% of the insfrastructure for the website myself but want the code to be "cleaned up" and enhanced, a few security features put in place and some additional features added, would these two website be the best way for me to go a programmer to work on the website?

Can I find out what the prices are before hand and if it's still to high for me (from the lowest bidder), just walk away without paying and fees?

It's really good for that kind-of thing.

Rent-A-Coder let's you set a price before people bid and you are not obliged to select a quote. Once you have accepted a bid, your money is held in escrow until the work is completed.

[alexander.kharlamov]

I tried to use guru.com to find a web designer, and my experience was really poor. I did get a lot of bids for very low money, but the quality of work in their portfolio was very, very poor. And the good ones cost ridiculous amount of money. In the end, I found a great web designer through my personal contacts that cost me a little bit more than guru.com people, but the quality of their work is infinitely better.

[MisterEThoughts]

What other sites, can you offer, in order to get freelance work?
I am a freelance writer part time, and I want to find more things like Leon Basin's Content Producer Page - Associated Content


So, i can get an extra 100 bucks or something a month. Is there other places like this? Thank You!

[norbert]

Originally Posted by MisterEThoughts

What other sites, can you offer, in order to get freelance work?

PajamaNation has just been started and knowing some details about it I'm sure it'll be huge.

[AndrewJ]

I've also used both as a buyer. It must be very competitive because some services can be had for low cost. On the other hand it is often difficult to find a reliable provider to build an ongoing relationship with.

Andrew

[qrlammer]

I remember when I first signed up to elance.com, rentacoder.com and onlinefreelancejob.com
at first it was very hard to win bids, it took me about two or three months to win my first bid. At the end they worth a try, even if you don't get to win any of the bids, you will still be able to learn new stuff and expand your knowledge and thoughts with programming.

[ellie]

I just approached/interviewed someone for the first time on odesk. He seemed really promising, he had good flash skills and feedback was good.
He did contact me after a few days and said he would get back to me with a quote, a few days later and I am still waiting His hourly rate seemed a bit low to me, so I was going to offer him more, but now if he contacts me I think I wont bother going with him as I stated communication and "keeping me in the loop" was really important.

My current flash developer I work with is an ***** so I'm on a quest to find a new one and no I am not paying him peanuts either. I did not find him online though.

I've used freelancer.com a few times, majority of the developers are pretty bad, but the developers with a higher pay rate are not too bad in most cases. You just got to be careful that there not just showing you a fake portfolio.

My HTML/PHP guy though is pretty good but I found him in a forum, where he was just offering advice with programming. That's probably the best way to find a developer is to hang out in forums where developers hang out.
Although, don't hang-out in forums purely related to their field of expertise.

Shoemoney had a a recent article about hiring good developers from forums.

[runningbird]

I tried for months to get awarded writing projects on Elance, and I finally was proposed a cheap rate by a certain buyer. I agreed to it. Then he never sent me anything.

At that point I said screw it. Granted I only had about 5 pieces in my portfolio, and only one was an online article. But my Elance writing test scores I took through them scored top 5-10 percentile. All of the time spent bidding just wasn't worth it. What a waste.

Coding or other work may be entirely different.

[Gaz]

Originally Posted by MisterEThoughts

What other sites, can you offer, in order to get freelance work?
I am a freelance writer part time, and I want to find more things like Leon Basin's Content Producer Page - Associated Content


So, i can get an extra 100 bucks or something a month. Is there other places like this? Thank You!

There are a number. you can try sites like

Associated content (already mentioned in your post, just wanted to put it here for completeness)
Helium
Triond
Content Current
Freelance Writing Blog


Here's a good section on Helium with a number of articles listing paying writing sites
Sites for Freelance Writers

Hope those help

[Gene]

Years ago I used eLance. It was OK but required some perseverance. It gets easier to get work after you have successfully completed some contracts.

[Lawliet]

I've never used either of these, but I have used scriptlance.com. As the others said, competition (especially the aforementioned Indians) does drive the price down, but people seem more concerned with reviews and the experienced ones know to avoid the $5 bids.

Also take into account the value of relationships. MANY a time I've been selected for jobs via the site and then been given many more projects off-site by those people. Consider the cheapo projects introductions/try-outs for bigger things to come.