In general, I would caution any true professional from considering these websites as viable means of earning extra income despite the economic recession. My problem is with most of the employers/buyers on the site. More often than not, you will encounter employers/buyers that will waste your time and, furthermore, do not have realistic expectations given the budget for their projects.

True enough, this happens in everyday business but not in this type of setting. When the government or professional businesses put out an RFP, more often than not, the contract is awarded to someone. In addition, when these entities select a winner, they consider experience, ability, as well as price. We spent 4 months on a few of these freelance marketplace websites. During that period more than 75% of the jobs we placed a bid on were never awarded to anyone. Of the jobs awarded, almost all went to the lowest bidder. Some of them actually went to bidders bidding below the employer’s/buy’s estimated budget range for the project.

In conclusion, recession or not, our company will not be using these sites in the future unless we are asked to by a legitimate employer/buyer.

I have blogged about our experience on our website at
http://blog.calabrix.com/?m=200909 and on about.com at http://freelancewrite.about.com/b/2008/02/06/thoughts-on-elancecom.htm#commentform

Flexible Outsourcing is a viable option for SME, SOHO and Start-up Businesses to stay afloat.

we can provide the quality but were hesitant in starting the business, Thanks again for the post

by the way, i have heard alot negative about the Elance staff management, heard that they dont usually reply to questions asked

The clients at Elance are the worst people to work for, they expect you to underbid your peers and then they become “marketing experts” who think paying chump change allows them to become pure AS#H*LES. Sure if you are just getting started or are willing to dig your dignity out of the SH#T they shovel out then yes Elance will work for you. BUT WARNING WARNING… learn the lesson NEVER WORK FOR AN AS#H*LE. Fire them if you are putting in too much effort for too little payment.

In one of the comments I read that Indian freelancers can afford to undercut as their cost of living is low. That’s not true. I am from India and I often wonder how people can afford to bid for projects on Lme Exchange etc. for as low as $0.80-1.5 per 500 words! Imagine the client’s guts – do they think writers, designers etc. are typists or cartoonists? Even cartoonists are artists in their own right! Despite being in India, my hourly rate is around $10. I would probably be “uaffordable” for most Lime Exchange or Get a Frellancer clients!

I think, if you really want to ‘make it’, you should chip away at the rock, but smartly; and it is bound to give way one day. I just hope that day is not far!!

I think this blog post is just fantastic.

My firm began work on Elance only a couple of months ago and we are already ranked 201 among all other providers.

In our 5 months, we have exactly been through the same things, lowballing, rethinking strategies and we emerged as winners cuz we went for providing quality work, service rather than think of money at the time. We are now 7 employees and its amazing how a simple blog post can describe 5 months of our experiences.

Also I only wish I would have read this 5 months ago, it could have saved so much of our time to progress, well, atleast new Elancers can benefit from this.

- Tejas