Okay, I admit it, I’m a message board junkie.
I have far too many accounts on far too many message boards and if I don’t watch it they can siphon weeks away from my time. This can be really bad when I’ve got a deadline.
Anyway, the other day I was on the oDesk Community forum and reading the posts when I saw yet another of those wonderful posts that bash oDesk for “undervaluing” freelancers and forcing people to vastly reduce their hourly rates to try and compete. These people then follow up in the glorious tradition of medieval guilds and modern socialists to suggest either a minimum wage or the expulsion of “those cheap foreign workers.”
They’re missing the point.
ODesk is an expression of the free market. In a free market people will always pay as little as they can get away with, but they won’t pay for someone who won’t do the job more than once. If you’re cheap and bad, you get one job at most and then the bad feedback keeps you from getting more work. If you’re cheap and good, you build a reputation and then you can start charging more.
Lots of providers from “those foreign countries” charge high rates. They do good work and they get paid for it. They also have a good reputation with lots of positive feedback.
A free market can raise your rates too– if everyone wants you then you can charge more and still have people fighting over your time.
It’s all about Reputation.
The thing is, reputations aren’t just handed out, they have to be earned. Earning a reputation takes time and work. It means getting those first few jobs and then working your butt off to make sure your clients want to hire you for the next one. It’s not resting on your laurels; and it’s not letting your ego do the talking.
There’s a saying: “He talks a good fight.”
Think about that; we’ll get back to it.
Back to the Message Board.
Remember those people we were talking about earlier, the ones on the oDesk Community Message Board? Think about their reputations. If they’re lucky, they don’t have reputations; if they aren’t they’ve got bad ones.
Most of these people have come on the site expecting that everyone will be over-awed by the sheer glory of their presence and pay them vast sums of money for simple tasks just because they say they have great qualifications. Then they get upset when nobody does.
The problem is that when you’re competing on a site like oDesk, what others say about you is much more impressive than what you say about yourself. Anyone can talk about themselves, the hard part is getting others to talk about you. If you’re just playing yourself up, you’re talking a good fight. If others do it, that’s the real thing. You need the real thing to succeed.
Another quality these people tend to share, as well as overweening pride is a lack of patience. They usually hit the boards within a week of joining the site and start ranting about how little everyone makes.
What they miss, is that anyone who comes to oDesk with a high rate has three options:
1) Lower their rate and work their way back up until they have the reputation to command the rate they want to earn.
2) Stick it out at the current rate until they can convince a buyer they really are worth that much and then wow the pants off them so their feedback brings in the jobs they want.
3) Leave and go elsewhere if you feel oDesk isn’t for you.
The problem is that if you go on the boards and start ranting, you’re likely to cut off every option except option three. The truth is oDesk may not be for you. It’s not for everyone, and that’s fine because the world would be stale if it was.
If that’s the case the thing you should do is just pack up and leave. Don’t go on a rant and make needless enemies. Some people use the same names on multiple sites and you may find the enemy you make on one site follows you to another.
It’s not worth it.
Have a great week, and as always, if you’ve got anything you want to add please use the comment box at the bottom. We’re always looking for your feedback.
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Dave, you are sooooo right! I did just what you mentioned. I started cheap and did a decent job, and now I have more work than I can handle at a higher rate.
I wanted to add that there is one other third party commentator on offer. oDesk.
By taking and passing tests on oDesk, you get an impartial commentary on what skills you actually possess. Not as good as feedback, but for a newbie, better than self rating. Everyone seems to self rate their English at 5 stars. For some reason they don’t take the tests to prove it. Makes a buyer wonder…
I had to start at the bottom myself, and it worked wonders for me. Hard work means a lot to a buyer, so if you’re willing to start from the ground and work up, you can demand insane rates.
Thanks for an unbiased look. As you’re probably aware these folks who show up for 3-4 hours and decide that oDesk is a get rich scheme that they haven’t figured out drive me crazy (you’ll see my posts on almost all of them).
They show up and post for a few jobs and get ticked off because they’re not getting $50 an hour or more. What’s worse is they feel they’re owed this without having any reputation on oDesk nor have they taken tests (and if they have and they’re lucky they have ALMOST come in near the middle or bottom of the scoring charts.
Thanks again for being objective about this.
If I came across as unbiased, I don’t know that I got my point across as I’m actually pretty biased. I really find it offensive when people come to a site and start ripping things to pieces without taking the time to figure out what’s going on.
No freelance site is perfect, but they aren’t scams either.
I have another point, but I think it deserves a whole post so I’m going to work on that.