Battle of the Freelance Sites

Sun, June 6 2010

A couple months ago, I hopped back on the freelance sites Elancer and Freelancer.com to look for work. Work, I found but not without some thought provoking experiences.

I prefer Elance by far. The site is better designed on the whole; it looks more professional. I was able to easily browse for projects when I wanted. The only thing I didn’t like is that free accounts only get so many credits, which you can use to bid on the work projects. I believe I got 10 credits a month so I had to make sure I was bidding on the 10 most profitable/enjoyable/realistic projects for myself. That is definitely limiting and some projects can even cost more than one credit.

Freelancer (formerly Get a Freelancer) has a much higher limit. Mine was something like 50 so I was putting in quite a few more bids. Freelancer was also easy to search. I liked their keyword suggestions, something that Elance does not have. If you’re looking for article work, like I was, you can easily click “articles” or “article” from the list and see applicable topics. Both sites group work by category as well. Freelancer’s project list is a little messier, design-wise. While both allow you to view extra details about the projects, Elance has a “watch list” where you can save things that you might be considering but arent’ so sure about.

I also have to say that the quality of work on Freelancer isn’t as desirable for a couple reasons. There’s a lot of reselling. There’s also a lot of people looking to get you to do ridiculous amounts of bulk work. Many of the sellers do not have a strong grasp of English and it’s obvious that some sellers have multiple accounts and/or are posting similar projects over and over. It’s quite confusing but even after you get your head around it, you’ll see the going rates on Freelancer are, quite honestly, ridiculously lower than those on Elance. I’ve noticed some of the same projects being posted on both sites. While I typically ask for $5 per 500 word article and that has been acceptable on Elance, some sellers on Freelancer ask for $.25 per same 500 word article. Um, what? I think not.

The attitudes of sellers on Freelancer are frustrating as well. There’s a lot of “This is how much I’m going to pay and you’re an idiot if you bid over it” kind of thing, as if buyers are wasting their precious time. Well, I kind of feel like these unreasonable offers are wasting my time when I have to stop to read whether it’s work applying for or not. But a lot of people do apply for these projects so I think Freelancer may cater more to people who do not fluently speak/type English or cannot find work on Elance.

These attitudes spill over into many communications. I find my conversations have generally been terse, unhelpful and sellers are unrealistically pushy. How soon do you think I’m going to complete an article if you’re paying me .0005 cents per word?

It’s easy enough to big for articles on either site. Elance has a slightly more efficiently system. You can bid, send a message and upload attachments of previous work on one page. Freelancer allows you to bid and send a message but you have to use the inbox system for sending attachments. I’d think that would become quite confusing for sellers. The inbox is confusing enough for me. It’s really impaired. You can’t even delete messages. Messages are simply there forever.

That’s also the case for projects. Whether I bid and win, the project is canceled or I lose, all my bids stay in my list forever. There’s no reason for bids I didn’t win to remain in that list and once I finish a project, I want the ability to close/archive it. If I want to access it for reference or something, that’s great but I like being able to differentiate between other projects.

Elance really has a leg up on Freelancer when it comes to project management, though. You can set milestones, send status reports and each project has a message board for buyers and sellers to communicate. Elance also lets you do projects that are based on hourly rates and you can manage that on site, too. Each project has its own “work room” so you can easily do this all in one place.

Freelancer is just much more messy. Maybe that’s why so many sellers take their business off site. The problem is, the fees are automatically (10% for free members whereas Elance will take 6% maximum) taken out of any project you accept but if something happens like, say.. you accept a bid but the seller winds up inviting you to some completely different site and you don’t want to do that but the account is obviously abandoned, you’ve paid for a project you won’t be able to do. Yea, that totally happened to me. Plus, doing things off site seems a bit.. not exactly legit to me and I don’t like it much. Unfortunately, Freelancer has a whole lot more underhandedness and sneakyness going on.

I’ve completed some projects where the seller paid through Paypal. This is interesting because, ultimately, Freelancer will send your money to PayPal but you need to have accumulated at least $30 and pay a $1 fee for withdrawing. I certainly don’t mind bypassing these steps but this method keeps the projects open forever so you can’t leave feedback. Therefore, feedback isn’t really important on Freelancer. Remember when I said it’s obvious some people have multiple accounts to get more action? On the contrary, feedback and history is much more important on Elancer and you can feel a little better about the people you work with. At least, I did.

Elance also pays through Paypal (or by check or several other methods) and there is a minimum of $35, I believe with a 2.75% fee. Depending upon how much you withdraw, it is almost always a better deal than Freelancer’s PayPal option.

Both sites have options where you can increase your number of bids and decrease money withdrawal fees for a small price. I did this once with Freelancer, over a year ago, but I’m not sure it’s worth it unless you’re really consistent with your work.

It’s important to remember, however, that there is all sorts of work to be found. I have only written articles. You might be a programmer or data entry person and your experience may vary greatly depending upon your expertise.