Try this instead: The time you would spend hunting through job listings WORTH applying to, spend that time hunting down 10 contacts a day (a simple web search is all it takes), crafting a short email to them with a link to your online portfolio (whether it be writing, designing, etc.) and watch the results. Do this for a month and I practically guarantee that you will start landing clients — at rates you set.

I’ve been a freelance writer since 1993 and used a job site exactly once — way back in the 90s. I got so frustrated crafting the proposal and trying to follow their guidelines that I never did it again.

When I started SEO writing about a year ago, I sent out 12 emails — and in less than an hour, I got my first bite. Within 24 hours, I had landed my first client and within a month, I made over $4,000. I have never, ever spent any money on marketing — and I have never used a bid-for-work job site to find clients. I now have writers working for me I’m so busy.

The lesson: when you hunt for clients, you set the rate — and a host of other parameters. You become the desired, the wanted, the professional — not some desperate freelancer willing to work for peanuts.

Just my (experienced) take,
Yuwanda

Apparently, it is necesary to also pay to use the website to find work. I still haven’t really figured out what my $25 is being used against, but it seemed like I had to pay it to be involved. The site keeps track of number of bids, and you seem to run out of bids. So it kind of counts against you, in that you are charged for making a bid, but may not get the work. And, with all the lower paid writers that seem to accept such low pay, it isn’t really a good place for a decent writer to get good work that pays well enough to be worthwhile.

Much of the time, the bids are hidden, so you don’t even know what you’re bidding against, unlike a site like eBay, where most of the time it is disclosed where you stand. I found this a bit alarming, and much more to the advantage of the client. Being held in the dark like that doesn’t give much incentive to bid on a project, so I did not bid on any of those for that reason. Besides, I felt that it showed a sort of bad faith in non-disclosure by the client.

I also noticed that some of the clients’ projects nearly screamed that they would be “checking the work with software” - and that any work that didn’t pass muster, would be rejected. I did not at the time, understand about most of this software or how it exactly works.

I decided to search through and see if I could find any assignments that would be worthwhile. After finding a job that required 7 articles to be written, from around 350-500 word length, for $250, I decided to bid for it and was accepted.

I submitted my first piece and it was very well received. The requestor continued to encourage all of the content I submitted. I did general web research to gather data, and then wrote pieces based upon a trip I’d taken to the region that involved the topic, in addition to some magazines and books I had read that gave me some background materlal.

After about a week went by, I had spent a substantial amount of time writing the content and produced the last article. It was at that time, that the client decided to inform me that the articles could not be used, because a software program had found “duplicate” material. I was flabbergasted. The topic was one that would be all over the Internet; there is nothing knew about the topic. So the fact that some words would appear elsewhere is simply unavoidable. I then found, that the client had actually posted one of the pieces, word for word, on another website (independent of the one it was intended for), with the client’s byline!

When I confronted the client about it, she insisted that she had done that before running the software on it. She claimed that she had not intended to run the software, however, decided to do it because during her research, she found duplicate content.

I had never agreed that she could take my work and put her name to it on another site. The agreement was that I was providing content for her website, not someone else’s. She kept insisting that she had to right to use the content that I had provided in any way she saw fit, and that Internet work was not the same as publishing.

Of course, I indicated that she should have been upfront about how she planned to use the content and that she should have indicated that there was a problem with the content well before the 7th and final piece was submitted. I also requested that she at least pay 1/2 of the agreed upon rate, since she had failed to disclose her intentions and that there was a problem early on, so that I could cease doing the work.

She agreed to pay for the article that she used, and then took it off of that website, but refused to pay for the other 6 articles that I had provided. I intend to check periodically, to see if she uses any of that content, but other than that, I have abandoned the situation as a hard lesson learned.

The site is not easy to navigate, and does not seem to keep track of assignments. I am very web-savvy, so was most disappointed in this.

I decided not to protest through GetAFreelancer — I just don’t want to waste any more of my time. Not knowing the ins and outs of all of the software that is being used to determine original content, how the formulas are used, etc., I decided it was not in my best interests to argue about it.

I am reluctant to pass judgment on GetAFreelancer over one experience, however, my general opinion is that the work offered is extremely low pay, and that any really good writer should not subject themselves to that level of pay. It’s just insulting. Also, the site is not easy to navigate, does not seem to keep assignments listed — and because of all of those reasons, I will not be using that website again to find work.

GetAFreelancer definitately appears to encourage clients to pay less, which is really bad for good writers. It was a bad experience for me overall, and I will not ever use it in the future.

1. You bid, the guy chooses the $1/hour lowball, gets burned badly, then comes back to you because now he knows how much quality work goes for. This has happened several times and we’ve got some pretty decent work out of it.

2. You bid slightly below your normal rate or bid on a rarer job where there are no takers (we have a wide enough range of experience to accommodate some of the more exotic requests that the Third World won’t touch). The client decides to try you out, discovers that you’re high-quality, and never goes with anyone else. Most clients on these freelancing sites who are serious about getting work done just want someone who can take care of them; they’re willing to pay a higher price if the developer cares about their business and expects a long-term relationship with them. If you show them that you’re such a company, they’ll just give you their next bid request rather than hunting for another provider who may or may not be any good. We got many of our smaller clients this way.

There’s a lot of clients who have been repeatedly hurt on freelance sites by scam-artists and incompetents whose only goal is to finish the project with the minimal amount of work and then run away. But they keep going back to those same sites and trying other providers for their projects because they don’t know where else to go. Find them, get them out of the freelancer hunting business with your initial project, and you’ll have them for life.