There are quite a few people in search of a good, honest Elance review, and no small wonder. The website provides the largest assembly of freelancer and freelance contractors from around the world in categories like writing, programming, graphic design, and administrative assistance. If you’re in the market for a contractor to help with the production of content for your next undertaking, it’s important to know if Elance can measure up.
Elance helps businesses to temporarily employ the relevant skill-base and work with them in the cloud. For businesses looking to staff-up a team on an hourly or project basis, Elance offers instant access to qualified professionals who work on-line and provides the tools to hire, view work as it progresses and pay for results.
Elance for Buyers
As a buyer, If you are looking to jump-start a project, broaden your reach or just simply get things done, you will find that Elance is quicker and more cost-effective than job boards, staffing firms and traditional outsourcing. You name it and Elancers will deliver results, often with a flourish: from writing code, crafting a marketing plan, designing your website, managing your day-to-day schedule and a thousand other projects.
The website has been based on feed-back from user experience of the buyer. This means you’ll never spend a dime on the site, other than to the providers you hire. Signing up is also very simple, taking only a few minutes and culminating in the posting of your first project.
Setting up a project requires minimum work, though I suggest that you take a few moments to review the options available for any project. You want to be thorough in outlining your needs so you don’t get inundated with bids from low quality contractors. This is, unfortunately, the one weakness of a website like Elance (if not Elance in particular). Anyone can be an Elance subscriber if they pay their monthly service fee, and they can then tender for your project.
It then becomes up to you to work your way through the returns you receive and select the appropriate one that you will feel comfortable with. You will need to review samples, ask for interviews, and setup milestones that guarantee you get the quality you’re seeking.
The Providers
When you need to get hold of a quality provider, the majority of Elance review writers note that Elance has long been in the middle ground due to the sheer volume of providers here. However, the old maxim of “you get what you pay for” virtually always come into play. If you want low cost, high quality work, it will be hard to find quality providers. Nonetheless, if you are interested in paying a bit more, the top level providers in any category are rated to help you track them down. They have ratings for each type of project, total earnings, repeat clients, and an all-inclusive aggregated score that shows how well regarded they are by other buyers.
If you have skills and talent and are seeking independent work online, Elance offers access to qualified clients, a virtual workplace and guaranteed pay for great work. To help make delivering great results easier for you, Elance offers a suite of tools to help make your work life as smooth as possible.
Workroom Tools
Early Elance review writers highlighted this as its main advantage over the competition (or unique selling point), since Elance was one of the first services to provide escrow services and they work very well. Providers pay the escrow fees out of their earnings and in most cases, it is instant (once your payment source is verified). The workroom has undergone recent upgrades to provide the same hour tracking and screenshot tools as ‘Odesk’, although they do still fall behind on a couple of things, i.e. mobile apps and desktop tracking offered by ‘Odesk’.
Also, Elance’s backend can be a bit confusing with a slew of seemingly overlapping options for payment and invoicing. This is as a result of their regular upgrading and feature testing. Every month or two you can anticipate a change to the way Elance operates, sometimes in small ways and sometimes with a full overhaul which leaves you confused and grasping for options. Documentation is limited and customer service is from time to time difficult to reach in a pinch.
The Bottom Line
As any good Elance review will tell you, there are both good and bad points to make for the use of Elance as your outsourcing tool of choice. On one side, Elance has more providers and a greater network of projects than any other site in its class. As a buyer, you pay no fees and can access providers almost immediately from around the globe. Notwithstanding, the program itself can be dizzying at times and the calibre of the providers is often hard to verify, and there is no way to be certain where the bids are coming from, a major problem in certain categories, like Writing and Translation.
In summary, Elance is a useful tool that can help you cut your work load significantly. Don’t expect it to do all the heavy lifting for you, however. Question your prospects, study their work, and freely use the feedback tools to land solid contractors that you can count on for future projects.
If you require further information on this subject, check out Niche Marketing, or would like to read other reviews by the same author, make sure you take a look at Jon Kews’ website onlinefreelancesupport.com.. This article, Elance Critique is available for free reprint.
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