All posts in Online Freelancing Sites

Taxes for Elance and Odesk freelancers

Posted by on April 2, 2012

I’ve gotten a lot of my recent work off of Elance and Odesk this year. About $13,000 of my total income is from Elance alone with another $3,000 from Odesk (I also get paid from my apps, but that’s another story). When you have that many clients paying you for projects, tax time can become a rather horrifying ordeal. How do you account for all of those payments? How do you know your numbers are correct? What about the fees the sites take from each transaction? Well, you can breathe a sigh of relief because I’m going to show you a little accounting trick I learned using Numbers on my Mac.

Getting the Elance Data:

We’ll start off with Elance. To get last year’s transaction data, you’ll want to go to Manage –> Transactions.



At the top, Elance will ask you if you want to download your account data. Click on the “click here” link, and you’ll get taken to a page where they’ll ask for a range of months.

The range you want is from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. For 2011, that’s January 2011 to December 2011.



Click download and you’ll get your data in a “.csv” file.

What to do with the Elance .CSV file:

During my first two years of online freelancing, I had no idea what to do with these files. All of the transactions come bundled together, and there was no way I was going to sift through it all by hand. I actually hired an accountant last year, but I don’t want to bother with it this year because it’s pretty easy to do. So let’s open up that .CSV file from Elance!



Mine looks just like the above mess when I’m first starting out. Notice how all of the amounts are mixed in with one another. What’s up with that? At first glance, it seems very difficult to separate all of the payments and fees from one another, but it only takes a little bit of trickery.

Step 1: Click on your table, and then click on the “reorganize” button in the top menu. You’ll get another popup menu that looks like the one below.



Step 2: Choose Column D under “Sort.” Column D corresponds to the payment amount. By sorting this way, you’re separating the payments received from the payments sent.

Step 3: Remove all ACH Payment rows. These don’t correspond to any payments from your clients. They simply denote bank transfers.

Step 4: Remove the plusses from your payments received. This is the only part of the process that’s manual labor. It sucks, and I’m still looking for a way around it. You can’t sum up your payments until you remove these plus signs.

Oh, and you don’t have to remove the minus signs from the Elance fees. You can sum them up as they are. It’ll be a negative number, but you’ll still know how much.

Step 5: Sum up the payments received and Elance fees using the “SUM” function. Pick an empty cell and enter =SUM( . Keep the parentheses open, and Numbers will allow you to select the column to sum up. Make sure you’re summing the payments received and Elance fees separately.

That’s it. This process doesn’t take that long. You can probably do it in less than ten minutes. It certainly beats trying to add up all those payments any other way.

Getting the Odesk data:

To get your yearly Odesk transaction data, you’ll want to go to Wallet –> Transaction History. The transaction history button is a tab located at the top of the page.

You will be presented with a screen that looks like this:


Enter the range from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011. Don’t worry if Odesk changes the range after you’ve typed it in. They’re just trying to line up the range to the weekly payout for time. Only transactions from the year 2011 will appear.

Odesk makes it a lot easier for you to do your taxes. That’s because they never take fees away from their contractors. The client is the one who gets charged all Odesk fees, so you never have to worry about them. To find your total payout for the year, simply scroll all the way to the bottom and use the “Total Credits” number.

The rest of your accounting will probably take a lot longer. At least this part won’t trip you up. If you have any questions for me, I’m happy to answer them in the comments below.

Happy taxes!

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Content Spree launches its freelance writing marketplace

Posted by on March 23, 2012

Around a few months ago, I got an email from Andrew Page of Content Spree, a new freelance writing marketplace that’s gearing itself towards high quality writers and content. Andrew and I spent some time discussing the merits and faults of his competitors: sites like Elance, Odesk, and Vworker. We came to the conclusion that there were too many low quality jobs for writers on those sites. It’s a system that encourages absurdly low prices, and we both agreed that it makes the bidding sites look unprofessional.

Fast forward and Content Spree has just launched a beta version of their site. Right now, they are working on getting out all of the kinks. I decided to ask Andrew a few more clarifying questions about the launch of Content Spree. Here’s what he had to say.

Ted: How long will the Content Spree beta last, and what are Content Spree’s plans for working out the kinks?

Andrew: We don’t have a set date but we certainly don’t want it to last long. At this point we’re fairly bug free and are focusing on making further enhancements to the UI.

Ted: During this process, can anyone sign up for an account? Can anyone post jobs or look for work?

Andrew: Yes, during beta anyone can sign up for an account. However, we are actively monitoring registrants and removing writers and employers that aren’t in compliance with the Content Spree code of conduct. We’re currently building a system that will vet writers. In order to have high paying jobs on the site, we need to ensure that the writers meet a certain standard. We also have a $50 minimum on all job posts, and we are exploring having different minimums for each job category. For example a corporate whitepaper should have a higher minimum than a blog post.



Ted: Who is Content Spree directly marketing itself toward? Can you give me the names of some businesses you’ve contacted directly to advertise your services.


Andrew: There are a couple of markets we’re attacking. We’re marketing directly to creative agencies as well as Content Marketing Managers that work at medium to small corporations.


Ted: Many people on sites like Elance and Odesk feel as though these sites have a bias toward the buyer. One example of this is the ability for buyers to post jobs for free. Many of us feel as though this system encourages abuse and a lack of seriousness on behalf of the buyer. What are some things Content Spree is doing to eliminate this bias or at least add in a different bias to counterbalance the system towards writers?

Andrew: It’s a tough balance, especially with a new site. While there is no financial risk for the buyer, there is the time and effort it takes to post a job. We monitor all jobs, so any jobs that come across as spammy are removed immediately. We also work with the buyer throughout the process to ensure that he or she is actively engaged with the writers and is serious about the project.

Ted: I would imagine it’s incredibly difficult to launch a business like Content Spree. Solvate, a site with a similar aim, recently decided to close its doors. Why does Content Spree have the winning edge to compete, or at least carve a niche for itself, in what appears to be an extremely challenging market? Why should businesses hire high quality freelancers when there are so many people out there willing to work for pennies?

Andrew: Our strategy is to focus on one segment and dominate it. For Content Spree, that segment is writing. We don’t believe that any of the existing marketplaces do a good job of catering to the needs of larger businesses. Corporations have a huge need for content and they’ll pay for quality. We believe that Content Spree is the site that will help facilitate transactions between quality writers and buyers seeking high end writing services.

It certainly looks promising for Content Spree. Having spoken with Andrew several times, I feel that his head is in the right place. He’s equally concerned about the writers and the buyers, something that’s rare in online marketplaces and bidding sites. I’m really happy that he feels so strongly about minimums. It is, in my opinion, the only thing that keeps all of this sane. Allow the buyers to post as many projects as they want, but make sure they at least adhere to the minimums. I feel like that’s a pretty good way to keep the spam out of the system.

Thanks again to Andrew for taking the time to do this interview. If you are interested in hiring a freelance writer, check out Content Spree’s professional writing services. You can even hire me too.

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The Top 10 Mistakes Freelance Writers Make When Beginning A Freelance Business.

Posted by on December 13, 2011

It would be ridiculous of me to say I’m not guilty of any of these. In many ways, what I’m saying here should serve as a warning to everyone. These ten mistakes will set your freelance writing business behind. They will keep you running on the never-ending treadmill to nowhere. It’s one thing to scrape by, and another to grow your business. Don’t do these things, and you’ll avoid the former.

1.) Not getting a byline.

You know all of those ghost writing ebook projects you keep bidding on at Elance? They might be good for you now (they pay the bills), but they’ll come back to bite you in the future. Why? Simply put, you can’t publicly take credit for them. They’re attributed to someone else’s name, so it’s almost as if they flat out don’t exist in your portfolio. You know you did them, but your clients don’t, and that makes it hard for you to advertise yourself to others.

You need to search for opportunities outside of the bidding sites. They’re harder to get, but they’re worth it. You’ll get actual publicity that you can point to, live content that you can show to your prospective clients. It’s incredibly hard to build a portfolio on ghost written projects alone. Give it some hard thought the next time someone pitches one to you.

2.) Not building a website.

When all of your projects go through the bidding sites or Craigslist, you’re allowing those sites to control the conversation. That kind of sucks because I can tell you for a fact that a lot of people go to those sites to get a bargain. You can find good clients there, but the best ones are more likely come to you through your own website.

When you build your own website, you start to grab ahold of the conversation. You appear as an authority figure in your discipline. Add in a nice big portfolio, and clients will start to take you more seriously. Why get paid pennies for work you can’t be proud of when you can become a leader and truly get noticed?

3.) Charging too little.

I once spent nearly a month doing a project that amounted to 500 dollars. I will never ever do that again! Do you want to know what the worst part of it was? It was some stupid ebook project, so I never got a byline. I pretty much gave up a chunk of my life and walked away with nothing to show for it.

Think of it this way. There isn’t a chance in hell that a low-paying project will have any degree of prestige attached to it. Don’t think about how you feel right now. Think about how you’re going to feel in a few years. When all you’ve got in your portfolio are these low-paying article spam jobs, you’ll wish you’d spent your time doing something else.

4.) Burning bridges.

This is a hard one because you sometimes need to burn a bridge that’s genuinely making your life difficult. Just realize that there’s a cost attached to it, and it’s greater than the mere pay you’re getting. You want clients who will refer you to others. You want a badge of pride you can put on your website to show others that you did a great job. If you burn a bridge, you can’t do that anymore. What a bummer.

5.) Not being prolific.

I’ve already got 52 blog posts and counting. I keep adding more and more content to this website because I just have to do it. There was once a study conducted on artists. They found that the artists who made twenty paintings in a very short period of time had a better overall technique than those who focused intently on just one painting.

I think the same thing applies to writing. To get really good at it, you just have to write and write and write. I write at least a thousand words a day, and I think nothing of it. That’s the sort of mindset you need to have to be successful.

6.) Wasting time on uninspiring projects.

Have you ever had a project that just made you yawn the moment you began? That’s a big sign you need to do something else. My worst writing happens when I’m tired and uninspired. My best writing happens when I get the spark of an idea and just run with it.

Don’t do uninspiring projects. You’ll spend all day napping on the sofa, and you’ll have nothing to show for it.

7.) Not killing bad client relationships before they turn into something worse.

Some clients will drive you up the wall with multiple revisions and crazy deadlines. If I ever feel a constant pressure from a client, I think of a way to end the relationship. I want my clients to be critical, of course, but I don’t want them to be so critical that they’re tearing apart everything I write. If they’re that unhappy all the time, they should probably be working with someone else.

Don’t do what I’ve done and continue to work with these people, hoping everything will be fine. It won’t. You’ll just end up miserable when you get a project back and they’re angrier than ever before. These relationships are a cancer. They must die, and it must happen sooner rather than later.

8.) Not taking the occasional break from writing.

I started up an iPhone app development company because I wanted to have an extra source of income that wasn’t based on writing. I couldn’t be happier that I’ve done it. It’s made me more sane overall, and now that I’m back in the swing of things and blogging regularly, I feel a lot more inspired.

Writing is great and everything, but iPhone apps and computer code know no emotion. There are no revisions. They either work or they don’t work. If you get them to work, you win. Simple as that. I need more of that in my life.

9.) Freaking out when you don’t have any work.

Trust me, it’s going to be okay. The clients will come rolling in soon. If you don’t have any work right now, take your time and do something genuinely productive with it. If you sit around and worry about who is going to respond to your bids and emails, you’re wasting time you could be spending on more important things like building your web presence.

The Chinese have a saying. “No man who rises before dawn 365 days a year fails to make his family rich.” Just keep chipping away at this. Eventually you’ll get what you want, and it will happen when you least expect it.

10.) Not using the power of deadlines to work faster.

I am by no means saying you should procrastinate. What I am saying is you need to work somewhat close to your deadlines while spending the rest of your time on marketing yourself. I find that if I begin a project too early, I just end up doing it more slowly. I’d much rather feel the pressure of a looming deadline. It makes my time more productive.

Now there is one case where this doesn’t work to your benefit, and that’s when you’ve got a new client. New clients will want you to correspond with them right away. This is when you should impress them with your speed. Get it done as fast as possible, and there’s a good chance you’ll get more work from that client. If you wait until the last second, you’ll leave a bad impression.

At the end of the day, you have to think of your future self. You don’t want to find yourself looking through all the work you’ve done over the years, only to find out that there isn’t much you’re proud of. This is your career, after all. The projects you’re bidding on might pay the bills today, but what will they do for you tomorrow? You can’t build a career on spammy SEO articles. You need real writing samples. You need to work for companies and clients that matter.

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Elance vs Odesk

Posted by on December 12, 2011

A lot of people ask me what the difference between Elance and Odesk is. After all, the two sites are the largest online freelance marketplaces you’ll find. There are a few others that are worth looking into, like Vworker, but once you get beyond that, the number of listings on the sites drops quite dramatically. As a freelancer, lots of listings are your friend -even if most of them don’t pan out. You don’t want to have to sign up for a bunch of different sites in order to get just a few extra clients.

With this in mind, I’ve decided to do a series on all of the different freelance websites, what’s good about them and what’s not so good about them. All of this is based on my experience working on each site, as well as a bit of research I’ve done on the side. Each site has its own strengths and weaknesses, largely based on the separate visions of their CEOs and management teams. Here’s what I’ve discovered.

What Odesk is trying to be.

In case you haven’t noticed, Odesk is the largest online freelance marketplace. To even say that they are a place for mere “freelancers” alone is a bit of a misnomer because I think they want to break free of that mold. I would say they’re trying to reinvent work as we know it. In the past, we called that freelancing. Perhaps we’ll continue to call it that in the future, but I don’t think the team at Odesk wants it to be limited to that.

Odesk grew to its size because it was the first of the online freelance marketplaces to successfully implement a pay for time worked feature. For many years, that was their unique selling point. Their motto was “an hour worked is an hour paid,” and it contrasted greatly with the fixed price projects you’d see on sites like RentACoder.com (now Vworker) and Elance.

Over the years, both Elance and Vworker built their work-for-time features in order to compete with Odesk. The idea was ripe for the times, but Odesk made sure to take full advantage of it while it was their primary selling point.

The key advantage of a work-for-time scheme is the ability to do virtually what most managers do in the office. They can hire a virtual team to handle whatever tasks they delegate, and they can do it in a secure way. If a manager wants to wean an employee onto the team, he or she can limit the amount of hours that person is allowed to work. Once the employee has demonstrated competency, the manager can increase that person’s hours.

Odesk’s goal is to make it easy to create virtual teams. For the most part, that goal hasn’t changed over the years, and it reflects quite strongly in the types of jobs you’re likely to find on Odesk. In my experience, nearly all of my Odesk jobs have been hourly. I join a team and get paid the hourly rate that I request. I have done a few fixed price jobs on Odesk, but they are few and far between.

The one thing I like about Odesk is that they seem to have built a better referral engine. That is to the say, the clients who are referred to me through Odesk tend to be pretty decent. I sometimes get a few bad eggs, but that’s usually better than searching through a bunch of project listings trying to find what I’m looking for.

By the way, there’s one thing you can do to stop the bad referrals from coming through. Just make your payment terms and minimum project size very clear at the top of your Odesk profile. Mine are in all-caps, and I give a strongly worded rationale for what I charge. If you do the same, you’ll get clients who understand what you expect from them.

The one thing I don’t like about Odesk is searching through the listings. It’s hard to separate the good ones from the bad ones, and once you’ve entered a bid, it takes you right back to page one. I’ve found myself going through numerous pages over and over again just to pick up where I left off. The listing section could use a site redesign for added simplicity.

What Elance is trying to be.

Elance started off as the premier place for online freelancers. They offer an hourly option as well, but it’s not as emphasized as it is on Odesk. The Elance site design evokes a more upper crust sort of feeling. This was more of a selling point in the early days of Elance, but it now appears as though the site wants to grow to be the size of Odesk.

One thing I really used to love about Elance was their enforced minimum project size for a fixed price project. They used to set it at $50, and it served to weed out a lot of bad listings. I also like that, as a freelance writer, Elance acknowledged that there’s a time cost to going after the smaller fish, and we deserve to be compensated for it (o.k. maybe that’s me putting words in their mouths, but it was nice).

Sadly, that $50 minimum is gone. I think it’s largely because Elance wants to expand, and they know they simply need more listings in order to do so. Some people are willing to go after those super small projects too, especially when it’s their first fish. It’s a double edged sword because Elance and Odesk end up annoying the crap out the more experienced freelancers who have a hard time finding what they want in an increasingly crowded sea of projects.

Hopefully, a better referral system will help both Elance and Odesk. I’ve gotten a few good referrals through Elance, but because there are less projects on the site overall, I tend not to get as many. I still find it valuable to go through listings on Elance when I’m running low on work. Elance’s site design is better for this process than Odesk’s site design.

Recently, Elance appears to be making more news on the technological front. They’ve appeared on several news channels to talk about the state of online freelancing (at one point mentioning my friend Ben Gran). Fabio Rosati, their CEO, talked about connecting Elance workers to telepresence robots to do jobs that might only require someone’s presence for a few hours. A person in Illinois could logon to Elance and hop into a robot (just like Avatar) to be the office receptionist. Pretty cool when you think about it.

Elance vs Odesk. Which should you choose?

It ultimately depends on how you prefer to work. If you prefer to clock in and work on an hourly basis, Odesk is the better choice. If you prefer to work more like a freelancer and take some risks on fixed price projects, you’ll find some good ones on Elance. I should also mention that Elance uses escrow, and Odesk currently does not. Escrow protects you from the clients who take a while to pay. They have to fund the project before Elance will allow it to begin.

Over the long run, you should have profiles on all of the freelance sites. Don’t just pick one. I spend more time looking through listings on Elance, but I get a lot of referrals through Odesk. To do well, you need to be everywhere.

I’d like to end by saying your online freelancing career doesn’t stop at Elance and Odesk. There are lot of other opportunities out there, and one of the best ways to get them is to start building your own website (just like this one). When you create content that targets the right keywords for your industry niche, clients will come to you on your terms. This is much better than getting clients through Elance and Odesk because you don’t have to pay any commission. The sale is 100% yours.

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How To Win Your First Project On Elance, Vworker, Or Odesk

Posted by on August 4, 2010

Having a hard time getting that first job on Elance, Vworker, or Odesk? Clients won’t trust you until you’ve built up a job history. You know that once you’ve passed this barrier, it will be much easier for you to get your next client, and then you’ll really start building your business. So how do you do it? Keep on reading because you’re about to find out.

Have A Very Well Written Elance Profile

Your Elance, Odesk, and Vworker profiles are much more important than your Facebook profile. You aren’t just writing something for your friends. You are writing a little advertisement for yourself. Make sure your English is perfect and your wording is as smooth as butter. Be specific about your unique skill set, and never promise to do more than you know you are capable of.

I see a lot of profiles where the freelancer states too many generalities. If you find yourself saying things like, “100% satisfaction and amazing turnaround,” or “the most innovative web designers on the web,” stop yourself. This is a huge turnoff to buyers because they know you are just fishing for whatever phrase sounds nice. Take the time to find very specific strengths that set you apart from everyone else. Your buyers will notice the extra effort.

Bid Competitively (For Now)

The lowest bidder doesn’t always win, but a bid that is lower than average can help to position you as the better choice. Here is something you can try. Go through the buyer’s project history and try to find out what she has paid for something similar to the project currently listed. Instead of bidding the lowest price possible, position your bid slightly lower than the price of the last project.

There is such a thing as bidding too low, and it can actually cost you the job because it makes you look like you don’t understand the scope of the project. I certainly don’t always hire based on price alone. I almost always pick the candidate who grasps the project the best.

Be There For Someone In A Time Of Need

Emergencies happen, and they are the reason companies like Elance, Vworker, and Odesk exist in the first place. If you can find someone in a rough spot who needs your expertise right now, you will be on your way to securing that crucial first project. To narrow down your results, just type “urgent,” or “emergency” into the search bar. There is almost always at least one person in desperate need of your help on any given day.

Realize that I offer this advice with a word of caution. I wouldn’t recommend most of these clients on a longterm basis. Some people genuinely do get into emergency situations, but I’ve often found that most “needed it yesterday” types simply lack good time management skills. Take the project now, but don’t offer to help them when they come back with another “emergency” unless you are getting excellent compensation.

Follow Through With Your Best Work Ever

So you got hired? Excellent. Now get to work right away and impress your client with some real results. Time is ticking. The more time you spend procrastinating, the less excited your client will be when you deliver your work. Keep a sense of urgency and get your work done a few days ahead of the deadline. Stay in close communication in case anything unexpected happens.

Still lacking motivation? Think of it this way. It’s better to have a profile with no job history than to have a profile with one botched job. If you fail now, you basically ruin your chances of ever getting work on any of these sites. I did that with GetAFreelancer.com, and it’s one bridge I’ll never be able to cross again. Don’t close the door to more opportunities just because you want to be lazy!

When All Else Fails, Get A Friend To Hire You

It took me a month and a half to land my first job on Vworker. That’s one month too long if you’re looking to use platforms like Odesk and Vworker to build up your portfolio and launch your online career. It might seem unethical, but it is completely OK to have a friend hire you for your first project.

Just make sure you’re actually doing a project and not simply paying off your friend. I’m sure you can find something that needs to get done. Maybe your friend needs a custom made Twitter account or some help editing a term paper. This practice is completely ethical as long as you are going out and commissioning real work.

My friends still hire me over Elance and Odesk because these sites aren’t just tools for finding work. They’re also great for managing projects and making sure everything gets done according to a set schedule. I see these sites as a software platform and nothing more. Their job is to facilitate the online work process, making it easier for you to manage your work life from home.

Don’t allow the fact that you don’t have an online job history get you down. It’s a lot easier to build an accomplished profile than you might think. With persistence and the desire to create a schedule that allows you to get the most out of life, you can win your first job and launch your freelance career.

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I'm Ted, a snowboarder by day and copywriter by night.

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