Elance Critique

Written by Jon Kew Thursday, 28 July 2011 07:30

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 independent contractors from around the globe in categories like writing, programming, graphic design, and administrative assistance. If you're in the marketplace for a contractor to help with the creation of material for your next design, it's fundamental to know if Elance is suitable for you and your business (or not).

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 independent contractors from around the globe in categories like writing, programming, graphic design, and administrative assistance. If you're in the marketplace for a contractor to help with the creation of material for your next design, it's fundamental to know if Elance is suitable for you and your business (or not).

Elance helps businesses hire and administer 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 online 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 faster 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 site, 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 website, 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. As the majority of Elance review writers will point out, the site is eager for you to sign-up as quickly as possible.

Setting up a project requires minimum work, though I would suggest that you take a few minutes to review the options available for any given project. You want to be thorough in outlining your needs so you don't get inundated with bids from low quality contractors. This is, sorry to say, the one weakness of a site like Elance (if not Elance in particular). Anybody can be an Elance member if they pay their monthly service fee, and they can then bid on your project.

It then becomes up to you to winnow down the field. You will need to review samples, ask for interviews, and setup milestones that make certain you get the quality you're seeking.

The Providers

When you need to find a quality provider, the majority of Elance review writers note that Elance has long been in the middle ground due to the sheer mass of providers here. But, the old maxim of "you get what you pay for" nearly always applies in this case. If you want low price, high quality work, it will be hard to find quality providers. Nonetheless, if you accept that you will need to pay more than the basic minimum, you will be able to track down the top level providers using the scoring process used on Elance, based on Client feed-back. They have ratings for each type of project, total earnings, repeat clients, and an overall 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 efficient 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 practically instant (once your payment source is confirmed). The workroom has undergone recent upgrades to provide the same hour tracking and screenshot tools as 'Odesk', although they do still lag 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 frequent upgrading and testing. Every month or two you can expect modifications to the way Elance functions, sometimes in small ways and sometimes with a complete redevelopment which leaves you mixed-up and grasping for options. Documentation is limited and customer service is sometimes 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 great network of projects, more than any other site in its class. As a buyer, you pay no fees and can have access to providers almost right away 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 sure where the bids are coming from, a major problem in certain categories, like Writing and Translation.

Overall, Elance is a helpful tool that can help you shrink your work load significantly. Don't look for it doing all the heavy lifting for you though. Interview your prospects, study their work, and liberally use the feedback tools to land solid contractors that you can count on for future projects.