Elance is a total goldmine for writers seeking work, and not only that, but the security of it, plus the way that payments are guaranteed, can’t be beat.
Since I registered (it’s free) with Elance last September, I’ve had steady work, mostly from repeat clients who have ongoing jobs for me.
Elance is a worldwide database of jobs, which is updated continuously. You bid on a job, which includes your proposal, and you’ll get notified by e-mail if the client has selected you.
If the client isn’t sure and wants to know more about you, he can send you an e-mail asking for more information.
You can correspond with clients or prospective clients via your regular e-mail, which goes through Elance to reach the client; the client never knows your personal e-mail; Elance is the middleman for correspondence. Or, you can sign onto Elance and correspond via their “Workroom.”
Once you accept a job, it becomes active in your Workroom. You can correspond back and forth with the client either through the Workroom or by regular e-mail.
Either way, all the correspondence gets contained in the Workroom as a 100 percent accurate documentation of the correspondence.
Through the Workroom you can send completed work as attachments; don’t send via regular e-mail, as it might not be received.
The beauty of Elance is that in order for the job to get initiated, after the client chooses you and you accept, the client must fund an escrow account for the agreed-upon compensation.
Once this is funded, the client cannot get his money back unless he can prove, through Workroom documented correspondence, that you provided poor service.
So if you complete the job to his satisfaction, he has no choice but to then “release” the funds to your Elance account. From there, you can deposit the funds to PayPal or request that Elance send a check.
Suppose the client wants to scam you. Well, he can’t get his money back because it’s in Elance’s escrow fund. If he’s happy with your work, he’s going to release those funds to you.
So if he suddenly doesn’t want to pay and tells Elance you did a crummy job-all Elance needs to do is read his praises of you in the Workroom correspondence. This Elance system guarantees you’ll get paid.
The client never knows your e-mail unless you give it out, which you should not, because Elance will NOT consider any correspondence, that takes place through personal e-mails, as part of your defense should a client not want to release funds.
Every monetary transaction from an Elance client is permanently documented, so you can easily keep track.
For writing jobs that the client wants to pay by the hour, Elance has a handy time tracker tool.
As for Elance’s writing jobs? They are categorized and include Web content, articles, E-books and blogs, creative, academic, sales and technical.
Comb through the continuously updated job postings for writers. When you bid on a writing job, your profile shows to the client and everyone else who views the bidding page, though only the client and you can see your proposal and bid.
Clients will rate you, and a five-star rating is the highest. A prospective client can invite you to bid on their new job, though often, invites do not match a person’s niche.
