Elance Critique

There are quite a few people in search of a good, honest Elance review, and no small wonder. The site 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 design, it’s significant to know if Elance can measure up.

Elance helps businesses hire and manage 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 merely 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 present 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 built around the user experience of the buyer. This means you’ll on no account spend a dime on the site, other than to the providers you employ. Signing up is also very straightforward, taking only a few minutes and culminating in the posting of your first project.

Setting up a project requires minimum work, though I would advise 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, unfortunately, the one weakness of a website like Elance (if not Elance in particular). Anybody 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 winnow down the field. You will need to review samples, ask for interviews, and setup milestones that make sure you get the quality you’re seeking.

The Providers

When it comes to finding quality providers, most Elance review writers note that Elance has long been in the middle ground due to the sheer mass of providers here. Nevertheless, the old maxim of “you get what you pay for” nearly always come into play. If you wish for low price, high quality work, it will be hard to find high quality providers. However, 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 undertaking, total earnings, repeat clients, and an overall aggregated score that shows how highly 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 office 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 raved about it as 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’, though they do still lag behind on a number of things, i.e. mobile apps and desktop tracking offered by ‘Odesk’.

Also, Elance’s backend can be a bit puzzling 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, at times in small ways and sometimes with a full overhaul which leaves you mixed-up and grasping for options. Documentation is limited and customer service is now and again 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 category. As a buyer, you pay no fees and can have access to providers almost right away from around the globe. Nevertheless, the program itself can be dizzying at times and the quality of the providers is often hard to verify, and there is no way to guarantee where the bids are coming from, a major problem in certain categories, like Writing and Translation.

To summarise, Elance is a helpful tool that can help you shrink your work load greatly. Don’t look for it doing all the heavy lifting for you though. Interview your prospects, edit 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 topic, 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.. Free reprint available from: Elance Critique.