This is what freelancers need to know before they sign up to a freelance website
There are numerous freelance/freelancing
websites out there. Most of them, if not all, pride themselves as the best outsourcing
and freelance website for all forms of businesses. I have personally tried a
few of them. I must say, they are indeed a global workplace. Since I started work
as a freelancer, I have learnt a few things:
FRAUD
Always beware of fraudulent activities.
These may a times be presented as projects by prospective employers or buyers seeking
freelancers. These projects are usually fraudulent in nature but a new
freelancer may not realize this in good time. A pointer that one can use to
check whether the said project may be fraudulent is by looking out for disputes
especially in the payment method at the very beginning. You may also
realise that these projects always tend to offer very little payment as opposed
to the workload. If you also find that the project description as advertised
does not match the actual work, there is a high probability it is fraudulent. Most
of these jobs come as data entry jobs or easy typing jobs.
GENUINE EMPLOYER/BUYER
If an employer is genuine, they
will not ask you to log in to another website to start work before engaging you
on a contract from your freelancing website. A genuine employer/buyer will
always guarantee the payment by giving you an upfront payment of by funding the
escrow account. If the freelancing website offers an escrow account, e.g. Elance, my advice is not
to start on any work if it has not been funded. If however, the website does
not offer an escrow account, e.g. oDesk, insist on an
upfront payment. If the employer says they do not offer upfront payment due to
bad experiences in the past, then, look into their profile feedback. You may be
able to draw your own conclusions by seeing what other freelancers have to say
about that particular employer. If there is no feedback, insist on
an upfront payment. An upfront payment can be a percentage of the total project
amount.
In my own opinion, a freelance
website should ideally be free. However, some of these websites offer different
membership plans with different charges according to the user’s preferences.
These range from free accounts to premium accounts. Premium members tend to pay
the most and also tend to have the best services offered by a particular
website. An example of a website that is completely free is oDesk. It is free to
join, bid on projects and accept contracts. The only fee payable is
a percentage of the project amount. Elance operates more or
less the same except, it offers different membership plans and fixed prize
projects have guarantee payment unlike oDesk. A site like freelancer charges the
users on almost everything. There free account is actually the most expensive
account. You get charged a fee for accepting to work on a project; this is just
a rip off. What if the employer never gets to pay? Does that mean you will pay
for a job you never got to do? This is why I personally found myself losing
money instead of making it. What a shame. Perhaps I need to learn how to use
the site and make profit instead of losses.
