First Experience With GetAFreelancer
Posted on 08 February 2008 by Sharon
I signed up with GetAFreelancer a couple of years ago, yet I’ve only just completed my first project with them. This is my review of the experience.
Getting Started With GetAFreelancer
First of all, let me tell you why it’s taken me so long to get started.The first reason is because I was busy. I’ve hardly had any down time since I started freelancing. The second reason is because many of the projects on that site offer ludicrously low pay. I’m not just talking about 1 cent a word, but far, far less. Just like Guru, Elance and others, it’s an international freelance marketplace and you are competing with people who think that getting $1 for a 500 word article is a good rate.
GAF Gets A Second Chance
So, why did I even bother giving it a second chance? Well, I decided that I needed to bid more to meet my ever increasing income target. Part of my motivation came from participating in the Inkthinker Query Challenge 2008. I figured if I needed to query more then I needed to check out more bidding sites, and I decided to give GAF another chance.
A Quality Project
I happened to log on and see a financial rewrite project that looked promising, so I decided to bid. This wasn’t the usual $1 a rewrite nonsense, but a project from someone who was prepared to pay more for quality. However, there was a snag. I only had the basic membership, which was free. If I wanted to bid for this project I needed gold membership, which is $12 a month. I decided I could afford to invest $12 in my career, paid up by Paypal, and submitted my bid with the required sample. One PM and phone call later, the project was mine.
Making Sure You Get Paid
Now, here’s one place where GAF scores - the escrow system. Once the buyer awarded the project, he placed the agreed funds in escrow, so I knew I would get paid on completion - and I did. But then there was another issue - your first payment from them has a 15 day delay on it (I can’t figure out why). This means that even though the buyer released the funds straight away, it will be another two weeks before I can transfer them to Paypal. That sucks, but at least I know they will pay up straight away for the next project.
Another plus point is that I only have to pay for what I use. When my gold membership expires at the end of February, I won’t bother to renew it until there’s another gold member only project to bid on.
GAF Profile
The profile feature is pretty basic, but probably tells everyone what they need to know. Mine has not been updated since I originally signed up, and I’m sure I could do something to make it more appealing. That said, I’m pleased to have found a decent paying project on what seems to be a low paying site. GAF takes a $1 fee for transferring my funds to Paypal, so all in all, my project expenses are $13. It was worth it.
A Final Tip
Most importantly, I now have that all important client review - and here’s a tip. Even when bidding on multiple sites, there’s nothing to stop you from referring clients to your best positive reviews, no matter where they are located.
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February 8th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
But the big question is… You lucked out once on GAF. Do you really think there is potential to make money versus the time you’ll have to spend posting continually to beat out the 1$ writers?
GAF was bad back then. It’s still bad now. I think all writers should stay away from the place, because it’s a definite arena where 98% of the buyers don’t give a crap about quality work.
I do commend you for landing a good job, though.
February 9th, 2008 at 8:06 am
It’s a minefield, all right, James. I spend maybe a minute or two every couple of of days to see if any job that has a decent budget. If I can’t find one, then I move on. As I said, most of the projects pay so low that most writers would prefer to avoid them - myself included.
February 9th, 2008 at 8:52 am
You know, Rent-a-coder isn’t bad. It won’t bring in great wealth, but it has a fair chance. Definitely more than GAF.
February 9th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Yes, James, that’s another site I’m working on, but I haven’t had much luck with it so far. I hope to be able to post a similar review in the near future. (What can I say? I’m an optimist!)
February 11th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I am glad to read this review as I was thinking about GAF as a choice bidding site. I’ve heard good things about Guru and RAC though. I have been contemplating bidding sites but am thinking about doing more advertising so clients can find me and decide they want to work with me instead of my having to do the bidding. I do like the idea of escrow though because when dealing with someone new the worry about being stiffed is always a concern. Glad you had a good experience and with the positive review I bet you’ll get more out of it in future.
February 18th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I started to do this and then backed out of it because of the pay rates on the site. I guess that if you select the right opportunity, it would be well worth it. Even if you pay for only one month at $12 and find a few jobs that you like, then paying for the service would defiantly benefit you.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Yes, that’s what I figured, WFU. The fee was a small percentage of what I earned.
February 20th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
What a fair review. I have been doing copywriting since October. I have had pretty good expriences except for a few misunderstandings due to my own bad habit of not taking the time to read directions. I’m working hard to overcome it.
My current job I paid a fee of $25.00 for but I am really enjoying the topics. Actually I only do topics I like. Once I mistakenly bid on a project that I thought was one amount of pay and it turned out that it was so pathetically low that after paying the $5 for the fee, I earned about $3.99. I still felt compelled to do a good job. After all, it was my own error.
Your review was interesting to read.
February 20th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
you know, I don’t like the feeling of PAYING FOR WORK, but I am also getting tired of the constant whining about bid sites. I regularly make 80$ per hour with one client IN MY FAVORITE NICHE that found me on a bid site, and have used me for 3 projects since August.Yes, 90% of the people on bid sites are cheap. But the other 10% are easily discerned in minutes of browsing. I track ALL my hours- every single one- via an Excel spreadsheet. I spend about 2 hours a month on elance. I generally pull about 3 projects per month off elance. I should do some sorts on my spreadsheets and look at the numbers.One downside– if you’re a veteran writer,- but one without feedback, it’ll be hard to get some jobs for your real rate. I kind of avoided this, as I started with elance/GAF/IF when I was a new to FT freelancing, so I didn’t mind. But I wouldn’t recommend it for veterans.
February 20th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
@ Allena - Just so you know where I stand, I *like* eLance. I do. I recommend it despite its quirks and crap. It has decent pay and offers good conditions. RAC isn’t bad. Guru sucks, from what I’ve seen. There are plenty of good bidding sites for writers and it’s just another way to get work. Nothing wrong with them and I support them.
Hell, it beats surfing Craigslist. At least eLance keeps it all in one place!
February 20th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
@ Allena - I don’t think bidding sites are bad; it depends on how you use them. However, it is demoralizing sometimes to see how little people want to pay for quality writing. That said, no writer is obliged to take a low paying project unless s/he feels it’s worth it for experience, buyer feedback or other reasons.
@ James - I never got anywhere with Guru (nor with Elance, for that matter). I also find that many projects are double and triple posted, so not bidding on those sites isn’t really hurting me, so far.
February 21st, 2008 at 11:47 am
I use Get A Freelancer and Rentacoder primarily. And of those, I’ve had the most luck with Rentacoder. I have a good rating and have been doing projects on the site from the beginning. I got started by taking on some ridiculously low paying projects just to get the feedback rating. I am trying to get things started with ifreelance. I know that I would need to do the same thing - take on low paying projects. But I know I can find work elsewhere at this point for what I’m worth so I am not sure it is worth the energy.
February 25th, 2008 at 8:42 am
I’m working on a project for RAC now. We’ll see how it goes. Some of the prices are ridiculous, but there are also some gems - if you can get them.
March 16th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Getafreelancer is the biggest crap ever. I’m wondering why everyone claims that Indians are computer experts - they’re certainly not. The work you get (bid $10 or $1000, it makes no difference) can be thrown directly into the recycle bin.
Website creation: Disastrous! Those foreign people have no clue about validation, they never heard about proper design standards and their layouts and designs look like 2001. Actually someone even showed me wrong references to get the task.
SEO: Had to deal with some company which actually looked serious. I put a sum of $2500 into escrow, the agreement was that the money will be released in steps after the desired google positions have been reached.
6 months passed! The only thing that happened was to put my german site into a bunch of foreign english useless web directories. The website wasn’t even found in the Top 1000. Great, GAF should issue a refund of the interest they received with my money.
All in all I can say: If you need some crappy work for low money, go for GAF. Everything which deserves the adjective “serious” should never be posted on GAF. Don’t waste your time with dumb and non-english speaking third-world-morons.
April 14th, 2008 at 8:55 am
GAF… I agree. On the whole, awful.
If all employers are prepared to pay is peanuts, then all they’ll get is monkeys.
As an experienced copywriter it makes me very cross when UK companies post such loony rates of pay on GAF. It devalues my profession.
A good UK copywriter’ll charge between £35 and £45 an hour. That’s about the same as a decent plumber or plasterer. GAF’s $1 for a 300 word article mentality is lamentable. The problem appears to be that it covers too many disparate geographical areas.
GAF’s a great model but it’ll only ever work properly for professionals if it is split into common seense economic regions. For instance UK, europe, US, India. We all have different currencies (I particularly dislike working in dollars), we all expect different rates of pay and we use different native languages if, like me, you count American english and US culture as distinct from ours.
Having said all that, I keep a weather eye open. I’ve managed to find one very nice long term client via GAF. With whom I now have direct contact. So if you have the time, it can be worth trawling through all that shite!
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:49 pm
In my experience it is best to begin with a focus on positive reviews opposed to income potential. Sites like GAF are great ways to build clientele while keeping a steady flow of income. Sometimes low income is better than no income.
If you have a high positive review count then in many cases you will be able to bid higher and still win the project. For the $1 budget buyers, I would suggest sending them a friendly private message telling them that their budget is too low for quality work and explain why they should accept your rate at an ‘x’ amount of dollars. This will work best if you have a high review count and bring your high review count to the potential client attention.
The catch 22 is that to get a high review count you will have to accept low budget projects.
June 24th, 2008 at 7:56 am
That’s true on many of the sites; thanks for your tips.