Comments on: Just One More Reason to Hate Odesk

By: Curious

Curious — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 18:11:27 +0000

i am an oDesk contractor and although their Big Brother system is a scary thought, i personally didn’t find it threatening when i used it. what i simply don’t like about oDesk is the amount of stupid jobs there is in every category, like uploading photos on their facebook profiles or creating 200 gmail accounts with photos with different ip addresses each. that isn’t even a real job.

By: 7 Freelance Health Care Options | All Freelance Writing

7 Freelance Health Care Options | All Freelance Writing — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:28:40 +0000

[...] hole and liked how it turned out. In a future post, I’ll go over details on weeding through bad and ugly health plans to finding the ones that provide at least some decent [...]

By: Should You Spy on Your Freelance Workers? | Ajeva

Should You Spy on Your Freelance Workers? | Ajeva — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:19:11 +0000

[...] Are You Being Watched? Why companies implement monitoring software. Just One More Reason to Hate Odesk [...]

By: Jennifer Mattern

Jennifer Mattern — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 01:03:36 +0000

Well Kristi… some sad news today. Elance is apparently jumping on a similar model to Odesk. Now clients can play the Big Brother role there too. More in a new post on that tomorrow.

By: Kristi Patrice Carter

Kristi Patrice Carter — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:47:16 +0000

Interesting article and I had no idea that oDesk had that kind of a setup. I have been an Elance provider for over 10 years and have completed over 800 projects to date. I found them by chance and stayed by choice. To me, Elance is the leading online marketplace and I absolutely love the freedom that their site offers and the variety of projects. I joined oDesk once and bid on a few projects but honestly wasn’t that thrilled with the site or project offerings but didn’t accept any. Oh well, I guess when it works for you, why break it? That’s why I am sticking with Elance!

By: Jennifer Mattern

Jennifer Mattern — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:09:54 +0000

I want to give Matt some personal credit. I sent an email to Odesk this morning about the deceptive marketing issue, explaining exactly why the language was making false claims, and he just responded to let me know they updated it. It no longer claims to provide benefits “previously unavailable to freelancers” and instead reads “unavailable to most freelancers” which is accurate and doesn’t imply benefits are specifically for freelance professionals (you get them if you switch to W-2 employee status). So thanks for taking a step in the right direction and moving away from the increasingly misleading marketing we’ve been seeing lately in the overall freelance writing industry. Now if only we could do something about that monitoring software…. ;)

By: Jennifer Mattern

Jennifer Mattern — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:05:34 +0000

It appears Odesk Staffing is still falsely advertising these insurance benefits on their homepage, as being for freelancers. Hmmm. How about getting on the ball guys?

“Access benefits previously unavailable to freelancers”

They are still unavailable to freelancers, and stating otherwise is a downright lie.

By: Freelance Writing Jobs for December 15, 2009 - Freelance writing jobs, freelance writing gigs, freelance writer jobs at a minimum of $50 per article! | All Freelance Writing

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:11:01 +0000

[...] this so bad? After all, I’ve posted far worse, right? Yeah, but guess where this came from? oDesk, which uses software to watch you while you work. So not only can you write articles–in [...]

By: Lucy Smith

Lucy Smith — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:11:19 +0000

@ Jean – so true. I think people slavishly stick with content sites and bidding sites because it’s hard to eave their comfort zone. I understand that. But really, once you get started on marketing yourself properly, it’s not that hard.

I was kind of forced into thinking for myself because, not being US-based, places like Demand won’t take me, and a lot of work on Elance etc. only wants people in the US. Presumably to do with employment laws for paying, I don’t really know.

So I started looking in my neck of the woods, and it’s been a surprising and empowering experience. It’s forced me to think out of the box, and come up with my own ideas, and I really like that.

By: Jean

Jean — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:51:57 +0000

I just left the corporate world to become a full-time freelance writer (September) so that I could have the thing I value most — freedom!

I see with this post, Jenn, that I’m on the right track…

In fact, I just turned down Web content work that was below my minimum rate. I just didn’t want to start down that slippery slope of working for less than I (and several clients) know I’m worth.

It WAS steady work, so it WAS hard to turn down, but I told myself going in I’d never work for less than a certain amount per content article.

A girl needs standards after all,

There’s so much work out there for anyone who wants to find it. I know some folks feel more comfortable working for sites such as oDesk, Elance, etc. But a part of me just wants to shake some sense into them and tell them to market themselves directly to the companies themselves.

Thank you for this post, Jenn