I signed up for a guru.com and a elance.com account in July 2007. The one thing I liked about elance was the fact that you could see other people's bids, which I soon figured out most of them were way lower than what I wanted to charge, with that and the fact you had to pay for every category you wanted to bid in I decided to cancel and got a refund.

I decided to keep the guru.com account because there seemed to be more RFP's in my field and I had already paid for a whole year so I figured I might as well keep it for the full year just to see what happens. I have bid on a lot of projects and never won any of them, a few people were nice enought to tell me it was because my price was too high, but I still checked in occasionally and sent the random bid. Then out of the blue a couple of weeks ago I got a "request to bid" from guru in my email box, so I checked it out and it was from someone who lives a couple of hours from me but in the same state. They needed help with their payroll reports and wanted someone in the same state because they thought they would have better knowledge of the state laws. Anyway, I sent my bid (at my usual rate) and was hired on the spot, they paid in advance and now I have a happy new client, so.... you just never know where the next client will come from.

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Rebecka Melson ~ Virtual Business Services