I have bid on a few jobs on eLance and have been checking out the other websites like guru.com, getafreelancer.com, etc. However, it seems to me that the individuals/companies placing the job ads expect to find a Virtual Assistant for an absolutely ridiculous low price. I saw one ad that actually stated they were looking for a VA for $3 - $4 an hour!

I am very curious to know what other VA's experiences have been with these freelance websites.

Thank you in advance for any input!

Heather Books

I've never used elance - but I did use GetAFreelancer.com a bit when I was first getting started; and scored a number of projects as well as one long term client there.
The main problem I see with these freelance bidding sites is you're not only competing against a TON of people for each project but many of them are in places where the cost of living is nil - so their requested rate is absolutely tiny (hence the request you saw for $4 per)

If you're willing to cut your rate down a bit in order to compete it can be a good place to start but isn't something I'd ever expect to use long term. As soon as I got tired of working for peanuts, and had even ONE properly paying client, I stopped using GAF altogether.

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I have found 3 clients through networking, 1 through a handyman.com ad I posted, and 1 through a mailing. Although it has been slow going (relatively, after all I only started last june) I am getting paid what I am worth. And, my most recent client is so happy with me that he said he will gladly send business my way when an opportunity arises.

I 'spect networking and referrals (tell everyone you know that you are doing this) will bring much more success than bidding sites.

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Lily Chambers, The Virtual Office Goddess, LLC
Author "How to Do Your Own Small Business Bookkeeping"

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

I've had two clients pick me up in guru.com and one was a disaster because they expected me to stay low cost forever. I originally charged him a discounted rate because I was new to the biz and didn't feel right charging full rate. After 6 months I decided to raise my rates. Not to market value but to a higher amount to cover my additional costs. I was doing 10 times the work for him and it was clear I was not inexperienced.

My second and current client also found me on guru but we did not carry out our transaction through guru. We did it outside of guru. We have a great relationship now and in the time since I started he's increased the workload by 10 fold. He's very happy with me and does not squabble over prices like the last guy did.

I did find it hard to compete in places like guru and e-lance because of the international markets mostly. Like said above, with such a low rate expected over there its hard to make a cheapskate understand the "value" in our services. Most, certainly not all, of the RFPs on those sites are unfortunately just looking for the lowest bidder. I've also had several people tell me that they passed on me because of price.

I haven't much experience with many of the Freelance websites, I have however been looking over the projects the last few weeks and always shake my head when I see projects in which the buyer is only willing to pay $2-$4. The market is full of people willing to do the work for that amount of money. As Tess had mentioned you are competing with people that have a very very low cost of living.

However, this is not to say that these sites are totally useless. I have had placed a few bids for work on eLance. I currently do not pay a fee for the eLance service, as I normally only see a few projects that I want to bid on. I just use the free business plan (3 free bids in one category only). For someone starting out in the VA business or someone in between clients, the freelance sites can be a saving grace. You just have to realize you may end up doing work for far less than what you are worth.

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Darlene Victoria Gonzalez
The Voice & Vision Behind Your Business

Unfortunately, low price bids are something that you have to contend with. However, I did find a very good client through Guru.com, but I had to go through a lot of requests and submittals before finding success on that site. It is like finding a needle in a haystack, but there will be diamonds in the rough.

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Doreen R. Patrick, MVA, ACS, CIVA
www.virtualbusinesspartners.net

I joined Elance about a month ago and got a job within a couple of weeks, a week after that I got another job. That's when I decided to start my VA business. The first person who hired me is still using my services, so having that first client before starting the business really helps. I found out that alot of people from India are bidding on projects for $2/hr US, so I decided to look up the conversion rate and $2 US is $80 in India! I also found that some people won't tell you all the work that needs to be done until they hire you and you've already committed to the amount bid... So I always bid a little higher and tell them that's a flat rate unless the hours are less in which case I will adjust the price to the lower rate.

Hmmm - No - $2 U.S. is more like $10 in real-life India - trust me, I lived there for ages just recently and while we were certainly well off $2 did NOT go quite as far as all that I'm curious where someone wrote that it = $80?

Still - you're right that the competition is crazy on these bidding sites where you're up against people in the third world.

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I got that from the universal currency converter located here http://www.xe.com/ucc/convert.cgi But my point being is that people in India are making more than $2/hr and yet people expect us to do the work for that when all it is to us is $2/hr...

I completely understand - the quality of the end result is relative too - although many clients don't realize, and some don't care. There was another post somewhere on here we were talking about this very issue, a VA chimed in with 'pay peanuts, get peanuts' which I think sums up the situation perfectly.

It's one of the things we have to contend with, operating in a truly global economy.

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It was the first client who hired me on Elance who told me abot the people from India charging so little and I was one of the higher bidders but what he did was ask everyone to send him a sample of their work and he called me soon after and said that Quality is important to him and he liked what I sent him and that's why he chose me over the small $2/hr people. It really worked out because I'm still working with him, I feel really lucky considering alot of business people on Elance are mainly looking for the best price and I could never bring myself to charge so little.

I joined odesk a few months ago and their rates are so low it's unbelievable. It gets as low as $1 sometimes. I don't know how people could bid that low.

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Maria Quick Link Virtual Assistant Services
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I just joined getafreelance.com and I dont understand how people can say they will pay $1.50 for a 500 word article to be originally written but are only willing to say you can do 3-5 a day for a week-- that is so little it's not worth bidding on, but yet they say ONLY UNITED STATES over and over!! There is NO WAY that is rediculous.

A business that wants to pay a VA those tiny amounts is a business that does not need a particularly high quality product, and is not interested in teamwork or building relationships. So you probably don't want to work for such a business anyway.

I ignore the ads on oDesk that offer such low amounts, and brazenly name my full fee when bidding on jobs where the business seems more viable. I've gotten just two gigs from there, so it's not that great a resource .... but my point is that our American fees are valid and acceptable to many clientele, so we should dismiss the others as simply not in our league.

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Mary H. Ruth/Virtual Writing & Communications
http://www.writingVA.com