When I decided to revive my career as a business consultant, among others, I signed up with Elance, because this is a service that I had used almost a decade ago to find freelancers to do some work for me. This time I became a provider and within a few weeks I realized that in their desperate desire to grow, the management at Elance had destroyed the business. Now, unless there are geographic restrictions for a project, you are competing with folks in Bangladesh and Kenya. You try to be as competitive as you can and hope that you can do quality work for $50 and hour but then comes an individual in a third world country whose total billing is $50 for a week's work. Ouch! I closed my account.
For last several weeks I have been checking out Hourly Nerd. They have not made the same mistake as Elance by allowing everyone in. Instead, they only let folks from elite colleges with business education join. Having said that, I still see a lot of projects with a total budget of $100 or a few hundred bucks. Occasionally I see four figure projects and only rarely do I see five figure projects. Obviously, six-figure projects are even rarer.
I have bid on several projects but have never heard back. I wonder if a lot of clients are merely fishing for estimates on project so that they can award them to their favorite consultants. I am aware that some consultants have received projects because their profiles indicate the amounts earned, but it seems it is a lot harder than I anticipated.
For last several weeks I have been checking out Hourly Nerd. They have not made the same mistake as Elance by allowing everyone in. Instead, they only let folks from elite colleges with business education join. Having said that, I still see a lot of projects with a total budget of $100 or a few hundred bucks. Occasionally I see four figure projects and only rarely do I see five figure projects. Obviously, six-figure projects are even rarer.
I have bid on several projects but have never heard back. I wonder if a lot of clients are merely fishing for estimates on project so that they can award them to their favorite consultants. I am aware that some consultants have received projects because their profiles indicate the amounts earned, but it seems it is a lot harder than I anticipated.