Can you guys post your experiences with Elance for good copywriters and writers in general? I would like to know your experiences with Elance as mine are not so good... thanks
I have had better experience finding copywriters who actually know what they are doing on this forum and sitepoint.
Btw, there are other freelance job sites that offer writing jobs other than elance. You might want to try those.
We worked on Elance for 3 years, Made a killing, but the competion was starting to get cutthroat and people are constantly lowballing. A big portion of their bidders are from India and are willing to work at a very low rate, with a compromise in quality. We also have an offshore office, but we never rockbottomed our prices as after sales support and revisions all costs time and money. They have some high quality vendors with old clients like synapseindia, etechies ......, but these vendors have a big list of clients and an excellent track record, and get alot of repeat jobs, which keeps them going. Forums are much more interactive then elance, as u can talk directly with the copywriters and I think the pressure is much lower so you will get more open responses rather then the 'responses you want' as on elance. Over there, instead of writing software for other people, I got the idea of writing it for myself rather then others. So I ended up here. Happier and Less Worked.
My experience has been that Elance is just like anything else really, you will find some great providers there and some really crumby ones. It is smart to read thier ratings and history of feedback that customers have left. I also find that it is usually worth it to spend a little more money with the people that bid a little higher, instead of the low ball bidders.
I'm a copywriter at Elance and you can find my feedback profile here: http://www.elance.com/c/feedback/ma...stats&catid=10208&view_person=Prince_Projects If anybody is in need of content writing work, shoot me an email at For the most part, I've had success with Elance. Although there are lowballers everywhere, I think buyers are starting to recognize you get what you pay for.
Actually, I could never really understand guru. Their interface, to me is user unfriendly. For the past 2 years I get an email every month from them titled 'Project Notification' but never really bothered reading it. On the other hand, Elance has an excellent user interface, very user friendly and easy to understand, both for buyers and sellers. It's just working on Elance is very competitive, for Web Design & Development, that is. I can't say about their other categories.
I had a pretty decent experience when using Elance in the past. The quality was not top grade, but more than acceptable for what I paid for the project...
I was on there a few years back when you could still get on for free. I didn't much like it and I still don't like it now. I've found better people on this form when hiring.