Section 8.7. Sell Your Services on Elance

8.7. Sell Your Services on Elance

eBay has a category called Specialty Services, where you can auction off your skills; subcategories include Web & Computer Services, Lessons & Tutoring, Music Composition & Poetry, Custom Clothing & Jewelry, Appraisal & Authentication, Packing & Shipping, and Logo Design, to name just a few. You can offer personalized items (from business cards to T-shirts to mugs), jewelry or antique restoration/repair, video editing, shopping assistance, interior design, personal training, and more. Although legitimate services do appear in this category, a lot of what you'll find here is junk, like eBooks and CDs touting get-rich-quick schemes or effortless weight loss. And if you browse the categories, you'll see that most of the auctions here end with no bids.

If you have a skill or service you'd like to market, there's a better place to do it: Elance (the name comes from "electronic freelance "). Elance is a separate site that helps people and businesses looking for professional help find freelancers with a service or skill to sell. Elance is not a part of eBaythough there's a loose affiliation between the two sites. In fact, the affiliation seems to be getting looser. It's hard to find a mention of Elance anywhere on eBay. Rumors have surfaced and faded that eBay is creating a Professional Services category on its own site, but so far that hasn't happened . When it does, expect the last strings between eBay and Elance to break.

In the meantime, if you want to learn about Elance on eBay itself, you have to type in this Web address: http://pages.ebay.com/business_services to find eBay's mystery Professional Service page, shown in Figure 8-21. Once there, you can follow a link to Elance.

Figure 8-21. You won't find this page searching eBay in the usual way; Professional Services isn't in the AZ Index or on the Services page. eBay is not maintaining the page; links still take you to Elance, but neither the Search box nor the categories work; trying to use them gets you to an error page on the Elance site.

Of course, it's easier to go straight to Elance itself: point your Web browser to www.elance.com, shown in Figure 8-22. Elance has three divisions; you want Elance Online. Click the "Go to Elance Online" button, then click the Sell Services tab to go to the page shown in Figure 8-23. That's where you get started as a service provider.

Figure 8-22. Elance has three main divisions: Elance Enterprise sells management software to businesses; Elance Online is where freelancers can bid on projects; and Elance Agency sells fixedprice logo, brochure, and Web design. Click the middle button, Go to Elance Online, to get started as a freelance service provider.

Figure 8-23. The Sell Services page provides general info about Elance and displays categories that have open projects. Click Start Here or Subscribe Now if you want to register and subscribe to one of Elance's service packages, which start at $12 a month. There's no charge if you want to post a project and hire a freelancer. If that's what you're looking for, click Buy Services and follow the instructions on that page.

8.7.1. How Elance Works

You could say that Elance is the opposite of eBay. At Elance, if you have a service to sell, you're the bidder. Sounds backwards , but it makes sense. A business or individual has a project they need help with. Instead of locating and approaching a range of freelancers and explaining that project over and over again, they post the project on Elance and let qualified freelancers find them. From your point of view as a service provider, this process eliminates cold calling. When you contact a potential client, you know there's a need for your services. Your job is to convince the prospect that your skills fit the project and that you can meet the client's time and budget requirements.

8.7.2. Elance Professional Services

Today, many businesses outsource projects to save money on employee benefits or to cope with busy times in their business cycle. Certain kinds of professional services lend themselves better to outsourcing than others. Elance is always keeping an eye on which categories generate a lot of business and which languish, and it updates the site accordingly , creating new categories and getting rid of slow ones. Here's a sampling of recent Elance categories and subcategories:

• Administrative support . Bulk mailing and mailing-list development, data entry, research and fact checking, travel planning, word processing.

• Architecture and engineering . Computer-aided design (CAD), contract manufacturing, interior and industrial design, and the various flavors of engineering (electrical, civil, mechanical).

• Audio, visual, and multimedia . Animation, music and radio jungles, film and video, new media, voice talent, streaming audio/media.

• Graphic design and art . Brochures, letterheads, logos, book illustration, direct mail campaigns , 3-D graphics, photography, book layout, print ads, press kits.

• Legal . There are categories for just about all legal specialties.

• Management and finance . Accounting, bookkeeping, collections, financial planning and reporting, management consulting, human resource policies and plans.

• Sales and marketing . Advertising and branding, business plans, lead generation, market research/surveys, promotions, public relations, telemarketing.

• Software and technology . Application and database development, system administration, scripts and utilities, security, technical support.

• Training and development . Business and corporate training, policies and manuals, media and sales training, programming languages and technical training.

• Web site development . Flash, HTML email design, Internet marketing, search engine optimization, Web hosting and design.

• Writing and translation . Copywriting, editing, proofreading, grant writing, test materials, proposals, resumes, speeches, newsletters, translation, creative writing.

To look at specific projects, you can browse by category or search by keyword; Elance has a Search box on every page.

Tip: People with projects don't always post them in the obvious category. And sometimes, the category isn't so obvious in the first place; for example, does writing a technical manual belong under software and technology, training and development, or writing and translation? To find the most projects, don't browse by category. Choose a keyword like writing or sales and search the whole site.

8.7.3. Signing Up and Bidding

Before you can bid on Elance projects, you need to register on the site. On the Sell Services page (the one in Figure 8-23), there's a Subscribe Now button. Don't click it unless you want to buy one of Elance's subscription packages, which cost you a monthly, quarterly, or annual fee. Until you've had a chance to explore the site and decide whether it's worth the money to subscribe, you just want to register, which is free (but hard to find).

To register, first find a project listing: either do a search or browse a category and click any project. Figure 8-24 shows a typical project description page. On the right-hand side is a box where you can register for Elance.

Figure 8-24. On the right-hand side of a project description, fill in your email address and choose an Elance ID and password. Click Submit to register. When you've registered on Elance, you get a free Courtesy Listing: you can view project details and bid on projects.

Registration lets you view projects and bid on them, but your competition probably has more presence on the site than that. Elance offers several subscription levels, starting at $12-$30 a month and going as high as $75-$245 a month, depending on the category of professional service and the level of subscription. (That's not all using Elance will cost you; the company also charges an 8.75 percent fee on your invoice, and the minimum service charge per project is $10. Note that you're responsible for paying that fee, not the client.) Elance offers three subscription levels:

• Enhanced listing . This level lets you view and bid on projects and create a custom business profile with a portfolio showcasing up to 20 items. You can also get email notification of new projects and the ability to receive feedback for completed projects. At this level, you get up to three "leads" per monthwhich means that you can bid on three projects for no extra charge.

• Professional package . You get all the benefits of an enhanced listing but with a bigger portfolio (up to 200 items) and more leads: up to 80 per month.

• Select professional package . With this level, you get up to 120 leads per month. You also get featured listings to make you stand out from the hundreds of other freelancers, access to "select" projects (which tend to pay better than regular projects), and the ability to offer instant purchase packages to buyers (like eBay's Best Offer option).

8.7.4. The Drawback

As with most online freelance project sites, Elance is a buyer's market. There are far more registered professionals than there are projects available. This is great if you're looking to hire a freelancer, but it's not so great if you're hoping to sell your services. You might find that others are bidding far below what's reasonable for a given project. When you consider all the lowball bidding, plus the monthly fee and the per-transaction service charge, you've got to be careful that you're not bidding yourself below the poverty level.

8.7.5. Other Sites

Elance isn't the only place to sell your services online. Check out these other sites, too:

• Sologig (www.sologig.com)

• Guru.com (www.guru.com)

• Get a Freelancer (www.getafreelancer.com)

• Contracted Work (www.contractedwork.com)

Warning: Watch out for work-from-home scam sites, especially those promising big bucks for easy work, like stuffing envelopes. It's also a bad sign if you have to pay a fee before you can browse current listings. Check out a site with the Better Business Bureau (www.bbb.org) before you pay.