Elance is a freelance marketplace where individuals and companies looking to outsource project work or find specific occupational solutions can hire other individuals and companies to fulfill those needs. Like most of these freelance websites, the largest percentage of opportunities relate to the world of web and graphic design, programming, and a myriad of other technical vocations. Luckily for writers like us, the Writing and Translation section is a fast growing area with hundreds of job prospects.
The site offers a tiered level of membership with the most basic being free. The biggest differences in plans is in the amount of keywords and skills you can add to your profile as well as the number of Marketplace Connects available to you. Connects are virtual tokens needed to submit a proposal on a job posting and the number of connects needed per job depends on both the job type and budget. Connects are used as a safeguard to ensure a higher degree of proposal quality and to avoid the shock and awe campaigns of proposal spam.
The higher paid membership choices remind me of the pay per click search engine model. The more you pay (bid), the higher your results will be when employers are searching for certain job related keywords or skills. With the paid plans you get more Marketplace Connects which enables you to bid on more jobs and increase your chances of landing some work. While the ability to submit more proposals is ideal for a serious writer determined to become a true earner, it’s comforting to know we can start off for free and let our first couple of jobs pay for the upgrade to a better plan.
If you’re looking for some inspiration to sign up and give it a go, get yourself over to the Writing and Translation section and browse through some of the portfolios of other working professionals. You can see how much people have earned in the last six months as well as their lifetime earnings. It’s exciting to see people pulling in some decent yearly numbers, although I’m quite sure there are no slouches in the top spots.
For example, I saw one professional working by herself with lifetime earnings of over $460,000 and she’s only been a member since 2006. I found another team of one with earnings of over $140,000 and membership since 2008. Both are pulling in very impressive yearly salaries when you do the math. While these two individuals were clearly some of the most prolific writing related earners at Elance, there were plenty of others with very impressive numbers.
This transparency of earnings make it apparent that making money writing online can be achieved. It’s also encouraging to find real success stories like these because it renews that passion we all have for writing while keeping the dream alive that we can get paid for doing what we truly enjoy.
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