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Rule number 1: Stay Away from Elance. I did get projects, they paid, all right, and I hired people too. Both very, very, frustrating experiences. They lie, a lot, and are proud of it. Their approach is: We are a big American company (they are not) and you are nothing but a pieces of trash out of nowhere, therefore we get away with anything, excuse me now, and stop bothering. I will not extend myself on this, yet, if you need a detailed report, I will be glad to send you through email.

“Hired some guy on Elance on some of these places, very inexpensive”

– Joel Comm

Thanks for the tip Joel!

ODesk Certification. A far more professional and ethic business venture, ODesk has many more resources than Elance. Starts by the fact that have a impeccable and reliable, credential creating, online test. The tests are great, very well done, and once a applicant fails, he has to wait a few months until he tries again. When approved ODesk gives an HTML code to paste on your website to raise your professional credibility. The icon links to their website with your score and profile. All of this as a courtesy to registered providers, this means free of charge. Here some tests I was approved:

Certification is definitely a very useful feature that is only available through ODesk. Elance does not have it yet, most likely they are too busy with the billing department.

Privacy Issues. ODesk has an options for professionals to install a client application that will track every move a provider does during a project, if he is hired by the hour. It tracks and sends pc activity, sites visited, everythng to ODesk, to ensure provider performance. I tested the application, but I believe there are already plenty of people tracking by web activity.

It can’t be that obvious. There must be some use for Elance, otherwise their traffic would not be similar to ODesk. Both are top 1000 visited sites in the US, and top 2000 on the planet, so I may be missing something. But based on my personal experience, I don’t have a doubt.

If you found this post useful, please consider opening your account either as provider or employer, through one of the links below. It is free of charge!