For those of your not familiar with the concept, Elance requires contractors – people who want to work, and who bid on projects – to use connects when doing so. Basically, each bid requires a connect. When you’re out of connects, there’s no work for you.
Sure enough, it didn’t take them long to realize this in an opportunity to make additional money (or was it like this since the beginning?). Meaning, when you’re a non-paying member you have 10 connects per month, when you go step up and pay $10 a month, you get 20 connects, and so on. Of course, you can always purchase additional connects! 🙂 These numbers are not exact though, since I’m too lazy to look them up, but you get the drift.
Other features follow the same idea, too. You can bid on projects from a certain category by default, let’s say Programming, but if you want to bid on projects from another category too, let’s say Design – yeah, you’ve guessed it – additional $5 per month.
And there’s nothing we can do about that; their site, their rules.
However, we can make an impact on people looking for contractors, wanting to have the job done; they’re called clients on Elance.
Yeah clients, this huge intro was made just so I can say something to you. Since contractors are literally spending money to connect with you, make your project descriptions at least decent. You can’t expect contractors to spend money to ask additional questions about your project only to find out it’s not for them! Write a decent project description, and make life easier for both parties.
You’ll have better proposals, I guarantee it!