Where To Find Great Employers

Believe me, you don't see them everyday. I happen to have had some bad luck just recently and found myself working for one of the not-so-good ones but it's okay, everything's sorted. I learned my lesson from the experience and I know the "New Yorker" also learned his. My advice to new oDesk contractors and other freelancers, don't just apply for any job just because it pays. Here's a short checklist to help you find great employers:

✓ Check how much they have spent on oDesk. Go for companies who can afford to pay oDesk contractors at a good rate.

✓ Companies in good standing are not reluctant to hire contractors that charge 2-10 dollars per hour. It's a much lower rate compared to what people in their country are charging although if they are on a tight budget, they would most likely hire contractors that charge only 2-3 dollars.
✓ Check whether the job they posted contains instructions. Instructions should be clear and concise, not misleading.
✓ Check the feedback they received from their contractors and the feedback they gave to them. You should see it at the bottom of the job post. It should tell you whether the company is great to work for or not.
✓ If they are the sort that demand too much and pay very little, why bother? Who would want to work for peanuts? I sure don't! Move on to the next job post!

Have you had a bad experience as an oDesk freelancer that you want to share? I welcome guest posts. All you have to do is let me know in an email that you have something to share.

Project Down The Dumps!

I applied for a small Twitter job the other day and received a reply from a New Yorker. He wanted me to get him 1000 Twitter followers that are fitness, exercise, health, and media related, 90% must be living in the US. I replied back, told him that YES, I can get you 1000 Twitter followers. No automation tools are going to be used, it will all be done manually. He seemed quite happy with my reply, the only thing he was not too happy about was my hourly rate. I charged 10 dollars an hour. Is that too expensive? Social Media Marketers charge a whole lot more. What he said in his email made me think. Should I even accept the job? I didn't want to. I usually don't accept projects from people that are reluctant to spend money. He did say that he was with a small company and that they were on a tight budget. I took that into consideration and lowered my hourly rate at 7 dollars, which I utterly regret. I should not have accepted the job offer and should have moved on.

To make the story short, the Twitter project was a total failure. I have two years of Social Media Marketing experience and have successfully worked on similar projects so I know how long the said project was going to take and if it was even doable. I told him I can get the job done in a week's time and that I will be sending him a quick report on Monday next week. Everything went well. I went about with my work, happily checking his Twitter account every now and then to make sure he was getting "real" Twitter followers.

Tuesday evening, I received another email from the New Yorker but this time with feedback and "small" requests. He told me he's okay with health bloggers and stay-at-home moms from the US but would prefer that I target New Yorkers, more specifically, he wanted me to go for more important figures with huge twitter followers and less following. It was already Tuesday evening. I have a deadline to meet. The clock was ticking and he's wanting all these changes??? Red flag went up. Demands are okay. Feedback from employers are okay. I can handle this, I said to myself. I can make this work but something inside me just snapped. NO, THIS IS NOT RIGHT! With the additional changes, I cannot anymore guarantee that I can get the work done at the time frame we agreed on. Heck, I was even getting paid at a much lower rate so why allow this? NO, we should be sticking to what it says in the contract. I emailed him back and told him as politely and as clearly as possible that building a strong follower base on Twitter takes time and that he should have told me beforehand that he wanted New Yorkers but not after deleting all screenshots in my Work Diary. There's no way I was going to let this guy ruin things for me. There are hundreds of oDesk contractors getting scammed and getting tricked into working for almost nothing everyday! I'm not going to let the same thing happen to me. As expected, he ended the contract after a few more email exchanges. I already had a feeling that the whole thing would end horribly. He was very upset. He made scathing remarks and gave me a 1 star feedback which by the way, is not going to appear on my profile. I deleted all the screenshots, remember? He wasn't charged a single cent and besides, all he said in the feedback were lies anyway. Obviously, he was soooo upset when he realized he's not going to get a chance to rip me off he decided to do it using oDesk's feedback system. He's going to be so disappointed the minute he finds out his lies are not going to appear on my profile at all. I hope he learned his lesson because I'm sure as hell learned mine.