Thanks for stopping by
Photo by: Vern Hart
My thanks goes out to everyone stopping by as a result of oDesk's latest newsletter.
An even bigger thanks goes out the those who've subscribed to my RSS Feed. For those of you subscribed to my feed, I do apologize for the Feed being a bit wonky today (if you even noticed). The feed wasn't doing what I told it to, so I had to beat it into submission. I'll blame WordPress. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!
And finally, the biggest "thanks" of all goes to oDesk for paying attention to me and not having banned me from their forums yet for talking too much.
If you're a lurker and/or are subscribed to my feed, why not leave a comment below so I know who you are? I like knowing things, don't you? It makes me feel smarter.
I found your blog because of oDesk's newsletter, as well. After being successfully self-employed for eight years, things have slowed to a halt, and I've had to take on a full-time temp job in an office, which is definitely not my idea of a dream job. I was thinking of getting some work at oDesk, but after hearing the "monitoring" stories, I simply did not want to go any further. I'm trying to keep an open mind about this.
Thanks for stopping by, Zen.
To address the "monitoring" issue – it's not for everyone, but it also isn't as invasive as a lot of nay-sayers make it out to be.
It's also necessary for hourly jobs because there's no other way to keep track of time accurately without it – WITH it, your payments (as a provider) are guaranteed. All it does is takes 6 random screenshots per hour and counts the number of keystrokes and mouse clicks. There's an option to also enable a webcam if you have one, but it can be turned off in the preferences (if I'm in a good mood and dressed for it, I'll turn my webcam on just for S's and G's). Personally, I like running the Team client because it protects me as the provider – there's no question I'm doing the work I said I would and almost eliminates the chances of me getting stiffed (like I did for a project I got through craigslist a couple of months ago).
If you are still considering oDesk in the slightest, though, you might want to take a look at some of the fixed priced jobs. These don't require running the Team client, but the payments are also not guaranteed.
That's great information, thanks. Honestly, can you make full-time money on oDesk? I also didn't know that payments aren't guaranteed with fixed-price jobs. Like I stated previously, I really want to get out of this office job – it's just not me – and get back to working at home, on my own terms.
There are quite a few people in North America making a living off of oDesk alone, but the majority of fulltime freelancers have multiple income streams. You can also check out sites like elance.com and guru.com, and if you're a programmer, rentacoder.com.
Also, depending on your field of work, there are niche forums out there with special sections for posting jobs (webmaster-talk.com is the first one that comes to mind, but there are others in other fields).