How to Land Your First Writing Job on Elance

Since you are reading this article, I presume you know what is Elance. It is the world's leading site for online work. They have every kind of online jobs for just about every online worker. The last time I checked the site, they had about 18,000 live jobs available on their dashboard.

Sounds great! IT and Programming alone had over 7500 jobs, while design and multimedia had over 3500 listed jobs. While Writing and Translation was at the third place with about 2500 jobs. On the lower side, while Engineering and Manufacturing featured under 400 jobs, Finance and Management showed barely 300 jobs, and Legal segment showed a measly 183 jobs. From the available figures, it is clear that IT and Programming professionals have the most lucrative opportunity on online work sites including Elance. In other words, if you're technically skilled, you will not have to compete severely for jobs. Here is why? In all there are about 620,000 professionals vying for all jobs available on Elance. Of these, about 538,000 are individuals and about 82,000 are companies.

From available figures, it is clear that over 600,000 professionals are vying for about 18,000 jobs at any time on Elance. On average, there's one job for approximately every 35 persons competing for jobs. This indeed makes landing with a job very competitive. Here's some more statistics. There are about 168,000 IT and Programming professionals competing for 7500 jobs which means about 22 to 23 professionals compete on average for one job. In other words, IT and Programming professionals are at a slightly advantageous position than the rest. In the domain of Writing, 139,000 professionals including companies are found competing for about 2500 jobs, which means on average 55 to 56 professionals will compete for one job. The obvious conclusion - on average a writing professional will find more than two times tougher to get a job in comparison to an IT and Programming professional. Additionally, the average wage of a writer is likely to be less than half of the average wage of an IT and Programming professional.

Moreover, with increased demand for technical writing and the higher wages for the same, IT and Programming professionals have both writing and IT jobs open to them. Therefore, writing professionals would do well to learn technical skills to survive the competition.

Here are some strategies for the writing professionals to land with your first job.

Register with elance and complete your profile. Employers prefer to hire workers with complete profile. Showcase your writing samples in your profile. Employers invariably go through your sample before selecting your bid. Showcase your best work samples.

When bidding for the job, put yourself in the shoes of the employer and try to see what solution the employer is looking for. Tell the employer how best and unique is your solution. Tell them everything you will do and your expectations from the employer. Don't overstate or claim more than you can do or more than you are capable of. Give evidence for your claims.

Take the professional tests available on elance. The score on these tests will inform employers about your expertise. You have the chance to improve you score, so don't hesitate in taking tests.

Try to connect with the employer one on one. Engage them with questions that will help you improve the outcome.

Never bid more than the amount the employer has indicated. Better still, if you're trying to land your first job, bid low.

Don't get disheartened if you do not land a job in your first month or month after month. On average for every 55 or 56 bids you make, you are likely to land with a job. That's the average - you may get more or less. However, with completed profile and few professional tests, you're likely to improve your successful bid counts, better than the average.

Finally, it is the persistence that pays. Keeping on bidding effectively when a time will come, you will begin getting jobs. Among all the professionals bidding for the jobs, there are actually very few who continue to persist, the rest are weeded you naturally because they have no patience to continue the struggle and continue improving skills. The quitters in fact make the task easier for you.

Half of those currently listed under professionals are not serious. So, don't get disheartened by confrontations with a very large number of bidders. If you can continue and persist, you will likely break ice before you can imagine.

Remember, landing a job on elance requires not extraordinary IQ or talent. All it takes is a systematic course of action combined with persistence.    

What problems you are likely to face as an online freelance writer?

There are both rewards and punishments to online writing career. The rewards are flexibility and freedom and in many cases handsome remuneration. A majority of the online freelance writers are struggling writers. But then, most of them also have a day job and are happy with some additional income. There are other writers including students and housewives who need just about some additional income.

Problems the online freelance writers face 

If you are not from a nation where English is the first language, you will not get many higher paying jobs. Writing companies like Demand Studios, Text Broker, and several more with decent flow of jobs and fairly standard pay per article have closed their gates to entry for writers whose native language is not English. I am also one of their victims. Yahoo Content Network doesn't even pay residual income to non-U.S writers although you are free to write for them. Most of the unpaid writers probably write for them just to build the links to their blogs, which has its own rewards.

Additionally, for every legitimate online paying sites, there are five to ten scams. A beginning writer may fall in their trap. However, there is a strategy to choose a site to write for. It is highly recommended that you check the background of the site. It can be as easy as using the search term "(name of the site) Review" in Google. Read the reviews, you will most likely have some idea about the site.

Which writing sites to avoid
If a site does not give their physical address, phone number and other details, it is best to avoid them. However, in many cases, I have been paid regularly by them. So, what I stated is not a hard and fast, strict strategy. However, just in case they run away with your money, there's nothing you can do. Most of the scam online writing companies, according to sources are from India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Ukraine.

Which is the place to begin writing
Some of the companies I found legitimate and well paying are Independent Publishing (The minimum pay for a bronze writer is $4.66 for a 250-word write up and goes up several times over for silver and gold writers). However, they are not always flooded with jobs, but when the jobs come pouring in they are more than you can handle. So you can earn fairly good income within a span of few weeks when jobs exist on their job boards.

The other good writing company is Content Current. They pay about $7 for an article of about 400 words. This company also cannot assure you with year round flow of jobs. But you need to keep checking their dashboard. I didn't. So, they kicked me out for my inactivity.

Recently, I came across another site called Scripted. Their pay rate is probably one among the best. You can hope to earn anywhere from $24 to $150 for a 450 word blog post. Also, you cannot write for any niche you may want to but only for those you are selected to write out of about 15 to 20 niches. They are very strict on deadlines and quality. Make a mistake on any of the two, and you're kicked out for good.

There are many more sites that you can try.

How to overcome the problems you face  
A writer attempting to make living off online writing may face the basic problem every freelance writer faces sometime or the other. You may not always have enough work or jobs that pay well. This problem can be addressed only over a time, and not overnight.
(i) Multiple sources: It is best to subscribe to several jobs rather than remain stuck with one source.
(ii) Build residual income source: When you begin building residual income source on hubpages and Squiddo,  or other sources, you will eventually find an additional revenue stream paying you month after month.
(iii) Continue to bid: Companies like elance, ODesk, and Guru are among the top companies for freelancers. There are several more. As you persist in bidding for jobs at these sites, you will eventually begin getting jobs.
(iv) Build your blog: You may begin with free blog available at Blogger or Wordpress. There are several more companies that offer free blog. It will take few minutes to set up your free blog and you may begin posting immediately. It will showcase your talent. You may eventually consider switching to paid blog @ up to $10 or less per year.
(v) There is a very wonderful site called fanBox. You can post almost anything there. They allow you to plagiarize and post articles directly from other sites and pay you as well. They offer multiple opportunities to earn from posting, categorizing and rating, selling your products and services and many more.

However, I would like to caution beginning writers not to leave their day job for a while. Once, you are better established in the online world with regular online income, you may consider bidding your day job a good bye.