[no2pencil]

Hrm, interesting perspective. Are you complaining because you are a coder or a buyer? Most projects I've been on specifically state that they want details in the bid, or they get rejected.

My opinion : You can't fix stupid.

& as I've always said, any project that will accept a $10 offer on an obviously $1000 or higher project ... I don't want to work on that project anyhow. They obviously don't value their own time & saving money is worth more than having a good product.

[MentalFloss]

Quote

Hrm, interesting perspective. Are you complaining because you are a coder or a buyer? Most projects I've been on specifically state that they want details in the bid, or they get rejected.

My opinion : You can't fix stupid.

& as I've always said, any project that will accept a $10 offer on an obviously $1000 or higher project ... I don't want to work on that project anyhow. They obviously don't value their own time & saving money is worth more than having a good product.

Well, I signed up as a coder and tried to get some jobs but never got anything. I saw plenty of spam messages on every single job posting though.

[RACNicole]

MentalFloss, on 13 April 2010 - 01:47 PM, said:

I'd like to find a freelance site that doesn't have a million bids with:

Quote

Hi. Ur projekt intristes me much. Please to PM me and discuss.

GetAFreelancer and RentACoder do nothing to curb the endless project spam posts.

Maybe Nicole will come back and set me straight but quite frankly, I'd enjoy if both those sites fizzled out of existence.

Hi MentalFloss. Please excuse my delay in responding. It is against Rentacoder's TOS to post jobs that encourage spamming. Because we get so many job proposals a day however, it's nearly impossible to catch all jobs that violate this particular part of our TOS. That's why we encourage all members of our site to report them to a facilitator. If you see a job proposal on our site that violates our TOS, please help us remove it through this form: http://www.rentacode...sc/Feedback.asp

[dsherohman]

RACNicole, on 12 April 2010 - 11:21 PM, said:

Rent a Coder allows you to verify your time spent on a project by punching in and out of a real-time card application which records your desktop and webcam.

I'm so sorry to hear that RAC has joined odesk in the "we're going to treat you like children" camp. But, then, I stopped using RAC a couple years ago anyhow because of the overall low quality of projects posted there (which is nothing specific to RAC - "write a 100% functional facebook clone by next Tuesday for $150" projects are endemic to that entire genre of sites).

Since I present myself as as the professional software developer that I am and I deliver good value for the money, I am able to charge my clients either project-based or hourly rates as appropriate to the project and, in nearly six years of working freelance, mostly for clients I've never met in person, I have never had a client question my reported hours. Not once. Nor have they ever attempted to monitor my time directly, aside from the four months or so out of that six years which were spent working at client sites.

Oh, and I charge a lot more these days than I could ever get on RAC (or similar sites), even with my "over 99.5 percentile"/"Top Coder" rating. (I would post the exact percentile, but RAC won't even let me view my profile - a non-tax-relevant activity - without submitting tax forms to them.)

RACNicole, on 12 April 2010 - 11:21 PM, said:

At Rentacoder, we offer arbitration on all projects free of charge and we test your deliverables to make sure they meet requirements so that you can get paid. We also prevent abusive buyers from stalling the start of arbitration. As a result, 45% of our arbitrations are completed under a day. 75% under a week. We additionally publicize the detailed rules of how our arbitrators make their decisions.

Kudos on speeding up your arbitration process! In my time on RAC, I did two or three self-arbitrations (where the buyer and I were in agreement, so no RAC arbitrators needed to be involved other than to review and approve our terms) and filed for one 'real' arbitration, which ended up being settled between us during the week-long waiting period before the arbitration even started.

[husseycoding]

In my experience, steer clear of any such sites if you want to make any money from selling your skills.

The only benefit which may come is the very occasional decent contact, but even this is few and far between.