Email I received last night is one reason I no longer work on freelancer markets

[loucal]

Names changed to protect the (not so) innocent.

----Start email---- Hi Modest Freelancer,

I hired you on oDesk more than a year ago.

I have hired 50 people on oDdesk and they have all given me 5-stars ratings except you. You gave me one star.

I'd like to offer you the opportunity to rate me 5 stars.

So far, I have not rated our project together. If you do it, I will give you 5-stars in return.

If you don't, I will give you 1 star also, dropping your rating significantly.

Let's be frank. Very few people deserve just one star, I certainly didn't. I don't know what made you react to me so angrily, but you got paid for your project, so I couldn't have been that bad, not with all these other great ratings. Whatever happened was just a miscommunication.

If you go to your "past projects" you should be able to find the project and change the rating, or contact customer support to do so.

Let me know what you decide. Thanks.

- The Man ----End email----

FWIW odesk responded promptly when I alerted them to this and they said it is not tolerated. Ironically odesk feedback closes after 14 days so after I told him I would not be strongarmed he told me 'Now you get the one star' and 'You're your own worst enemy'(I love that one). Presumably, that was before he actually tried to change my feedback and realized he could not.

[loucal]

I have found many more problem clients than decent ones on sites like these. When I do find a good one, I generally finish the work very quickly in order to impress them and it often turns out they only had a day or two of real work to get done. I usually get great feedback, but when I ask if there is any more work I get things like 'we are running out of runway, so just waiting for funding' and 'we got offers for funding we just didn't like the terms' (that "founder" squashed the project within weeks after not getting the offer he wanted which makes me wonder if he ever believed in his product at all) and I end up back searching for new clients and spending inordinate amounts of time finding worthwhile contracts. I have been trying to refocus to more word of mouth networking as it seems this brings much higher quality contracts. What does the HN community think?

[alasdair_ → loucal]

Increase your rates. The people willing to pat well for your area ("well" may mean as low as $25 if you are in the Philippines of course) generally appreciate the value of good developers more than the people offering literally a couple of dollars per hour.

[brickcap → loucal]

I had pretty much the same experience that you did. Odesk can offer good amount of work for someone just starting (many clients are willing to take risks on people with no rating in exchange of less wages) but once you've established yourself it is time to move out. One of the best ways to do that is to start working with principals directly. You've already done a bunch of work for a bunch of people. You know what they do , you know who they serve. All you got to do know is market to those people directly.

It is not as difficult as you might think. Extract a bunch of choicest testimonials and put them on your website along with a description of what you do. While this won't get you new clients(at least until you start optimizing for keywords) it will definitely make you more appealing to those who you market to directly and when they do background checks on who you are and what you do before giving you work. Treat your website as your "reputation certificate" :) If you design it well you can leave a good impression on those who come visit.

The hard part is marketing. If you work for people in the technology you should have pretty good response by sending them emails directly and if you do it right you can set up an interview or two with them. If these interviews convert to actual paid work this will be much more profitable and long lasting than the contracts you took on odesk 'cause of two simple reasons:

1. In the "real" world people are much more open to form alliances for mutual benefit. On internet they can say to themselves "meh we will find another. More from where he came!"

2. Network effects are much much stronger. Or maybe I should say "convertible". I have had this hunch that once you start to work in the "real" world more people know what you do and you do get more offers just because you "did work for that guy maybe you can help us as well". Odesk and other sites are localized closed market places where they want to keep the talent for themselves and do nothing that may help you grow. Which makes sense because it adds to their appeal when they get to say "you find this freelancer exclusively on odesk". But for you this is not good at all.

The transition can be rough. Be a bit careful. I made the mistake of permanently deleting my odesk account 'cause it was the first google result on my name and clients would not accept anything I charged in excess of that amount (a vicious cycle since I charged little on odesk so I could get more work and now I couldn't do anything about it). That meant that my source of guaranteed work was lost and well... dry spells are not fun :) If you can try to make the transition slowly so it does not hurt your income.

[jibly]

Wow this is pretty insane. It's crazy how those sites seem to have lowered the standard of freelancers significantly. I also find it nearly impossible for a pro freelancer to not be competing with $5h guys that are mass replying on jobs (and usually get them). You should check out: http://www.cnnected.com an experiment to (maybe) solve this problem.

[joshcrowder → jibly]

I like the idea of this, how large is the list at the moment? I'd like to talk more about it can you drop me a message josh[at]seriousfox.co.uk

[hahainternet]

I have also given up on trying to find Go contracting on these markets. It's just a complete waste of time if you try and offer anything that's well planned.

[paulhauggis]

I stopped taking jobs on Odesk because of things like this. I find that the less a company is willing to pay a freelancer (I've seen $2/hour max on Odesk), the less professional they will act.