elance.com

Advantages: Easy to set up
Disadvantages: Impossible to sell

Most of you should not have heard of it... Some of you might have purchased through it. But only a few of you have sold anything through it. Elance is a work / project marketplace, where buyers post works / projects for bidding by sellers. Elance of course offers a listing service - where you can list all the kind of jobs you are able to offer, but according to my experience buyers almost never see those listings, since they are able to post a project ...
...are very good for you. You just have to open a new project to accept bids and sellers review the project and place their bid. You also may request samples of similar works done by the sellers or even - in case of a design project - a draft. If you are not happy with the bidding process - either pricewise or samplewise - you may close the project without any obligation. SELLERS If you are a seller, you will soon find out that you are the golden ... Read review

I own several companies which employ more than a thousand service providers so I enrolled in Elance. I asked Customer Service for support on some areas that was not clear to me, which is normally answered in Guru less than 24 hours. Weeks passed and finally I got a response from them asking me to explain what I want. I sent them several inquiries weeks back and they don't seem to have a record of it. Guru sends me a message and resolves all my problems within 24 hours. I don't blame your reviewers for giving a poor rating on their customer service. So when I tried to cancel my membership for over $1500 dollars, I cannot anymore! Oh well!

Advantages: Excellent Site
Disadvantages: Slow to navigate at times

This is a great auctionplace for selling and buying services over the internet. To use the site you have to register as either a buyer or seller and also register a currency to buy or sell in. Buyers display jobs in various categories and display a price they wish to pay for the service. This is whats know as a reverse auction and as a service provider (seller) your tactic would be to bid a price lower than that of the buyers initial estimate. Buyers ...
...to know that you can provide a service and as such you have to create a profile or portfolio of your work. If you perform some work it is best to look for those providers willing to pay you via escrow so you know you will be paid. Work categories include Writing & Translation, Graphic Design and Legal services. The site allows you to bill the customer. ... Read review

Advantages: Great for job posters and Elance employees
Disadvantages: Horrible for everyone else

This site offers an excellent place for job posters and an absolutely horrible one for service providers. Just take a look at the ratio of postings to service providers. For example, Design and Multimedia has, right now, over thirteen thousand service providers...and only four hundred and twenty-two job postings. Do you want to compete with that many people just to do work? This leads to bargain-bin pricing from many providers, so in order to get ...
...to the floor. And even if you do this, there is still, as stated before, a very low chance of you getting the work. Many jobs are closed without awarding it to anyone. To bid on jobs, you use "connects." These are like little tokens that you use as currency to bid on jobs. Jobs are assigned some number of connects based on its operating budget. So, bidding on a job with an operating budget of $3,000 might cost you 4 or 5 connects...one with a smaller ... Read review

Advantages: Buyers get plenty of competitive bids to get their projects accomplished
Disadvantages: (1) Hefty charges for Service Providers; (2) Mediation policy and refund policy are not reliable.

Elance is a very costly site for service providers. It picks your pocket by both hands - (1) A hefty fee on registration, and (2) Additional 8.75% of the cost of the project, with minimum of $10 (25%, if Project Cost is $50). Its refund policy is also quite defective. For its own fee etc., it uses very prompt methods of payment thru Credit Card, but adopts dilatory tactics by not providing any Link for deposit for the purpose of refund to the buyer, ... Read review