I love Labor Day, mainly because it marks the end of the summer with cooler weather on the way, all the kids are back in school, and football season is about to go into full swing. What I don’t like, and I am sure all those who continue to look for full-time work day after day don’t like either, is the reminder that Labor Day is technically for those who labor (that is labor in that stereotypical means created years ago by that industrial revelation we had), not those who labor looking for labor.
A Labor of Love
For all practical purposes, I have been looking for a full-time labor of love match since we sold our book business about three years ago (see How I Can Save Your Business Money from back in April, or the other articles at the bottom of this post). Although I have a great part time job, work more than full time at graduate school, and my days are busier now than they ever have been, looking for and finding a full-time position that matches both person and company has been one of the most difficult endeavors of my now 20+ year working life.
I have found more jobs and “careers” than I knew existed and made more connections with my resume than I can count. [On a side note, if you are a single college student in or around the Auburn area, there is a company looking for OSHA "inspectors" to work on barges in the Gulf of Mexico, no experience needed, pay is great, 21 days on 21 days off, and you get to fly to work.]
It is the Economy Stupid
After a while you just scratch your head in amazement at this current marketplace. Resumes and 3-piece suits are not what they use to be 20 years ago (thank goodness), but the lack of practical sense in some HR departments is almost comical, and expectations some business owners have is borderline ridiculous. Just for means of example, I give you one from this past week:
I had a company contact me from my blog asking if I would be interesting in writing articles for their website? Why sure, sounds great. I only have about 10-15 years experience writing well researched, SEO packed, properly formatted content, including about 1,000 articles on this blog alone, sounds great. His email to me then gave me a list of things he wanted me to do, including writing two articles for him so he could get an idea of my writing style, then after that, if they were interested, they would be happy to pay me $.007/word for 200-400 word articles? Yeah, that was a whopping $1.40-$2.80 per article. Probably cost me more to power my computer for that length of time than they would pay me. I get those all the time, and never reply to them, but someone out there does I’m sure.
Labor Day for All Labor
So today, at least in my mind, we can take some rest from those things which we do to sustain life. Enjoy what is probably a beautiful day outside since the calendar reads September, and be thankful for the work we are given to do.
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This is a followup, and part 2 of a 4 part series, on the work at home factory job of today (read part 1, The Work at Home Job Scam, the New Factory. This post deals with the freelance job market, the upcoming posts will deal with the call center jobs and Internet evaluator or website annotator jobs. Keep in mind the term “freelance” encompasses a huge genre of work from photography to writing to virtual assistant to anything you can find on Craigslist in the job area. The scope of this post is really just dealing with Elance and the Elance alternatives.
Elance is the biggest player in the Internet freelance job area. After paying for their premium service for 2-3 years, and trying over and over for years to find a good flow of freelance jobs, I found exactly one decent hard working person who hired me to do some ‘Internet research” for $10/hr, which over a period of 6 months has earned me $85. I still do work for him, he is trying to build his business, and he pays higher than most at $10/hr, but after almost three years, I have found nothing legitimate and it cost me $14.99/month ($450) for revenues totalling $80.
I am not here to say Elance or the others are scams (although there are posting scams all over the place), I am just trying to point out the value of your time and what it is worth.
There are plenty of alternatives to Elance like oDesk, Guru, Rentacoder, Scriptlance, Mturk, Freelancer, Getacoder, and some of my observations from sites like these are:
- there are always tons of jobs available
- Elance at least has it down to a science as far as pay and project organization
- you are competing with an endless supply of workers from India who charge $1/hr (yes, on average your competition will charge $1-2 PER HOUR)
- you have to work literally for nothing to get started by taking projects that will pay $50 for 30 hours of work
- you are competing with noobs and people who have no idea how to run a legitamate business who will do anything for nothing, though their work is often very low quality, something you can easily overcome
- quality is not valued as a whole… I have found the large majority of listings on these sites are looking for the cheapest possible outcome, with no regards for quality work
- and of course, there are tons of scams everywhere you look, offers for work that will have your ISP ban your service, have eBay shut down your account, or worse… some offers might reward you with a federal search warrant and your computer equipment confiscated
Of course not all freelance work is like this, but I know of many people, who live and work within the U.S. and have to pay expenses associated with living in this country, not India. You can only work for nothing for so long, eventually you have to either cut all expenses (not realistic) or have some revenue.
I have basically worked freelance as a photographer for more than 15 years and the key is to slowly build a client base that will recommend your work to others. It is slow, tedious, and doesn’t pay well, but it’s far better in the long run than the results from these sites listed above.
Do yourself a favor in the long run. If you are interested in doing freelance work, treat your business like you would any other entrepreneurial endeavor by looking at some of the basics. For what it’s worth, my list also includes ::
- Don’t quit your revenue stream (job) until you are established
- Determine what unique skill or art you are going to freelance (what’s your market)
- Be prepared not to make any money early on, but even so, stay away from the sites above
- Pursue your passion, not a position
- Know that trying to monetizing your passion may destroy it or at least significantly change it
- Seeking alternative “positions” in that industry may also destroy your passion
- Seek out others who are doing the same thing and try to learn as much as you can from them
- Working more hours will not always equal better results
- Trying to integrate your passion into #1 above (results may vary)
- If you can mentally live without a steady paycheck, a 401(k), a retirement package, and stability, forget about #1 and pursue your passion instead of the culturally accepted “American Dream” but when you struggle to find your way, re-read #3, then, as Buffett would say, breathe in, breathe out, and move on. My wife and I went over 15 years without a single paycheck (the W-2 type) and I still managed to eat.
Have you had any experience with Elance or any of the other sites listed above? In my experience most, if not all, of these sites way over promise and way under-deliver for those with quality, experience, and education in their field. I would love to hear if you have had any success with any of them in your freelance pursuits.
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It costs me $20-$30 per hour worked to have a work at home job. Working from home is totally different, I am talking about a specific classification of job, the work at home job. The job that targets those who want to spend more time with their family, not waste half their life in traffic, the homeschool mom, the out of work in between work individual.
Notice I didn’t say it made me x-amount of money, but it has cost me x-amount of money. That is the difference between today’s standard work at home job and one you have to actually drive to get to, between $20-$30 per hour less even though today, most jobs can be done from anywhere.
If you are looking for the newest in sweat shop factory work (and there are tons of people who are), you won’t find it at the local tire or car plant. No way, their union wages are far too high ($50-$75/hr) to compare with these jobs. The new factory work in our culture today is the work at home job. After owning my own business for 15-20 years (and running it from my own home no less) I never understood the extent of the work at home scam until I started looking for one of these great jobs. I figured that there was some company that could see the value in hiring me, a Linchpin, to work from my home office, but after 2-3 years of searching, and working, now I’m not so sure.
I will review a few companies and positions in a series of upcoming posts for those who are still looking since every time I came across one of these positions, I had to find a decent review about the company (look at forums and sites like WAHM, JobVent or GlassDoor.com) to find out if it was an actual scam or not. Most were not scams in the technical sense of the word, but I am amazed at what conditions we are now willing to accept just so we can have a work at home job (there is a huge difference in working from home and work at home).
Most of these jobs pay under $10 per hour (many well under, like $5-7/hr) and in the U.S. you will be lucky to cover your home office expenses for that. Generally you are required to put in a specific volume of tasks per hour, calls per hour or however they rate you, and always follow the manual, map, guide, instructions with no deviation. Most hire you as contract labor so they don’t have to pay taxes, worry about law suits, pay for training, or pay for any benefits whatsoever.
The difference that makes one job an actual scam, or at least a big clue, and the other job not a scam is if they require you to pay them for the job. Most of these work at home jobs don’t go that far into the true scam world, they are factories of course, not scams. They do go as far as paying you by the minute, requiring you to incorporate, and require you to take “tests” to become qualified, and they don’t pay for your training. These “tests” are in essence the very work of the job, work you do for free because it is part of the “interview” (I took a 10-15 hour “test” to “qualify” and later realized that I was doing their actual work, unpaid of course).
In each site or company I list in my upcoming posts I am only showing the most obvious match, and those I have direct experience with in the past. Under the surface there are tons of companies all doing the same thing, looking for the cheapest most expendable warm body, but I know for some, any job is better than no job, and I totally understand that.
The list could be endless. You have freelance work, call center (centre) jobs, tech support, customer service, programming, search engine evaluators, data entry and so on. In these three upcoming posts I will highlight the three areas I have looked at the most, freelance, call center, and search engine evaluator (or annotator, search engine technician, ads quality rater, etc). For those of you who are looking for a meaningful job where you can add value to the company, I have an exahustive list of who to avoid, but I would love to hear from you too. Good luck in your search.
