As an employer oDesk is a great place to outsource any extra work you may have. As a worker, it’s somewhere you can join up with a team of workers to work on larger projects than you could accomplish by yourself.
In this oDesk review, let’s look at some of the features you’ll get as a oDesk worker. It’s free to bid on projects! That’s always a great sign (as long as they aren’t tricking you, which they aren’t). The only thing that might be tricky is finding projects that pay more than a few dollars per hour.
oDesk is full of projects that have a budget of under $20. This is what turned me off to the site, as I generally want to bid on projects that pay at least $50 or it’s not worth my time. If you included all the current projects on the site, the average bid price on them might be $4/hr. I’ve counted endless amounts of projects where average bid was under $3/hr and I had no chance to compete!
Enough about the obviously large amount of outsourcing and subcontracting going on at oDesk. The best features of oDesk are the free tests and free bidding. This is what lets you, as a freelancer, stand out from others and demand a higher pay rate. They have free tests on everything from PHP5 to basic English proficiency. The more tests you pass, the more free bids you have per week.
I think oDesk is even better for employers, as they can get so much work done for so little cash. A lot of these jobs will be going to foreign shores, but if that’s alright with you then you will have a constant stream of cheap, quality labor on hand. oDesk also has one of the best time tracking systems of all freelancing/telecommuting websites, to make sure freelancers are tracking their time correctly and are paid accordingly. After thinking about my oDesk review, I would have to say oDesk is one of the top 3 telecommuting websites on the Internet today.