Guru: The Best Online Auction Site for Freelance Writing

The web site that started me off from taking freelancing from a side income to a full time income was Guru.com. Guru and Elance are considered the two best auction based web sites for freelancers, especially for freelance writers. These are sites where employers get to post descriptions of their projects for free, and freelancers are allowed to bid on them.

Two absolutely essential pieces of advice if you are looking to build up a freelance reputation on Guru:

1) Buy a year long subscription. Last I checked it was somewhere around $125, and it is cheaper than going month to month. It is well worth the cost. One good job, or even six minimum wage jobs (the least a person can bid is $25--that's always the absolute minimum you will earn) will cover the subscription price easily. Everything after that is profit.

2) Have patience! If you're starting out it takes time. Think about it from an employer's point of view: you have two bids, one person has ten jobs in his/her history and $1,000 in earnings with a five star rating, the other has no background. Which would you choose?

It takes time, but look at any ad that says "new writers welcome" or "SEO," or look for jobs that are ridiculously cheap. I would never again write ten 500 word articles for $30, but to get that initial positive feedback and job under my belt, I would to get going. And early on, every dollar counts. Getting the positive feedback is huge, and the more you build up, the more employers will come knocking on your door.

Elance is said to have a higher ceiling than Guru, meaning that while it's extremely difficult to make a living wage just off of Guru, there are many authors who do so off of Elance right now. That may be true, and Elance's minimum fee for a job is $50, which sounds good for freelancers, but I've noticed that it's harder to get started there and the set up is much less user friendly than Guru is. Guru is more open to new writers.