How to promote your profile on Odessa?

Question

Freelance

In short, I'm tired of writing cover letters.
Guys, tell me how to drive your profile by dress.
Do the tags or categories you apply to affect how you are ranked by odesk in the category search for freelancers?
And then I'm alone html and css. No tags like 'website-development' appear anywhere, if there are such (because lol I don't do it, I'm not an Indian), how does Odessa itself choose who to show and who not?
Even in the profile there is a bare minimum of a free-tender (html/css/js, preprocessors, git). There is no heresy like PSD_TWO_STML, and other garbage. I want to be top 1 forever.
I have already been in the tops for html/css/TWITTER-BOOTSTRAP with a frequency of 2 weeks. But this is not enough, customers rarely search by tags.
Do I need to turn my cozy cute profile with Jedi and Darth Vader into crap like me "jack of all trades, php, c##, assembler, objective-c, pochinka-myasorubok-ryazan-tombov" and all that? Tell me plz.
And then soon the sweet contract will end, again you will have to write letterers.
How to get into the top category of web-development?
And where, for example, in the Web Development category is a subcategory like "Front End". What the hell is with "Web Programming"? Am I some kind of web programmer? LOL what? Did Odesk go completely crazy there? By the way, I just noticed right now, WTF. Web programming, em. In short, there is not even a place for me. Hmm. I went to write support.
Puma Thailand, summon.

Answer 1

Why promote it?
For the last two years, I've been cleaning 25-50% of my clients twice a year because I don't have time to work for them.
Actually what is needed for promotion? It's just good to work for the minimum sane period, at least a couple of years in full time.
In total, you will have a profile with 4000 hours worked, 5.0 feedback and a bunch of regular customers.
Taking into account the fact that you are a programmer and, apparently, you send letters not like me, 20 letters a day, but only in between work, that is, once every few months.
What difference does it make how it shows you in the search, in general, the invitations themselves are rarely sent by customers on Odessa, even with my dead profile on Elance, offers to work there come more often.
Work hard and you will always be top1.
Do you receive an annual letter from Odessa that you are at least in the top 1% of freelancers on Odessa? So far, I have not been able to enter above the top 5%, but I also had a one-year break in work.

Answer 2

Judging by the way you described the question on the Toaster (with the terms "lolchto", "rebza", WTF, etc.), I suspect what kind of cover letter you have. Be careful with your language, this is a business, not a forum for grades 8-10. It's amazing how the moderators let this pass.
Speaking to the point (I hope I understand what's the matter): Odesk has been doing something unclear with search and ranking lately.
At the beginning of the year, according to my 2-3 target queries in a narrow niche, I was in 1-2 place.
Then I had a long break where I indicated that I was not available. But periodically monitor competitors. Moreover, half already began to know in person.
A month ago, I reopened my profile, edited it a bit, and started actively writing cover letters. A couple of days later I turned out to be the fourth (this is the norm) in one of the requests (I monitor by "Find freelancers"). And now, somewhere very far away.
What is most interesting: 90 percent of my competitors also disappeared from the top positions (it happened recently). As a result, according to my target requests, some individuals who have a mediocre relationship to this niche can sometimes fly out.
It is possible that Odesk makes changes to the ranking algorithms from time to time. And customers cannot find relevant performers for themselves.
Elance is doing better with this, so far. Yes, and there is the possibility of some kind of paid promotion of your profile.

Answer 3

You need to beat a lot when it comes to oDesk. But in general it makes little sense. To knock down small shabashki and build a portfolio at the initial stages, perhaps. It’s better to look for a full-time remote, but here it’s more serious. I am a dotnetchik, a hundred competitors easily run into a tasty vacancy. Mostly Indians, of course, and therefore it is not so difficult to get through among them for an interview. But in the interview, in any case, you will have to prove why you should be taken. It is very important to know English here. They didn’t hire me 3 times in the last couple of months due to poor conversational ...