What difficulties arise when freelancing on odesk, elance, freelancer.com?

Question

Freelance

I'm going to hold a free webinar in November for friends who work on Western exchanges (odesk, elance, freelancer). many now have difficulties with Russian customers
. The main questions for discussion are:
- where to start working if you have never freelanced at all
- how to solve problems with the language when communicating
- how to compete with the Indians and Chinese
- how to find orders for the development team
What other difficulties arise? Please share if anyone has encountered difficulties in working on Western freelance exchanges.

Answer 1

Started working this month. In principle, there are no problems with competition - serious developers are in demand regardless of where they are located and they pay a lot because they are few. (especially if narrow specialization).
The difficulty is precisely with getting the first orders, because there are no reviews, and without reviews it is difficult to get orders. In the beginning, you need to take any orders - it is easiest to get those with a small payment (5-10 bucks) that Europeans / Americans give (because 5-10 bucks is not much for them and they will gladly take the risk of hiring you).
I completed the first order in 20 minutes (changing the output order of rows when exporting to CSV), the client left an enthusiastic 5 star review. In principle, such work is sufficient. If you have 3-4 reviews, you can easily get hired for a short hourly job. (about 1-10 hours). Then you can already take on serious work and set about $ 15 - $ 20 per hour.
How to solve problems with the language - I do not know. Probably should learn it :). By the way, it’s hard for narrowly focused specialists in web development on oDeske (I judge by myself), they are constantly looking for Full Stack which are Frontend + Backend.
In principle, everything that I understood in a month - I wrote it off. By the way, if you take a job, but feel that you can’t complete it, you can apologize and refuse as soon as possible. You won't get any money, but you won't get any bad reviews either. It's comfortable.

Answer 2

Yes, the same as everywhere else, a lot of money, a drop in motivation, apathy and fatigue.
1) You just need to start working, there are no secrets here, they pay money for work from this and you have to start.
2) Googletranslate, courses, recalling school and university programs in English.
3) Do not compete with them, you cannot win against them, their life is cheaper. I don’t know how much you have to be a bad employee in order to start competing with them in the same niche.
4) As well as not for the team, the search is no different, you monitor the exchange pumainthailand.com/eshhyo-odin-horoshij-servis-dly
... we are hired , we work

Answer 3

I have slightly more experience with oDesk than naneri , but the opinion is largely the same.
First, it's worth saying right away that working directly through oDesk or elance "encourages" you to work more and better thanks to their time tracking programs.
Secondly, for example, I did absolutely no "small" works for the sake of reviews. How to start working successfully on oDesk is written in detail on the same oDesk. Write individual Cover Letters, try to understand what a potential customer needs, know your real price.
The first hourly was for 50 hours for 12$\h, then there was a customer for 18$\h, for whom I had already worked about 200 hours.
I honestly write in my profile and resume that I came to the freelance exchange after a certain experience in the offices of large organizations, I describe my real experience and achievements. If you do it qualitatively, the customer will understand that you are a specialist even without reviews.
Just learning a language is very useful not only for communication, but also for work, and for the brain as a whole.
Are you sure you need it? I attributed myself and continue to refer to another segment of the market. Understand there are several types of orders. In some it is necessary "what would work", in others "what would work, it was done with high quality, beautiful, extensible", others want a mix of both in different proportions. Of course, I would like to classify myself as the “cream”, but objectively I am still above the average Indian on oDesk, the customer is ready to pay me $18 per hour, many Indians ask for 5, why do you think the customer did not go to the next one?
team