One of the questions that I get asked a lot is whether a site like guru.com is worthwhile for freelance writers and other professional writers. Whether or not a site is worth it depends, of course, on your definition of worth it. For my purposes, I figure that if I’m going to take the time and effort to apply for something and handle the process of getting the gig, writing the product, and then getting paid for the job, it has to pay a certain amount of money. How much money that is depends upon the freelancer involved.
So, to see if a job site like guru.com is good for freelancers, I setup a quick profile and then did a search. For my search, I chose the entire Writing / Editing / Translation category. Then, I chose to filter out results that require on-site work (what it takes to get me to work on-site is different than what it takes to get me to work remotely.) Lastly, I eliminated all of the jobs listed in the very lowest paying categories. That is, everything that pays less than $250 and everything that pays less than $15 per hour. Those are not high numbers by any stretch of the imagination. Lastly, I eliminated any jobs that did not say how much they wanted to pay, or chose "Don’t Know."
Trust me, when I tell you that anyone who doesn’t know what they want to pay, wants to pay something that is too low. I have never, ever, ever, encountered a prospective client who talked to me about their project and when they heard how much it would cost said, "Oh, that’s way lower than what I thought." If someone doesn’t have any idea whatsoever what a project should/would cost, they are either just testing the waters and there might not end up being any job, or they are hoping that they can get a really low price and don’t even want to think about what it might cost them in reality.
Lastly, I left the default parameter to only include projects posted in the last 45 days. That is pretty ridiculous in itself. Unless we are talking about a project that goes through a full RFP process, after 30 days, most projects are already sourced.
The results?
14 projects. That’s right, 14. I think that is pretty much your answer right there. It is not worth a freelance writer’s time to be an active member of a site that will generate a whopping 14 projects that do not pay the bottom rate or require you to be onsite.
So, no, it is not worth it for a professional freelance writer to use guru.com
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Not to mention the fact that I just took a mind numbing, ridiculously low paid job from on there to get through holiday period and after I submitted the first four articles the guy informed me I was too slow (less than 24 hours) and he had assigned the gig to someone else. No pay for me. Day wasted.
Sure not everyone is like that but hard to tell which is which.
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