Comments on: Why Elance Failed and Odesk Succeeded as the “eBay of Outsourcing”

By: Why Elance failed? Serious business can’t depend on freelancers for outsourcing. | Blog about Virtual Assistant, Outsourcing, KPO, BPO and China

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 06:04:28 +0000

[...] The following article is one of the best analysis of why Elance failed. You can read the original post here. [...]

By: Justin Toth

Justin Toth — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 17:09:30 +0000

Totally agree on elance, it’s just a bunch of Indian developers bidding $2-10/hour. Ignorant employers think they’re getting a good deal but what they end up with are time zone differences of 12 hours, developers who can’t understand requirements or communicate with the employer, and developers who are sorely lacking in their programming skills (the best laughs I’ve ever gotten about programming work were by Indians.) Now there are a few exceptions, I’ve worked with maybe 2 hot shot Indian developers, but you have a less than 1% chance of finding one…

The quality employers who understand this don’t use these sites (elance, guru, odesk, etc…) and neither do the quality developers for the same reason. These sites are for ignorant and cheap employers and for 3rd-world second-rate developers, enough said…

By: HG

HG — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 23:07:03 +0000

I found this interesting piece written by someone who has worked on both these sites, and I found this piece quite objective and interesting.
http://www.fruitsack.com/2010/01/elance-vs-odesk-vs-guru-the-best-freelance-site-to-start-making-money-online/

I do understand that cheap jobs being outsourced cause a problem to hardworking Americans, but that is the future whether we like it or not, and the sooner we realize this, the better it is going to be for the US worker. We need to compete with our skills, not price. People forget that there are businesses out there that still look for quality and not price alone.

As the saying goes, if you throw peanuts, you will only attract monkeys
That’s my 2 cents take on this issue.

By: Giriraj

Giriraj — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 09:18:48 +0000

I believe Jessica, first of all the east Indians are corrupt, take the case of the founder of ELance “srini Anumolu” he was caught cheating the SEC in a fraud case. All the Indians are corrupt and misleading in their business deals. We don’t want to support these crooks who spoil healthy business. Check out http://trump21.blogspot.com/ on many more corrupt practices by these little east Indians

By: Hallie

Hallie — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 03:37:33 +0000

eLance is a bit ghetto, but oDesk is a slum and like its fellow slum eBay, will keep drawing the worst of the worst until it collapses into a giant steaming dung heap.

By: Ian Ippolito

Ian Ippolito — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:22:00 +0000

Odesk was a great innovator of the pay-for-time model, but it, Elance and the entire industy have changed a lot since this article was published. We have compiled a more up to date comarison of the differences between the sites. Please see:

http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/DotNet/misc/CompetitorInformation/WhyRentACoder_ForBuyers.aspx

Ian Ippolito
Rent a Coder

By: roger murray

roger murray — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:06:55 +0000

Jessica is definitely an internal sales person (fake?) for oDesk!
Now it seems things have turned back against them !!

By: ThisPinoy-AM

ThisPinoy-AM — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:16:47 +0000

I wouldn’t consider people cheap especially when someone considers the currency exchange rate. $500 in the Philippines can get me a high rise apartment in Downtown Makati. Try to find that in New York City I doubt you will be living in Manhattan if you could. People forget that the US currency is more than double in some parts of the world so when someone is bidding @2 an hour or $6 it would seem outrageous for an American because our cost of living is so high in the states. Since I notice alot of the job posters are from the US the only blame a person can put on low ballers is our own fault for not wanting to pay the local web developers the going rate in the US which believe me I can understand since the average going rate for any type of ecommerce site is around $10,000 at least but like I always tell the people who complain.. “If you want it so bad then pick up a book and learn how to do it yourself.” You think joe the plumber is going to come to your house to change out your one little pipe for $10 bucks which is what it would’ve cost you if you did it your self. Maybe people should start biding plumbing jobs to mexico? Although sarcastic the point being said is that don’t knock these people who are trying to make a living in a rough world. It’s not their fault the exchange rate works for them and not for you. just my 2Cents..

By: jararn

jararn — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:29:55 +0000

i think they are both good, but the worst one is rentacoder

By: Logical

Logical — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:34:55 +0000

You are a founder – that’s good on paper. The quality of a person depends on how to choose the perfect service provider. Yes there are numerous bogus service providers – but everyone is not bogus – there are people who are getting their work done from elance / osdesk. I saw sometime cross posting – someone is posting a project on elance.. and then i saw the same project being posted by the service provider on freelancer – that’s funny!. The truth is there are bogus service providers – but there are other side of the coin – there are bogus project posters. Who want their entire startup done in mere $500.

And what do you mean by cheap indians – infact you should join an ashram in himalayas and cool down your head. You shouldn’t blame somebody who are trying to get your work done. There are lots of US based startups – whose initial programming is done by indians – and its generates jobs and indirectly +vely affects the economy of your country.

And lastly you are talking about America – your ancestors captured it (from native americans) – you got everything for free – Now you can’t take competition from indians / chinese