priceless

[Marissa S]

Darren, you should guest blog at Odesk -- love what you wrote here

[Exp U]

Doubt if they'd have me. I'm too sweary for oDesk's frontline. Heh. I'd be the only one there with a full-time personal moderator.

[Lisa R]

The list is a great one, as everyone agrees. It's the same stuff I'm always looking out for as well. On sites like oDesk, it pays to keep your wits about you. Seems you gotta sort through a million scams to find a couple of worthy jobs to apply to (if you can't tell, I'm super picky about where I apply or what invites I accept, LOL). Newbies on any freelance site should read this list...it could save them a ton of grief! oDesk should include much of it in their FAQs or newbie information

[Eva A]

You made my day. I just had to log in my laughter... very funny "I'm too sweary for oDesk's frontline. Heh. I'd be the only one there with a full-time personal moderator."

[Louis D]

Very comprehensive: I like it. All of these signs push my buttons (don't get me started about sub-contracting: take 95% and pay the contractor the rest in some cases). Another sign for me personally is people who bark orders or are snappy and rude in their job descriptions, things like: "SUCH SUCH WILL NOT BE READ I IF [insert term].... OTHERWISE I WILL DELETE YOUR APPLICATION IMMEDIATELY". Or "MUST ATTACH SUCH AND SUCH OTHERWISE YOU ARE WASTING MY TIME". Just generally very coarse militarized writing.. often in capitals. Turns me right-off. Nothing wrong with putting a few specifications or clauses in there for sure but barking things like some maniac suggests a buyer who has an incompatible attitude to mine. Generally the job description will give insights to who you are dealing with and nothing does it for me more than a nicely written, tight and to the point job description with a dash of respect thrown in. But that's just me anyway - some folk might like that kind of thing.

[Alex W]

Agree. Avoid such.

[Mark T]

I think the biggest rule is not to be too eager to get your first job. 

[Nancy C]

I totally agree with Darren, he knows what he is talking about.I've experienced quite a bit of what he wrote about and i'm going to save this info for future use. Some of this job offers are not worth 'my' grain of salt, my time or my resource i sincerely would want to work with the few good buyers over multiple of unserious and ridiculous offers anyday. I am worth far more than i put on odesk, if they can't see it... well too bad their loss not mine.

[Emily H]

Thanks for this post. I should add, for us writers: "I want high-quality NATIVE English writers ONLY! No spinning/re-writes, ORIGINAL WORK ONLY!) (there's your barking orders).... then followed by a LONG list of extensive qualifications: 5 years writing experience, high scores on multitudes of Odesk tests, 100 Odesk hours, and another rant reiterating the high quality they expect. Then the pay: 1 dollar per article. Right. Yeah. Good luck with that. For 1 dollar an article, you'll be lucky to get spun stuff. Second: Those job posts about editing, which look good upfront. "I just need someone to edit this _____ I wrote. It's about 50 pages". You take the job, thinking you're going to read through and correct punctuation errors, maybe re-word some awkward sentences. Pay seems reasonable.... and then you receive your 50 pages of stuff to go through, and the amount of work ends up equaling out to about 50 cents per hour.... because the person is completely illiterate. Probably it's an ebook they paid someone else on here 30 dollars to write.

[Christy W]

"Probably it's an ebook they paid someone else on here 30 dollars to write." HAAAAAAAAHAHAHAAAA