So Elance just banned me without any reason. Where should I find work? | Hacker News Reader

So Elance just banned me without any reason. Where should I find work?

3 pointsatif0896 comments

I am a front end development guy who loves freelancing as a hobby and also likes the part where I make some extra money for doing that ;-)

I had a solid Elance profile for last 7 years and now all of a sudden they suspended by account with a generic (quality purposes) reply as the reason.

Elance was a boon for me, at any point I feel like working, bid on a few projects and I get awarded almost within 3 hours.

I would stay off oDesk and Freelance because those are more like sweatshops and people are looking to hire people at $5 per job.

Now since I cannot use Elance anymore I was wondering where I could find people who would be interested in my service. A couple of forums helped fins some people who needed work but nothing like Elance.

Cheers!

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Not all oDesk offers are $5/hr

If you have good portfolio and know how to write good cover letters you can easily get jobs at $25-$35 hr.

The key is to apply only for jobs where the client has good history of payments. Each oDesk client has an average $/hr rate, so keep that in mind.

Good luck!

(note: I have been using oDesk for 5 years)

I do. I do. :-)

I'll check it out. I have an oDesk profile from 2008 but I never used except for small $10 jobs in 2008 I guess. I'll try updating it and see how it goes.

Could you give us more info, what exactly happened?

Did you email de Elance team to ask why you got banned? If so what did they reply? Did you identify the client that flagged you, if so what did you wrote them, what did they say?

Is there a way to fix things with this client so they write to Elance asking to remove the ban?

I heard good things about toptal.com but their site says they expect to work through the night for the duration of the contract if on another timezone.

I looked into the Elance rates and I see rates of Java Developers at 5 dollars an hour, the same ones that you mention on oDesk and Freelance. Might as well switch to those.

Check https://weworkremotely.com/ from 37signals, careers.stackoverflow.com and jobs.github.com for remote work in general, but not necessarily short term freelancing.

Thank you so much for your reply. This is indeed helpful.

Hi,

Thank you for this. This is very helpfu. I think I got reviewed in Elance because for my last 2 jobs a guy didn't pay me.

He wanted me to work on different projects than we agreed about. When I declined, he wanted to cancel the job and I didn't wanted to cancel it because it hurts my ratings. So he asked me to quote $0 and mark the job as complete. Well that triggered the review flag and Elance started assuming that I am taking clients offline whereas the fact was I almost always do it the other way because I am covered with escrow.

Once the review started they found out that there was another job back in 2011 which was left open because the client stopped responding to me. That's all 3 negative marks in my job history of 60+ jobs.

Before the review process started, I wrote an elaborate mail explaining them all that happened. And the following was their reply

Dear {username},

Thank you for contacting us about your Elance account.

After a careful review, a decision has been made to close your account. Elance requires maintaining a high level of professionalism and trust, and this step was taken to protect the safety and work standards of all Elancers.

At this time, you will need to log into your account and initiate the withdrawal of your funds.

Please be advised that further appeals of this decision may not be responded to as our decision is final.

We wish you all the best.

Regards, The Elance Trust and Safety Team

This reply was enough to piss me off and stimulate my male ego levels and I responded them by a one word reply - "Cool!". I was pissed off to the level that I wanted to startup a rival website to hurt Elance customer but then decisions taken in anger not always good. So, I will keep off the plan until I reach an enough mature state where I have enough experience and skills to actually give a tough competition for Elance.

For now I think I will check out the websites you sent and see if I can get something. Ideally I would love to work on a product which pays me little money and equity. I had no luck from angel.co yet. Got about 20+ introductions but no serious work offer. So I guess there could be something wrong from my side too.

Currently trying my luck on LinkedIn connecting with as many people as I can.

P.S - If you are looking for a Frontend developer / Full Stack (NodeJS/PHP) dev partner, please check me out http://goo.gl/VJzbGl

Personal experience: I've had a lot more luck on the HN monthly freelancer post than on Odesk/Elance/Freelancer.

Thanks a lot. I'll check it out this month.

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