Six months ago I started my superb freelancing career and registered in some of the best known freelancing sites (Elance, guru, RAC etc.). As you can guess, there’s gonna be a detailed story about each of them, today we warm up with Guru.com, a site I won’t be a member of in few hours.

November 2009. I have started working on Elance and also closed my RAC account (will detail it too in another article). Since I didn’t want to put all my eggs in the same basket, I followed the advice from other freelancers and created an account on Guru.com

Overall the site looks OK. Can’t say I am too pleased with the design (please bear with me, I am a designer, so this matters to me too), but, since I was just coming from RAC with its horrific design, this was a breath of fresh air so to say. The account creation was fast, the profile system pretty interesting, aside the “requirement” of uploading a VIDEO. Christ, what video to upload? I am a web designer, not a top model. My profile was left “incomplete”, but, after 1 hour of work and resizing my design previews, I got a pretty cute profile. Let’s say it inspired professionalism and talent. Was pleased.

At the beginning, since I was just getting my feet wet, I wasn’t too interested in paying for the membership, especially since it meant almost 75 USD for 3 months. OK, 74.95 USD. I don’t like to pay this much without knowing if I will actually like it there and can do business after all. My experience with Elance was better each day, so I was pretty hopeful.

Tried the free membership for few hours, to see what’s there. Of course, NOTHING was available for a non-guru / non-vendor account. I mean nothing. I have scoured the system for any job and after almost 2 hours it was clear to me that, paying was the only option.

Of course, with the idea that I can access few jobs and get my money back, I made the payment for a 3 month Guru account. Took a test too, wait .. 2 (something design related and HTML) so that my possible clients would know I kinda know my stuff. I also presented my best work in the portfolio and, with all lack of modesty, I don’t do ugly stuff.

Then I started bidding. A lot.

In the firs day I bid on 30 projects. All unique bids, with custom presentation to each of them. With link to my portfolio and even to my elance account, so that my potential clients would see how pleased these guys were.

Some projects were awarded to someone else. OK, I though, I didn’t land my first client on Elance in the first 2 minutes. I wanted to see who got the job and maybe how much the overall bid was. I don’t rely a lot on prices, but, since it was a new system to me, it was good to know how prices were there. Nothing like this. Maybe there’s the info somewhere, hidden from the everyday freelancer’s view.

I got 2 invitations though. One contacted me to work outside Guru and I don’t take work outside (especially since I wanted to get some sort of feedback going on, to be able to land more contracts). Few days ago, when I was ready to say I lost 90 bucks for nothing (paid for 2 tests, remember?), another one invited me to the project. We talked a bit and he awarded the project.

Woooohoooo!

And then the “acceptance” came. I am used with the Elance system. Straightforward. We say “accept” and maybe make some changes in the agreement (price, deadline etc.), even if most of the time all I have to do is write “thank you for the opportunity” and click accept. All other details have been solved by the actual bidding and private messages. Armed with a lot of knowledge about how to accept a project, I saw a disturbingly high number of  ’stuff’ to be taken care of. Nope, can’t say “I do” and be happy ever after. There were contracts to be uploaded, all kinds of stuff to be filled in. I was shocked. It would take me an hour to just do this “acceptance” thingy. So I just let my client work with other freelancers he accepted in the project.

Overall my experience with Guru.com showed me what a too complex and heavy system can be. I cannot access vital information for me to make a bid (OK, not expecting the pathetic bids on RAC: “let’s bid 0.5 USD lower, maybe I get the job”), cannot see who’s winning and maybe why, the monthly price is HUGE as compared to what I get, the acceptance system takes HOURS, at least for a newbie in the system etc.

Yes, I got 100 bids / month. Sounds huge compared to the 40 one connect bids you get on Elance. But I pay Elance 15 bucks a month, now I can’t even “eat up” my connects (since I am invited to bid and in many cases I am the only one invited). I started gathering too many connects, wished they could be sold … I lost 25 USD/month on a system that allowed me to earn ZERO dollars. Today they reminded me my membership is expiring. That’s OK. I don’t need Guru anymore. I can lose 90 bucks in a more creative way. Say a casino. Or I could burn the money.