Friday, December 06, 2002
Kornbluth Times Two
Well, where to begin?
This week has to have been one of the worst weeks ever. The only consolation I have is that I get to spend about three hours with my Kristin and Parker before work or exhaustion overwhelms me.
Last week was much better. We went to Atlanta for Thanksgiving, which was fun, and Parker got to torment Prozac. However, things went awry when the Computer decided to go haywire. Unable to get it to boot past safe mode, we ended up upgrading windows, and then spent a week or so upgrading all the programs to reflect the changes. The Honda also decided to take a sabbatical on Tuesday – it required a tow and a night at the Mechanic Spa to get back into shape. The computer still does not recognize the modem, or the network card, so it’s cut off from the rest of the world – and any freelance work I would like to find.
Enter Elance, or as I like to call them today, E-judas. In response to complaints about spam bidding, Elance has decided to institute a usage based pricing system. As a Basic service provider, I am allowed to bid for free 80 times a month – any bid I make over that costs .50 cents. Based on my past bidding per month, this would equate to $75 dollars a month I would spend in bidding fees. Judging from my past win ration, this means, minus fees, I would make 5 dollars a month using Elance.
I am so livid about this Usage Fee. Elance has over 3,500 service providers, who bid on approximately 1000 new projects posted a week. To compete with more established firms, newer and smaller firms, especially those in Basic categories, have to bid on more projects in order to garner attention. This system will lead to providers only targeting big-ticket projects, leaving smaller projects without bids. It also means that, despite our having paid Elance’s exorbitant registration fees to join, we can only bid on 2% of projects posted in a month. 2%?? That is ridiculous!
If anything, a usage pricing like this should only be applied to the Select project categories. Select providers and buyers pay for the premium service – a system to decrease spam bidding should only be applicable here. I can’t count the number of Basic buyers who have never responded to my bids, private messages, or even chose a provider at the end of their project – how am I supposed to determine which are legitimate and ready to buy and those who are just futzing around?
Finally, as I was in the process of uploading files for my OPS files, I encountered a server error and immediately contacted the staff to let them know of the error. Who then promptly responded to tell me I am in violation of the several different laws, and copied my tech staff as well. Apparently, the professor should not have given me access to his site, a factor I had not considered as he made it sound like others did this for him in the past. I’m sure others do it too – I guarantee there are numerous graduate students building sites for their professors, but probably have the advantage of doing it from their teacher’s computer. It’s going to get ironed out, but it’s still a thorn in my side right now.
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