Why Choose vWorker? (for workers)

vWorker.com gives you a Worker payment guarantee^*:
If you fully complete the contracted work by the deadline, and it is up to industry-expected standards, you will be paid. Note: On projects more than $150.00 USD your responsibilities also include filing a weekly status report. Click here for more details on vWorker.com guarantees.
 

Elance does not offer a free payment guarantee on fixed-price. It instead offers a more limited "Fixed Price Work Guarantee". If the employer won't pay you, Elance will "assist both parties in finding a resolution to the dispute". However, if "push comes to shove" and the employer doesn't voluntarily hand you back your money, Elance will not intervene. Instead, you must go to arbitration to retrieve your money, and this process is not free (costs $99 or $199).

Other sites that offer a money-back guarantee, do it for free. You can compare this feature across sites here.

July 19th, 2010: Elance's CEO, Fabio Rosati, asked for an opportunity to be quoted on this item. He said that the Elance fee for arbitrations "is due to requirements that Elance must adhere to by operating a State of California licensed escrow service in which Elance cannot act as both Escrow Agent and Arbitrator."
 

*1: These sites' mandatory pre-arbitration processes allow an abusive employer to stall the start of arbitration (and prevent you from beginning the process required to get your money) for weeks. You can compare this feature across sites here.
 

Freelancer provides a money-back guarantee on fixed-price (via arbitration like all sites that offer such a guarantee). However they charge you 2% of the project price (with a minimum of $10) to do this, which may make it too expensive to exercise the money back-guarantee on your project. Additionally, Freelancer limits arbitration to projects with milestone payments of more than $30. You can compare this feature across sites here.
 

Scriptlance does not provide a payment-guarantee. If there is a dispute, Scriptlance says in their contract: "We do not act as an arbitrator between parties, should a dispute arise, except in limited situations." Other sites that offer a payment-guarantee do not have this limitation. You can compare this feature across sites here.
 

 

oDesk does not offer escrowing on fixed-price projects, which forces you to choose between two potentially unpleasant alternatives. Click here for more information.
 

Elance offers arbitrations on all projects (regardless of size). However, since it charges $99 or $199 for each arbitration, in actual practice you may find it too expensive to invoke on smaller projects. The majority of sites that offer a money-back guarantee, do so for free and do not have this limitation on smaller projects.
 

Freelancer limits arbitration to projects with milestone payments of more than $30. You can compare this feature across sites here.
 

Scriptlance does not provide a money-back guarantee. If there is a dispute, Scriptlance says in their contract: "We do not act as an arbitrator between parties, should a dispute arise, except in limited situations." Other sites that offer a money-back guarantee do not have this limitation.
 

Sites that charge you for arbitration often also have potentially expensive "Pay Extra or Lose Your Guarantee" challenge rules. Such a rule says that the employer can challenge you at any time with an arbitration. If they do, you *must* pay a non-refundable fee for the arbitration, or lose your money (and your payment guarantee). Sites that don't charge for arbitration, don't force potentially expensive "Pay Extra or Lose Your Guarantee" rules on you.
 

On Elance, the employer can challenge you at any time with an arbitration. If they do, you *must* pay the non-refundable arbitration fee (either $66 or $133.33), or lose your money (and forfeit your money back guarantee). Other sites don't charge for arbitration, and don't force potentially expensive "Pay Extra or Lose Your Guarantee" rules on you.
 

On Freelancer, the worker can challenge you at any time with an arbitration. If they do, you *must* pay the non-refundable arbitration fee (5% of the milestone amount with a $5 minimum), or lose your money (and forfeit your money back guarantee). (*Note 12/20/2010: This fee went up from a previous charge by Freelancer of 2%.) Other sites don't charge for arbitration, and don't force potentially expensive "Pay Extra or Lose Your Guarantee" rules on you.
 

*6: This site does not publicize statistics on their maximum times to close arbitrations.
 

If you are an expert, it can be difficult on some sites to make your bid seen over the bids of less qualified workers. A very effective way to do this is to guarantee on-time delivery with a deposit. Since you forfeit the deposit if you fail to deliver on time, this is taken very seriously by employers and gets their attention very quickly. It also financially aligns you with the employer, resulting in a better partnership.
 

The fees are calculated as a percentage of the project price.
 

Verifications are a safety feature that ensure the employer is the legitimate owner of their credit card or PayPal account. They protect the owner from someone else using their payment method without their authorization and give the opposite party the assurance that the employer can truly pay. They are mandatory on all sites that offer them.

Only vWorker and Scriptlance do not charge for this service.
 

This site does not offer the protection of a verification feature.
 

vWorker.com gives you a Worker payment guarantee^*:
If you log time properly in AccuTimeCard™ and truly work on the employer's project, you will be paid for every hour you work. Click here for more details on vWorker.com guarantees.
 

*3a: Elance does have a guarantee, as long as you and the employer both choose the optional WorkView on the hourly project.
 

*3: No payment-guarantee. These sites implement hourly in a manner that can be abused by the employer. Since they do not provide definitive proof of your working to the employer (i.e., no webcam and desktop monitoring) they cannot guarantee that you will be paid for every hour worked. An abusive employer can decide to withhold your payment after you have worked the time, and you may not be paid. You can compare this feature across sites here.
 

A real-time timecard system allows you punch a time clock in real-time, to verify your billable hours to the employer. This (along with other protective features like proving your presence and work activity) lets you prove conclusively to an employer that you were working. Sites with this type of system guarantee to pay you for the hours you've worked. Sites without such a system, cannot guarantee you this, and you can end up with no money for your efforts.
 

When working remotely, it's important to prove your presence on a job. By taking automatic images of your webcam, a site can prove this to the employer and (with other protections) guarantee to pay you for the hours you've worked.
 

Liveperson does not record your webcam, but requires you to interact with the employer via a chat session during billed hours, which indirectly allows them to prove your presence.
 

*9: Elance does not offer this ability. Click here for more details.
 

oDesk does not guarantee certain types of work. If you fail to click your mouse/keyboard at least once a minute, over a certain number of minutes in each ten minute period, then they consider it "low activity" and will not guarantee payment to you. Simply moving your mouse or the mouse scrollwheel (such as when reading) is not deemed activity. Additionally, oDesk does not publicly disclose on their website the minimum number of minutes that you must maintain your clicking, in order to be assured of payment.

When you do the following types of work, you typically do not click the mouse or keyboard:

1. Reading (electronic or physical documents)
2. Purely mental work (planning, designing, thinking)
3. All work involving writing on paper at your desk

If you perform any of the above on oDesk, you must remember to constantly stop your work to click your mouse/keyboard. The continual interruptions can act as a mental and/or physical interference, and in some cases (such as intense mental work or writing/designing on paper at your desk) make the task impractical to perform. You may also incur additional stress knowing that you must remember to do this constantly, or you may not be paid.

Other sites do not impose this limitation and guarantee all types of work.
 

The fees are calculated as a percentage of the project price.
 

Verifications are a safety feature that ensure the employer is the legitimate owner of their credit card or PayPal account. They protect the owner from someone else using their payment method without their authorization and give the opposite party the assurance that the employer can truly pay. They are mandatory on all sites that offer them.

Only vWorker and Scriptlance do not charge for this service.
 

This site does not offer the protection of a verification feature.
 

This site only allows on-the-job trials (via crowdsourcing) in design related categories of work (logos, website layout, t-shirt design, etc).

vWorker.com is the only site that allows you to do it on every category of work.
 

This site does not have trialsourcing. As a result, employers cannot do larger projects affordably and will usually not post them.

vWorker.com is the only site that has trialsourcing. Click here for more details.
 

Freelancer.com charges $19 for "DesignStudio", which gives you the basics of crowdsourcing:

• Online Visual Workspace - view every design submitted and rate, reject and comment on them to give your Designer immediate feedback.
• Messaging system for fast communication.
• Contract management system - handover the copyright to the design

Other sites do not charge for this.
 

Freelancer.com charges $30 to make a contest private. Other sites do not charge for this.
 

vWorker hours:
Monday through Friday: 9am - 5pm.
Saturday, Sunday: 9am - 3pm
 

Elance hours:
Monday through Friday 8am to 5pm PST
Saturday, Sunday: 8am to 12pm PST
 

Guru hours:
Monday - Friday 9am to 6pm EDT
Saturday, Sunday: Not available
 

*15: These sites have chosen to not make this financial information public.

*Before April 2010, vWorker was formerly named Rent a Coder and is listed under this name in the INC 5000.

Creating a detailed project posting is the most important thing an employer can do to make your project successful. However, it's also time consuming and difficult, and requires so many details that even the most experienced employers often forget to include all of them. Unfortunately, omissions often end up costing you unnecessary time, money, effort and/or aggravation.

A requirements wizard interviews solves this problem by asking the employer simple questions which explore areas that they probably haven't thought about before. It then creates a detailed specification that you can use.

As an example, let's say the employer wants an internet site created. The wizard will explain that there are many different browsers and browser versions out there, and that websites rarely work on all of them unless you specifically codes it to do so. Cost is important to you, and they realize that they can't afford to support all of them. To solve your problem, the wizard explains the market share of the different browsers and they realize that they can still cover 95% of the market by only supporting 4 browser types/versions. The wizard outputs the result and not only did you avoid taking the time to explain it to the employer, but you have automatically avoided potential miscommunication later over the scope of the project.
 

Creating a detailed project posting is the most important thing an employer can do to make your project successful. However, it's also time consuming and difficult, and requires so many details that even the most experienced employers often forget to include all of them. Unfortunately, omissions often end up costing you unnecessary time, money, effort and/or aggravation.

A requirements wizard interviews solves this problem by asking the employer simple questions which explore areas that they probably haven't thought about before. It then creates a detailed specification that you can use.

As an example, let's say the employers wants their site to rank higher in the search engines. The wizard explains the market share of the different engines so that they can make the most cost effective choice, and also walks you through the different onsite optimizations and offsite work that might be helpful to them. It then shows this in the project description, and you've avoided having to invest any time and effort to explain this to the employer.
 

Affiliate programs with residuals, pay you more than once for the same referral. Programs that don't, pay you only one time and generally pay less over the long term.

 

Pays you repeatedly for all new business generated by all referrals (employer and worker).

 

 

Pays you repeatedly for all new business generated by all referrals (employer and worker), as long as it occurs in their first 3 months on the site.

 

Pays you repeatedly for all new business generated by all referrals (employer and worker).

 

Pays you a one-time $50 bonus if the employer or worker does over $1,000 in business.

 

Some sites post hypothetical earnings for their affiliate programs based on hypothetical (and sometimes overly-optimistic and unlikely) sales figures. In contrast, all of the amounts on this page are based on actual vWorker.com historical data from May 2001 - January 2011. To keep them realistic, employer examples are based on the average employer posting average sized projects at the average frequency and rate. Worker examples are based on the average worker winning the average sized projects at the average frequency. These averages are:

1. Employers:
    
   • First 3 month's activity average: $245.82 over 2 projects.
   • Yearly activity averages:

     Year	Total $ spent	# of projects
     1	$583.36	4
     2	$872.14	6
     3	$953.17	7
     4	$1,030.85	8
     5	$1,093.64	8
     6	$1,014.76	8
     7	$936.25	7

2. Workers:
    
   • First 3 month's activity average: $300.02 over 4 projects.
   • Yearly activity averages:

     Year	Total $ spent	# of projects
     1	$747.64	8
     2	$1,485.86	10
     3	$1,840.33	11
     4	$2,011.20	10
     5	$2,259.23	10
     6	$2,298.96	9
     7	$2,409.08	9

*Affiliate programs with life-time residuals (vWorker.com, eLance and Scriptlance) can actually pay even more than 7 years, because there is no limitation on how much is earned. This would increase the amounts calculated for those programs. However, for space reasons, the calculations are limited to 7 years.
 

*22: Amounts shown are the standard affiliate, super affiliate, and ultra affiliate amounts (respectively).

Click here for more information and how the vWorker figures are calculated.
 

If you are an expert, it can be difficult to stand out from a crowd of less qualified bidders.

Some sites allow you to prove their knowledge by becoming pre-certified by an appropriate testing agency. They also allow employers to limit bidding exclusively to workers like you who are certified in the area(s) they are interested in
 

*21: These sites allow you to be certified in the hundreds of tests provided by ExpertRating.
 

Guru allows employers to hide negative ratings and comments, and replace them with "No feedback published" (see the Guru help page and click on "How do I block feedback?"). As a result you may never discover some or all of the actual history of a potential employer you are evaluating, nor can you ever know if information has been blocked or not. Other sites give you as much information as possible so you can make the most educated decision, and do not have this limitation. Guru allows workers to hide negative ratings and comments from you, with their "block feedback" feature. As a result you may hire a poor performing worker without every knowing it. Other sites show all ratings/comments, so you know as much information as possible about every worker.

Odesk allows employers to choose which worker comments appear on the profile and to hide negative comments (see the Odesk help page). As a result you may never discover the exact reasons for a particular rating, nor can you ever know if information has been hidden from you or not. Other sites show all ratings/comments, so you know as much information as possible about every worker.

No one wants to spend time and effort bidding and interacting with an employer, only to watch them disappear because they were pretending to be someone else, or didn't want to invest their own time and effort into the project.

An employer who makes the additional effort to have their phone number verified demonstrates that they are who they claim to be, and that they are willing to invest effort into the bidding process. Sites that offer this feature, call each employer and show their verification status on their profiles.
 

No one wants to spend time and effort bidding and interacting with an employer, only to watch them disappear because they weren't capable of paying for the project.

Site that verify credit cards address this issue by charging a small random amount (from $1-$2 for example) on the employer's PayPal account, and asking them to confirm it. By doing this, the employer proves they own the account.

An employer who makes the additional effort to do this, demonstrates that they have a valid and working Pay Pal account and may be more serious than an employer who has not.

 

oDesk does not allow employers to pay via PayPal.

 

Instant messaging (IM) lets you communicate back and forth in real-time with the other party. It allows a much faster "back and forth" communication than posting a normal message on the private message, which can make it great for interviewing (or being interviewed), working out questions/issues and asking for (or giving) quick status updates. Unlike a chat room, IM doesn't require both parties to formally coordinate a time to meet, and allows for impromptu conversation which is more rapid, natural and effective.
 

Instant messaging (IM) lets you communicate back and forth in real-time with the other party. It allows a much faster "back and forth" communication than posting a normal message on the private message, which can make it great for interviewing (or being interviewed), working out questions/issues and asking for (or giving) quick status updates. Unlike a chat room, IM doesn't require both parties to formally coordinate a time to meet, and allows for impromptu conversation which is more rapid, natural and effective.
 

If funds are paid via a method which is cheaper to process, the the fee is discounted.
 

vWorker gives you a 2.5% discount immediately, and calls the discount a "preferred payment discount". Click here for more information.
 

Guru.com gives you 1-2% back for use on your next project, and calls the program "loyalty dollars". Loyalty dollars expire, if left unused for two years.
 

vWorker is the only site that give this discount immediately, and applies it to your current project. Guru.com requires you to fund a second project to receive the discount.