Legitimate Online Work Through oDesk

Looking for work online, or online jobs, can get pretty discouraging. Many people eventually give up. I know I have at one time or another. There is just so much propaganda out there these days about "work at home jobs" that it is very time consuming and hard to sift through. I wanted to work at home, part time, full time, for short term or long term work, anything to at least earn a little extra money from home. I don't like to admit it, but before I found legitimate online work through oDesk, I had searched for work online for years.

I liked to toy around with the "pay per click" programs and referral programs because they are entertaining and do pay out a little money. Part of me is still secretly hoping I will strike it rich somehow too though.

Other work at home jobs I have tried over the years were the assemble products at home type jobs, which I am not sure are real or not. Some may be legitimate, but I have never found one. I completed, or tried to complete, a couple of these programs with no luck. The job required you to buy the materials, from the company, to build the product with and send it back to the company for inspection. If it passed, then they would buy it from you for more than you bought the materials to make it, so you could turn a profit. I spent hours more than it was worth my time and money assembling these items perfectly to their diagrams, and sending them to the company multiple times to try to meet quality standards. They would never accept anything I made and never bought them back.

At this point I got more serious about things and searched more online, and discovered all the job search sites like Monster and Career Builder. On these sites you can create and post a resume and search for and apply for jobs. Jobs in your area and jobs in different states or abroad. I found that, though these jobs were posted online, many were located at the office location and were not "work at home" jobs, they were just listed and posted online. There were very few online work opportunities, especially for people with little or no experience. Some companies offer work at home jobs but they usually require two or more years experience and a degree. I was starting out with little experience and no degree, save a high school diploma.

Somewhere along the way I stumbled upon another kind of job search site called oDesk. I decided to post a resume and search for work at home jobs, once again I thought. Then, while I was building my resume I discovered that this site was different.

The jobs posted were for online work only. The person applying for jobs got to set their own hourly wage, or bid for own price for jobs with a set price. This was very different from anything I had ever found yet. site a little better. Sure enough, a couple weeks later I found that I had an interview with a freelance writing agency. They hired me right away for an ongoing job as a freelance writer.

I am happy to say that I have been making around 200 dollars a month for the last 9 months working as a freelance writer through oDesk. The experience of using oDesk has been very enjoyable and informative and enlightening. And I must say, it has been a very rewarding and gratifying experience to finally break through and be able to earn extra income in my spare time at home.

The people looking for jobs and working are called providers and are considered independent contractors. The people posting the jobs are called buyers.

Some of the things that set oDesk apart from the other job sites are:

• They are free to join and use their services.

• They offer 326 different skill tests that you can take for free and post on your resume to help build it up.

• There is hourly work and work with buyer budgets, or the amount offered for the job, and people may bid the budget price or even bid lower to in hopes of getting the job
• oDesk guarantees payment for hourly work.
  

Bidding too low is not allowed though, and is frowned upon. This is because it drives wages down for everyone and is not fair to people just trying to make some kind of decent living in economic hard times, or any kind of times.

You apply for jobs with with a short cover letter describing your strengths and some experience, remembering to use etiquette. Then you check back into your account periodically to see if anyone has asked for an online or email interview with you, has declined your resume, or the job listing has ended. You can be notified of these changes by email as well if you prefer. You are allowed to apply for two to five jobs to start out with. After you have worked and acquired hours on oDesk and completed a few of the free skill assessment tests oDesk offers, you can apply for more, up to twenty at one time.

Once you get work, there are team work rooms that you sign into and your hours of work are recorded. oDesk does guarantees payment on hourly work, but does not on set price jobs so it is up to you whether you want to take the risk to get paid or not.

Take into account though that the buyers profile gets feedback from providers so they want it to be good feedback. In turn, providers get feedback as well from buyers on jobs completed and it is posted on their resume so they want it to be good too.

Feedback can be left as good or not so good criticism of work, but oDesk requests that buyers and providers treat each other with professionalism. It will not tolerate slander or indecent feedback and it will be deleted immediately. Buyers often, when going through applications will not only look at job experience, but they may make decisions about hiring based on the providers oDesk hours completed and what kind and how much of feedback they have.

The oDesk help feature gives all the information you need to succeed on oDesk straight from the horses mouth. Communication with buyers is great because you can communicate directly with your employers through oDesk itself, by personal email, via Skype, yahoo messenger and more.

There is tons of other kinds of help and support on oDesk to assist people in learning how to work online and succeeding. There is a forum for oDesk members to communicate as a whole. In the team rooms diaries are kept by individuals that can be shared with fellow workers so ideas can be collaborated, problems worked out and questions answered. The amount of communication going on is probably one of the reasons oDesk and its buyers and providers are experiencing so much success.

oDesk does charge a small percentage of the money you make to pay for their services. The amount is stated when you apply to a job and is added to your bid or wage requested so you can see what your buyer would pay in full if they hired you.

Workers on oDesk are responsible for their own taxes and are required to file a W-9 with oDesk before their first withdrawal can be made. Anyone who makes over $600 a year will be sent a 1099 to help with tax preparation. They recommend that you seek out a tax professional because different states have different laws about how much taxes are owed by independent contractors. So you may or may not have to pay taxes.

If when you do find work and are paid for work completed, it will be posted to your financial activity on your account and you can then withdraw it into a bank account by direct deposit, of which there is no fee for this service, or a PayPal account of which there is a small PayPal fee of one dollar. You can also withdraw money using a wire transfer, which costs thirty dollars, or a company called Moneybookers which costs one dollar per withdrawal. Or you can have the amount put on an oDesk Debit Master Card which costs a fee of two dollars per withdrawal.

The amount of money made on oDesk, since it began in 2003, is at around $146,300,000 and is climbing fast in this year of 2010. There are tons of jobs, 575,695 to have been posted to date to be exact, all requiring different levels of experience. From newbies (people with no experience), to CEO's, computer programmers, and even doctors. All using this vast service that has helped businesses save money and people find work at home.

With 557,131 providers working from all over the world. Jobs posted range from Web development, Networking and Information Systems, to writing and translation, administrative support, customer service, sales and marketing, design and media, and business services. There are data entry jobs, creative writing and blog writing jobs, telemarketing jobs, transcription and much much more.

Some new changes have been made to the look and feel of oDesk recently, for a more user friendly experience on oDesk.

Some of the terms commonly used on the site have now changed to help newcomers better understand the work environment at oDesk. This helps people learn faster how to use oDesk to the fullest potential.

For example, here are some of the changes in the wording at oDesk:

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