I think all that bizarre data you saw was to just get in contact with the client
If you ask me the $50 proposal is just a decoy to fool the system and bill the rest of the stuff “on the left” and avoid that fee
The “no requirements” stuff you saw was to just release the real requirements to the ones really interested

@BruceA, @Jim,

Although I’ve heard about Rent-A-Coder before, I haven’t used it yet. Based on what you guys are saying, I’d deduce it also has its downs.

@Najaf,

Thanks for sharing your experience with us. If you ask me, I’d say you’re very successful (you’d laugh if I told you how much I’ve made so far). I’ve also noticed you get a chance at bigger and better projects if you’re part of a company instead of flying solo. Anyway, keep rocking Elance!

I mostly bid on projects local the UK (I’m based in London) and as I’m just starting out as a freelance PHP developer, my rates are £25/hour (roughly $50).

I started on Elance with smaller projects (literally change the href on an anchor tag for £25) but now I get on average between £200 – £600 per project from clients that I originally met on Elance.

I’m not going to become a millionaire based off of those, but I’m well on my way to building up a client list.

I think the trick is to be selective with the projects you bid on. I don’t bid unless the project has a well-laid out brief. You can tell a lot about how well the relationship with the clients going to go based off that brief.

Also, I’m much more likely to bid (and get picked) if the project is UK-based.

So far, I’ve made a total of £900 (about $1800) off of clients I met on Elance, and that’s at my £25/hour rate so it can’t be that bad.

Might not be so successful when I push my rates up a little.

Unfortunately i failed to notice the hamster wheel clause in the contract, which meant that the client kept adding on bits of more complicated functionality. Being a nice guy, i stupidly went along with it.

Sure enough the project moth-balled into a giant monstrosity, which consequently exceeded its deadline. In the end, i was lucky to get the disappointed client to re-imburse me for my time which by this time would have been better spent flipping burgers.

Out of all the things i learned from that experience, the most important is to NEVER sell yourself short. If the client is willing to accept a $50 bid on a project, chances are they will be complete idiots to deal with anyway.