This is a continuation of the Hands-On With The Elance Work System by Matt Katsaros. To read the first part, follow this link here: Hands-On With The Elance Work System: Part 1.

Fork In The Road

Now that I've got my job posted on Elance and ready to go, I'm feeling pretty good, but at this point, I have two options. The first is to sit back and take a breather – proposals to take on my job should start rolling in within hours (and sometimes minutes.) The proposals are coming from providers surfing the site 24 hours a day from all over the world. However, if you want to take full advantage of what Elance has to offer, you should spend some time searching for that perfect provider for your job. This step isn’t necessary as you will receive plenty of high-quality proposals on your job post, but finding and inviting people to submit proposals is definitely time well spent.



Now, there are many different ways to go about searching for providers, so learn about all of your options, play around with all of the tools, and do what feels best for you.

Starting Your Search

The easiest and most obvious way to start your search is the search bar (1). It’s simple enough; if you’ve ever used Google to find something online, then this theoretically should be a no-brainer. Simply type whatever skills or technologies you’re looking for into the search bar – for my job, I thought about using something along the lines of “web designer,” “HTML web programmer,” or “Flash/HTML web designer.”

You can either be general or get as deep into the nitty-gritty as you would like to be with these keywords, but one important thing to remember is that providers can only submit proposals on jobs within their own category. Make sure to select the same category you selected for the job posting when conducting your search. The keyword search I am going to use is “Web Designer”, because it is general enough yet fits the description of what I am looking for.

The next way to get your search on is even easier than the first way. On the bottom half of the Elance homepage (2), you’ll see several tabs that correlate to the categories of providers on Elance. Select the category for your job, and you will instantly see six providers in that category that have been rated today. Click the "All" button to see more providers in that category, or you can click on a specific skill (on the right) to be taken to a page (either Trends or Search Results) that has all of the providers that possess your required skill on Elance. Easy peasy.

Now comes the interesting part: selecting the providers you want to invite from your search. This part is entirely up to you and is all your preference, so choose as you will. Here are some tips that I use when choosing providers to invite. (Check out this guide for more information: How To Find And Invite The Best Providers)

Refine, Refine, Refine

There are so many skilled providers on Elance that it can sometimes get a little overwhelming when trying to choose which one to go with. This is where Elance’s filtering tools come in handy. You can refine by location, tested skills, rate, reviews, feedback, and type of business. You can customize any or all of these criteria in order for you to find the right provider for you.

When I searched “Web Designer”, I was presented with over 30,000 providers to choose from, and since I don't have the time to go through 30,000 profiles, filtering was the obvious next step for me. First off, I don’t mind where my provider comes from so I am going to leave the location as “Anywhere”  (3).

Also, I'm not trying to build something quite as detailed as Apple.com, so I will be adjusting my price accordingly by setting the hourly rate to “Up to $40” (4). I typically like to work with individuals rather than businesses, so I am going to select that for the business type (5). Just a personal preference.

As for feedback and rating, I am going to leave those at “Any,” because I don’t mind using an unrated provider. A little personal tip: Since people are usually wary of working with unrated/new providers, these guys can usually offer you a bit of a discount on the services. It is a bit of a risk, but it's worth it to consider it as an option. If you're not feeling as cavalier as myself, feel free to adjust the feedback and rating slider bars accordingly.

As I said before, all of these refining options are up to you to change around as you need. Get comfortable using a variety of these filtering options because they are one of your best friends when trekking in this deep sea of Elance providers.

When looking through search results, there are three main things that I like to take a look at: feedback, reviews, and earnings. All three of these are displayed right in the search results.

Feedback and reviews go hand-in-hand and are fairly self-explanatory. The higher the feedback percentage, the better that provider has been rated. The number for reviews is the number of reviews that the feedback percentage is based off of. 50 reviews and 100% feedback is perceived as better than 1 review with the same feedback.

The "Earnings Amount" is the amount of business that the provider has done on Elance in the past six months. There are also links to the provider’s profile page as well as portfolio images right from the search results – be sure to take a minute and look at those to see if that provider is a match in terms of quality, aesthetics, and design.

Once you have found a provider you fancy (I know, there's so many to choose from!), inviting them to submit a proposal is an easy process that takes just a few clicks. All you have to do is check the box on the right of that provider’s search result (6), go up towards the top, click the “Request Proposal” button, select the project you want them to bid on, and click the “Continue” button (7).



Now wash, rinse, and repeat the process as needed. After browsing through the search listings, I've selected a few providers that I believe fit exactly what I need and will invite them to submit a proposal on my job. Once you've done the same, the next step is to watch your proposals stack up, review them, and select the right one.

Next: Hands-On With The Elance Work System Part 3: Evaluating And Selecting A Proposal. We take an in-depth look into reviewing, evaluating, and selecting the best proposal to getting this web development job done.