How to Build Your Business on Elance: Part 2 of 3

Once you decide that picking up extra business on Elance may be a good fit for you, you have to set up and account and start sending out proposals.

Setting up an account is pretty easy. If you want to try Elance out for a bit, you can sign up for a free account. Whatever account you select you will have to provide some basic personal information, create an Elance profile, and select which categories you will operate in.

Elance Account Types

Elance offers four different account types. The main difference in the 4 accounts in the number of connects you are allotted each month. Connects are currency on Elance. Each job posted on the site is marked with a number of connects. This number will tell you how many connects will be removed from your account when you submit a proposal.

Free Account: The free account comes with 10 connects. This is a big improvement from when I first signed up with Elance. At that time, the free account only included 3 connects. The free account does not offer rollover connects. That means that connects you don’t use within 30 days will disappear from your account.
Professional Account: The professional account includes 25 connects per month. The professional account also allows your connects to rollover from month to month, therefore, you don’t have to worry about losing the connects you don’t use right away. This account is designed for use by only one person. This account costs $10 per month.
Small Business Account: The small business account allows up to five users. This account comes with 40 connects per month that can be rolled over to the next month. The connects on this account can be spread over all of the users on the account. This account costs $20 per month.
Large Business Account: The large business account provides 60 connects per month and will cost you $40 per month. The number of users on this account is unlimited, therefore, no matter how large your team, you can all work on Elance. The connects on this account also rollover.

There are some other minor differences in the accounts. You can explore them in more detail here.

Advantages of a Paid Plan

The paid plans allow you to add connects at any time. If you find that you have submitted all of your proposals quickly or you submitted proposals on jobs that required large numbers of connects you can buy more. Connects cost $.50 each. You can buy a minimum of 10 additional connects for $5. You can also add connects to your monthly plan if you want to have a higher number of connects available every month.

Paid plans also allow you to work in more than one category. All of the plans, including the free one, allow you to work in one of the eight categories. By paying for a membership, you are also able to work in more than one category at a time. For a fee of $5 per month you can submit proposals to one extra category. For example, I initially signed up to work in the Sales and Marketing category. I signed up for a professional account, costing me $10 per month. I then decided that I also wanted to work in the Writing and Translation category, too. That increased my monthly fee to $15 per month. Working in more than one category gives you access to more job postings.

Submitting A Basic Proposal

After you have looked through the job postings and found something that interests you, you’ll have to submit a proposal. Submitting proposals are pretty self explanatory. There is a form on each page that offers you an opportunity to submit a proposal for every job.

If you are completing a short proposal, you may be able to fit it into the box provided, however, you can also attach a document with your completed proposal. When you are completing your proposal, Elance asks you to focus on 3 areas.

Describe how you will fulfill specific project requirements.
Attach (or link) to relevant work samples.
Briefly describe you or your company.

You will also be asked to quote a price and a delivery time.

The last post in this series will discuss how to submit stand out proposals and what to do when the job doesn’t go as planned. Look out for it tomorrow.