When I graduated university I geared myself towards the dream of making money by making animation of any kind. After looking around I realised the possibilities were limited and in my laziness I turned to the web. I discovered freelancing websites such as Elance.com and oDesk.com in which you bid quotes on for varying projects. This seemed great but I quickly realised some major limitations and discovered some interesting possibilities.
I quickly found no one would employ me. I would bid but get refused. This was because 1. I had no experience tied to my profile. No one within those platforms had used me before and I had no ratings. 2. I was bidding too high. I always thought, don’t sell myself short, but I was faced with bidding against the likes of Chinese and Indian animators who could afford to bid a lot less due to economic differentials. The AUD was higher than ever and I had to sacrifice my fee, lowering my fee to somewhere between $1.00 and $4.00 an hour. Anything for the ‘portfolio’ is what I thought. Ultimately sacrificing my income and pushing my language and communication skills made me an attractive contractor for a few projects.
I had a distinct feeling that a lot of the projects were ill-considered and ran by those who were ill-experienced. It was home to flaky people who no consideration to the timely nature of animation. Last minute changes, complete revisions and re-animating came with the work. This is a dream place for the flaky entrepreneur who wants something done as cheap as possible with as little understanding as possible. If they had reasonable budgets I assume they would go with contractors they know in person, rather than resorting to the online option.
The other issue with these sites is they all take a bite along the way, taking a small cut of payments. You also have to purchase a kind of bid token, which will allow you to pitch for work. However, you get some for free each month. The system itself, reporting, billing, invoicing, milestones etc are actually set up very well. As a project manager you could manage a large scale project reasonably well with their tools. There is additional time tracking software which can pair in with their systems allowing flexible pay per hour set ups.
As a user you are required to agree/disagree to milestones or terms, making sure you deliverables are clear and the payment milestones are clear. This will ultimately save the any disagreements along the way. Payments can be moved direct to bank accounts or to a paypal account.
Ultimately these websites benefit the employer and not the contractor. This is where I see the possibilities more so. I could see myself with a tight deadline and looking at getting some colouring or other time consuming processes done through one of these websites. Given you’re working with new contacts with varying skill levels, I think it’s best to outsource the timely, less skilled task, saving your project time and money and may help reduce you quoting prices.
There are some downsides and risk to using these sites to outsource parts of your production. Firstly the intention to save time may end up having the reverse effect. The contractor could be slow, inexperienced, or require too much babying to complete the project. You may receive something you don’t want and have to redo it yourself in order to meet deadlines. The other problem is that often the contractors are based overseas. Having your contactors based overseas may be sound budget wise, but it would ultimately hurt out local industry, devalue the process and introduce language and communication barriers. Students, family and friends are always happy to help with medial task and often result in stronger relationships and contacts.
Be cautious as both a contractor and an employer on these sites. Really question whether the process will enhance you project or portfolio and pocket. If based in a remote area and local skills are limited, this may be a great way to get in contact with just the people you are looking for. But ultimately be careful, keep away from the screen and meet, greet and communicate with real people in the real world and you’ll probably develop greater work and greater connections.
No comments:
Post a Comment