More about my RentACoder experiment
July 14th, 2007 at 11:08 amAs I wrote here, I decided to do some work via RentACoder (RAC), mainly in order to do some interesting programming work and get back into “the zone” after a period of burnout and procrastination.
As of this moment, I have 10 projects completed with average rating 10 which puts me into the top 4% percentile of RAC coders. This clearly shows, by the way, that of the 170,000 coders registered at RAC, only a few thousand are serious coders that do work - all the others are people who’ve just registered and did nothing, or tried to do some job and failed.
The projects I did were very diverse:
- Perl
- Common Lisp
- General algorithms (someone’s Uni homework)
- Verilog
- VHDL
- Ruby
The vast majority of the projects were someone’s homework - RAC is quite popular for that. Another thing RAC is very popular for is web programming, especially in PHP. If I would really want to start making money on RAC, I’d beef up my PHP and CSS knowledge, do a few test installs and customizations of Wordpress and Drupal (both of which are very popular in requests for work) - with such experience it’s possible to earn nicely, I think.
The most interesting project I did was not homework - it was a Ruby module for diffing HTML files in a hierarchical manner. It was also the project with the least $$/hour for me, because I considerably underbid it and then spent almost 20 hours for the $90 I got from it. It was fun, though.
I also struck a “partnership” with a Pakistani guy, doing his “hardware design” homework for him - I did 4 projects, writing code in Verilog and VHDL and solving analytical questions about hardware design. This partnership dissolved in the end because he was asking for extra work for no pay, and I decided I’ve had enough of his insolence.
About money, all in all I think I earned less than $10/hour for my RAC work - which obviously isn’t enough if you live in a developed country (especially taking into account that RAC work is intermittent and isn’t continuous employment). However, for coders from developing and 3rd world countries, RAC can provide a real source of income. I saw many offers that ask for a programmer to work full-time, for sums up to $1,500 / month, with all the contracts and payments passing through RAC. I think that for a programmer in a developing country, this is extremely good pay - and you can actually make good money working from home. So, if there is one grand conclusion from this experiment it’s that our profession (programming) is in high demand. If you’re a good programmer, fast learner and motivated, you can make money from RAC. Even for people in developed countries, RAC can provide nice pocket money and even some additional income for students. For instance, I earned $300 for doing a few interesting projects - and had fun all the way because I like programming. And now I have the $300 with which I can buy quite a few books online 
July 14th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
One problem with the project is that, nearly all of them are web- related
project, so if you are not good at web-develop, or you feel it is boring, you may not have a very good experience so soon.
July 14th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
Thanks for reporting your experience. I find this report valuable.
July 14th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
don’t you feel like there’s something just a little messed up with doing other people’s homework?
I mean look at the irony. You wantto take on a few gigs cuz you’re in sole procratination slump only to be doing stuff for someone who is most likely procrastinating.
Good job!
July 14th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
please note with bigger/serious projects rentacoder staff are INCREDIBLY STUPID PROFESSIONAL LIARS
they lie even with their slogan
PERFECT evidences at http://kamen123.blogspot.com
July 14th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
An interesting account. I’ve had roughly the same experience as a freelance artist. Lots of work for a little pay until you climb the ranks, or find a sweet deal.
July 14th, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Do yourself a favour and ditch RAC, use www.odesk.com. After 2 years with RAC I moved to odesk.com and can not be happier.
July 14th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Odesk makes you run their windows software in the background while you work and it continuously sends screen grabs to their servers and clients. Not to mention they shave like a third off your hourly wages. You’ll be lucky to occasionally make like $9 an hour.
July 14th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Is a nuclear engineer or chemical engineer going to spend 20 hours helping someone for $90? You undermine the skill, yourself for saying that your time and skill is next to worthless, and your colleagues in the same or similar profession. If you did it for experience, that’s great, but get paid adequately for the work. The lawyer, doctor, or real estate agent who spends 20 hours applying their expertise I’m sure does it because they like what they do, and they may even enjoy those 20 hours because they are advancing their personal knowledge, but I highly doubt they would give that work away for $90, jeopardizing their retirement, housing, any medial bills that may arise, car repairs, schooling and clothing for their children, and anything else money may be needed for. Just how much training/how much did school cost say in a college/university to get that skill, shouldn’t you at least break even at some point? I doubt the $300 will hardly cover the cost of the books alone for those courses, yet alone the tuition.
July 14th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
While I haven’t worked on RAC, I have worked at Guru.com. I’ve found that there are some larger projects available there, that constitute enough to run a business, particularly if you are good at PHP. That seems to be the most in demand skill on RAC and Guru. I haven’t done much web programming, so things are slower for me, but I’m studying up on PHP so I can start bidding some of those jobs.
The key is to position yourself as an English speaking professional. If you are professional in your interactions with the customer, get the work done and general provide a reasonable price, then you will get work. I’ve gotten jobs as large as $15,000 through Guru. I’ve also gotten hourly jobs at $60 per hour (admittedly, not a sky-high rate, but it’s livable).
Use these websites to augment your existing client base and to find new clients. It can be done with proper effort and positioning.
July 14th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
Wow, you made $300 for a full month’s work in algorithms and chip design. You are right, there is a huge demand for people with your skills who are willing to work for a reasonable salary. I’m sure many college students reading this will be very inspired by this and have confidence in the knowledge that there are many $300/month jobs waiting for them upon graduation.
July 15th, 2007 at 12:01 am
Anyone know who came up with the rent a coder concept-
Is it somehow meant to allow coders from developing countries get reasonable amounts of money? Seems interesting… I wonder what percent of coders from the site come from developing countries…
July 15th, 2007 at 1:34 am
With a little sales experience you could have been earning $300 every two hours with those skills.
July 15th, 2007 at 7:15 am
Doing homework for others and underbidding work makes you an unethical dick in my book. The average developer sucks at his job. Probably because he hired out all his homework I guess. Meanwhile, US programmers are already getting hammered by H1B imports everytime they try to bargain for decent rates. Now we’ve got you doing shit for (almost) free.
Asshole.
July 15th, 2007 at 11:01 am
While I agree with the comments about not doing homework (but at the same time, if a person is outsourcing their homework, they aren’t doing it anyhow… Eli isn’t making it any worse).
But I totally disagree with comments that underbidding is “undervaluing” your “unethical”. I’ve only done 2 or 3 RentACoder projects because those are the only ones I’ve found genuinely interesting that haven’t been web/SEO work and really struck my interest. I really only bid enough so that I can get past the “cool, I’ve proved I can do it, now I have to finish” phase that’ll usually halt me on personal projects. I actually just lost out on one (which was in the ‘medium business’ category) because I was thinking of doing something similar (as open source) and so wasn’t willing to write the code for hire without also having full rights to it.
But I think that idea is hard to convey to someone who wouldn’t write code in their spare time anyhow. There *are* pro bono lawyers who dedicate their time for free in order to do a service the community.
July 15th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Work for what you can get. If $3/hr for off-time work is too little then stay out and wait for that elusive “$300/hr” job. You’ll find very few of them. Sometimes the $3/hr gig gets you into a longer and more lucrative relationship once you’ve proven yourself…and you can determine the trustworthiness of your client too. The other option you should consider is creating a business where you can afford to hire all those $3/hr people.
July 17th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
Mr Joshua Volz,
What is your nickname at guru.com ?
I just want to check your completed projects, if any.
July 17th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Sergey please spend your time checking my blog and please see that I have PERFECT evidences confirming my opinion
After that please advice the dummies in rac staff to stop with lies
And please do not forget that only rentacoder is place for barking
July 17th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
oDesk’s screenshot tool actually protects providers by ensuring that they get paid for the work they’ve done. The commission is only 10% — not a third, as a previous poster noted — and payment is quick and easy. Rather than using PayPal, you can get an oDesk MasterCard, accepted everywhere a regular MasterCard is taken, or you can have the money deposited for free in your bank account (if you live in the U.S.) — and these are just some of the payment options.
Many people are concerned about project size/compensation on these global marketplace sites. oDesk’s average project size is $3,000.
Check it out: http://www.odesk.com
– Michelle, oDesk.com
July 18th, 2007 at 10:18 am
“kamen 123″ spoil perfect site in revenge.
He has been banned from RentACoder because “He insulted other parties numerous times”.
Details of his personal failure at RentACoder:
http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/misc/ArbitrationInfo/KamenKaburov/RentACoderArbitration/KamenKaburov_RentACoder_Arbitration.htm
July 18th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Mr Michelle Keller,
What calculation you perform to get this result: “average project size is $3,000.”
July 18th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Sergey: please go to bark at rentacoder
here is obvious that I’m right and your behaviour is transparent
July 18th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
there are many dummies like rac staff that try to live from dishonest exploitation of other people…rentacoder is shame for the business…
July 18th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Sergey –
If you browse through the oDesk job board, you’ll find projects ranging from $150 for the creation of an animation logo to $12,000 (for creating a Facebook.com-like networking site). Some job posts list a time period/schedule rather than a specific budget so developers can set their own rates. oDesk allows Buyers to rate providers, so some oDesk providers become so successful they no longer have to bid on projects — Buyers contact them directly. This allows Buyers and Providers to develop meaningful business relationships, even if they are on opposite ends of the world. If you want to see more job posts, go to http://www.odesk.com
– Michelle, oDesk.com
July 18th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
Michelle,
I didn’t ask about oDesk advertising.
What calculation you perform to get this result: “average project size is $3,000.”
July 21st, 2007 at 11:30 pm
It’s not a bad website. I used to work there for small 50-100$ jobs. It gave me an amusing weekend exercise and help raise some money while slaving at the army.
Now I’m back there as a software buyer, and I tell that I couldn’t have done without this website (or similar ones). The workers profit from it, otherwise they wouldn’t have been there. It gives them another alternative that they might not be able to get in their home town, and it gives small business another way to get projects done.
Of course, the students who use it for their homework miss the point of studying completely. Their loss.
August 14th, 2007 at 7:05 am
Sergey, this is Sameer Jain responding; I’m working at oDesk as a Marketing Analyst this summer.
Sorry for not replying sooner–we hadn’t seen your follow-up comment until today. To clarify the calculation, the $3k average project size is based on estimated length of projects posted on oDesk. These figures are provided by oDesk buyers at time of posting and the average project is listed as being more than 225 hours in length. At our average hourly comp rates, that’s well above $3k / project.
Best,
Sameer
sameerj@odesk.com
August 17th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
1.
I can see many-many very small projects:
Here I can see $120 project:
http://www.odesk.com/console/g/view_profile.php?key=fbe874ab2975db65
Here I can see $251 project:
http://www.odesk.com/console/g/view_profile.php?key=764e073c8a47a091
Here I can see $138 project:
http://www.odesk.com/console/g/view_profile.php?key=02d6495a11690559
All these projects are “August, 2007″ projects. Where I can see three $6K+ “August 2007″ projects. So, arithmetic mean will be $3K ?
2. On the 1st page of your site I can see “oConomy Facts” section. Let’s see:
Earned in the last 90 days $2,999,360
You declare “2000 projects” monthly.
So, average projects size in the last 90 days (aka 3 months): $2,999,360 / (2000 * 3) = $500
3. I can’t check your numbers: $3000, 2000, $2,999,360, 225 hours, etc
But when I put these numbers together - I can see unrealistic result.
November 28th, 2007 at 3:48 am
Some Freelance websites are good in times of quality and functionalities some are not… but we all know freelancers get on that site to find work in order to have money in their pocket…but this freelance sites give more opportunity to the the freelancer and give them lots of contacts…and you have them in your own contacts,.- Another is you can collect more portfolios.