One word to describe guru.com: Despicable.
Been there as a good-earning, non-paying member for nearly 5 years. One time, I was paid $704 for a business plan project. It later turned out that my employer funneled money to guru.com system using a stolen credit card. I refused to refund the amount when asked. I told the Member Services guys it was not my fault. All I did was deliver what's expected; that all I deserved was getting myself paid for services rendered. Know what guru.com did? It suspended all my profiles and accounts, 10 of them. I was informed by email I will have them back when I am able to settle my accountability. I lost all the earning opportunities. I was making good money from freelancing; in fact, I resigned from my job and began working from home fulltime. My lawyer said I should sue to get those profiles back, saying the suspensions were onerous, unilateral, unfair. The guru.com site presents opportunities. But it's policies are horrible for non-paying members. Take it from me. If that is not contemptuous, I don't know what's ugly. I'm suing Guglani and I will be seeking $100 in damages for every day the accounts were shuttered.

I am very interested in how freelancers, independent consultants/contractors would structure a site that would facilitate a fair and accurate selection process while also allowing that company is be fairly compensated? Should the burden be born by the employers? Thanks for your feedback.

I have taken a membership for the last two years on GURU.com and have found that it is getting increasingly hard to find decent work. As is stated in some of the other reviews, if you don't get a paid membership there are virtually no jobs that you can apply for. The ones that will pay only want to pay rock bottom prices. I do transcription, and the fees that most employers want to pay only amount to $1 to $2 per hour. No Way! You can't do quality work for that. Also, there are not that many to choose from even if you have a membership. I have had a few that were total scams and did not pay a penny, and when GURU was notified, they basically said they couldn't do anything to help. This is the last time I will pay for my membership.

This site is horrible! They offer a 'free' membership, so I signed up and spent an hour creating my profile, resume, etc. I then did a search for jobs in my category which yielded 153 results. HOWEVER I COULD NOT BID ON ANY OF THEM! Not ONE! The jobs all required you to be a Guru or a Guru Vendor to bid....which means that the ONLY people who can bid are those who pay for a membership! What a rip off and a waste of time.

They should just scrap the 'free' signup...or at least be more honest and let you know that the only way you can possibly get jobs is to pay for membership.

I may be 'old-school' but I feel that jobs should pay the employee....the employee should not have to fork over money to get a job.

I rated them 1 start, just because there is no a zero or negative numbers as an option.

In reality, I'd rate them - infinity.

My review is based on a few years of paid membership. Guru.com has turned into a reservoir of cheap labor force for business vultures and parasites. Almost every employer that gets there specifies " Less than $250" as a project budget, then lists the things they want done that are realistically worth $2500, not $250.

Not to mention that I had projects unpaid, disputes unresolved, etc, without ever being able to get it sorted out. Their " dispute resolution center" is actually just a fiction, a fairy tale. A cheap ad to get you to buy their membership, offering some fictional security.

If you want to become an Internet slave, abused and underpaid by the employers ( yes, they also verbally abuse you), then join Guru.com, and you will have the best Vulture Fest on the Internet.

How can the Guru owners be so stupid anyway, it's the employees that keep the site going, not the employers... With a treatment like this, they will lose every single employee that provides quality work. Only $1 / hour workers will stay there, and we all know how " great" their work can get.

Disaster. Guru was not as bad when I first joined it.

If you are o freelancer,you have a freemind and you have a project which is reputable.This site is for you.For example you are student,you have a lot of information to make something but you are unemployed,don't worry,your project has value in this site.You don't have to work for a company.You are your own boss anymore.
Post your project and wait for buying.Your design,scripts,projects.All these are valuable in tihis site.I tried.and I first earn money on internet.You must try.

I found Guru to be a good place to start out in the Self Employed world. For the $150 annual fee, it paid for itself in 1 or 2 small projects. Once I established a decent rating and bid only with employers who requested US employees, I got plenty of work.

I will mention the fees are lame so you may want to define your payment terms upfront. Any employer who pays with a credit card you have added fees. It was still pretty worth the 5% fee that Guru charges since I didn't have to leave my home to find the work.

Keep your standards strong and bid accordingly. If you bid too low just to get the work, you'll attract very unreasonable employers who expect free changes for months.

I do mostly Desktop Publishing and Typesetting so the volume tends to be high and pretty easy work since I'm at expert level in Adobe CS3 InDesign.

Overall it's a pretty nice service. Considering this economy, it helped me pay the bills in the last year. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. If you'd like proof, just go to Guru and check out my profile which is mstoner15.

I'd like to hear other people's experience of this. I'm wondering if it's a scam. I'm a writer, copyeditor, proofreader. There was not one job to bid on for a basic member.

Does anybody know if there are any good sites for freelance writers, proofreaders, copyeditors, typists?

So far I'm not seeing anything. Are there some good sites? Or is this a worthless pursuit?

Does anybody know anything about taking surveys for pay? I've been pretty discouraged with what I saw there, too.

Anybody have any ideas for online freelancing writing-related work? Is there anything really out there?

Any feedback would be very helpful.

(Is it possible that good feedback on some of these companies is done by the companies themselves? It's starting to look a little creepy to me.)

Sargasso108

To MDGraphics:
The reason that over 60% of the projects go "unawarded" is because a lot of employers contact the freelancer directly and they conclude their arrangements offline (outside guru.com) and set up invoicing and payments directly. I know because I just got a $30,000 contact off guru.com in this manner. Screw guru.com! I'm not paying them a percentage of every hour that I work. It's enough that I pay them $100 quarterly to subscribe.


To interhope:
You think guru.com favors the freelancer? Surely, you're kidding. Let's see... the employer can read my profile, see a picture of me, review my resume and work samples. But, as a freelancer, when I bid on a project, I have to do it blindly, knowing nothing (not even the name) of the perspective employer. If you got a crappy freelancer, then the fault is yours. Did you review their work samples? Did you read their resume? Did you study his background that is posted on his profile? Did you call and talk to him and drill him with questions till you felt comfortable about his abilities and reliability? Did you establish beforehand an agreement of payments being tied to deliverables? Did you well define the project?

One thing is clear, from the freelancer point of view, you must know how to spot the employers to avoid. Here's some clues:

1) The folks coming out and saying something like, "I want a website like Monster.com and I am willing to invest $5000 - $10000." They're idiots. Leave them to the Indians.

2) If the initial job description sucks, you can pretty well guess they aren't going to be able to clearly define the project for you. A poorly defined project means a lot of guesswork as to what is in the employer's head. It's a fomula for a poor relationship, and both sides disappointed.

Finally, freelancers, charge what you're worth! I put down $50/hour and was pleased whan an employer called me and said, "I could have hired someone posting a rate of $15/hour, but then they would probably just bill me 3 hours for every hour worked." There are some smart employers out there. Don't appeal to the employers who are nothing but freeloaders, wanting to get rich while paying you nothing.

SHORT n' SWEET (or SOUR):
KNOW THAT THE SUBJECT SITE IS A GAMBLE.
It can easily be a money pit. Mob rules prevail. As a freelancer, you never know who you're dealing with; as an employer, you never know who you're dealing with. Both sides are gambling: the freelancer gambles that they will get paid at all, the employer gambles that they will get the quality of work they need/expect/are paying for.
(There are a lot of "big heads" in this world who might think they're wonderful at what they do, while others' perceptions may be entirely different. The subject site is one place where those differences in perception intersect).
FWIW, I tend to discount advertising of any kind, fully expecting individuals to inflate their own value and accomplishments. Heck, even some job counselors encourage that, so, knowing that, how can anyone expect to be believed when trying to "sell themself"? And selling yourself is exactly what the subject site requires for anything resembling success there.

BOTTOM LINE:
You get what you pay for...JUST REMEMBER WHAT YOU'RE PAYING FOR...opportunity, and not a shred more beyond that.
IMO, if you pay to join this site, the ONLY thing you can be sure to happen is that you will no longer have the money you paid for your membership. Once they have that, then all you get is "opportunities" to bid against others who are scrambling and scraping for the same generally-low-paying jobs that you are.
Between membership charges, high - and highly erratic - fees collected for their "service", I'm convinced they take entirely too high a percentage for what they provide. (It's about as risky as playing the lottery, but more expensive and with similar chances of winning).
It can be useful to acquire new clients, but that takes perseverance, low bids - and low expectations - on the part of the freelancer. It seems, perhaps, that the most benefit comes AFTER you've acquired a client AND you're able to somehow cajole that client into giving you work directly and outside the scope of the web site. (I'm strongly suspect the site owner is not foolish enough to think that isn't happening).

Read on if you want a detailed description.

My Experience There:
I've had (free) "Basic" listings on the subject site for a few years. (I think 2 before I landed any jobs from there). I finally landed my first job, and that customer was very satisfied, and I've since had repeat business from them. (In fact, I've met their job requirements so well, they call me directly rather than listing jobs "for bid", and we've developed somewhat of a rapport). Unfortunately, that employer doesn't like dealing outside of the subject site's processes because they like the fact that it handles some tax info for them. So, if I stick with that employer, I'm bound to continue to pay high fees to the subject site for the mere "opportunity" to bid on other jobs, (I'd guess roughly 95% of which are low-paying).

I hope to continue to get work from that employer, and took a chance that getting a paid membership would increase my "opportunities for work." (I earned enough from that employer last year, and paid enough in guru fees, that the fees I paid would have covered the cost of membership, but with little left over).

While I can now bid on more jobs, I am still somewhat limited because the work I do often cannot be done by someone in another location, yet alone in another country. (My job categories include shooting photos and video, along with editing, audio work, and DVD creation, something someone from Asia or Europe cannot do easily, i.e. shoot photos or video "within 25 miles of [the nearest large, U.S. city]". Conversely, I cannot easily shoot something in Australia, New Zealand, or any other country or continent. But none of that is the fault of the subject site; it's a condition of working in the field I chose).

Since I've "upgraded" my membership, I've noticed some odd, and certainly unexpected, things. Here are what I consider the oddities, (and perhaps they should serve as warnings to others considering a similar upgrade):
1) I've invoiced a repeat client for work done since the upgrade, yet the subject site deducted the same "service fee" percentage as they did before the upgrade took effect. In simple terms, paid membership is described as working like this:

a) an employer posts a job and it gets listed for all to be aware of,
but details are restricted in certain cases. Example: Basic
members can see that a job has been posted in their category of "expertise", but are prevented from seeing all the details of the project description, AND prevented from bidding on it unless the employer posted it as "Open" to all, rather than only non-Basic members. If you upgrade from a Basic membership to a paid one, you can now see all the details, but if/when you get paid, the fee charged by the subject site is based on when you first viewed the job listing, i.e. at the considerably higher rate of a Basic membership. In this case, not only has the site collected the price of membership, but they also have earned the highest fee available.


b) depending on how the job is listed by the "employer", bidding
may be restricted this way:
- Open jobs: anyone can bid on, even free "Basic" memberships. These also incur the highest fee the site automatically deducts for your payment.
- non-Open jobs: can only be bid on by those with a
paid membership, and the fee collected by the site is supposed to be a smaller percentage, but that , too, is not always the case. (See item "1) a)" above).

c) as freelancers submit bids/proposals, the employer is notified.

d) the employer can decide to use whoever they want, or no one at
all.

e) if a bid is accepted by an employer, the freelancer and "employer" work out the details of the project between themselves. The site owner apparently couldn't care less if either party doesn't know how to effectively communicate project details and expectations.

f) at times/events/stages agreed-upon by the 2 parties, the
agreed-upon price can be put into an escrow account, (which
the site claims to be the safest method of payment, but charges
the highest fee), or invoiced directly through the site, (which
the site claims offers less protection that the payment is, in
fact, legitimate).

g) upon completion of the project, full payment is expected, and
dollars and the completed project change hands between the
"employer" and the freelancer.

It seems I've been lucky finding this one repeat employer, as I've never had a problem with payment or delivery of a project completed for them. HOWEVER, I've never had a bid accepted by any other employer, either. I submit what I think are very comprehensive and detailed proposals, often listing exactly what I will provide - and what I expect from the employer - for the dollar amount of my bid. I raise many questions in my proposals to be certain I can, in fact, deliver the project up to expectations. (Perhaps my proposals are too detailed, but I continue to ask in an effort to acquaint an employer with all the things I must consider to deliver what they want).

2) If you have a Basic membership, and view the description of a job, then upgrade to a paid membership, THEN make your bid, and your bid is accepted, you will have lost:
a) the cost of upgrading your membership,
b) a higher fee for the site's processing, if and when you finally do get paid.

3) You apparently can "buy your way to (or near) the top".
With only Basic membership, I was awarded a few jobs, with excellent feedback for all of them from the employer. Despite that excellent feedback, I was rated between 100 and 200 in one specific category.
I then upgraded my membership to a paid one, and, without doing ANYTHING else...not even bidding on another job...my rating skyrocketed to within the top 10 in that category. At least one of those numeric ratings certainly was NOT a reflection of how satisfied my clients were with the results of my work. Yet, having given $$$ to the site for a paid membership, I suddenly gained a higher ranking. (Seems like "pay-to-play", as in politics, doesn't it)?

I could go on, but I think you get my points: the subject site has been beneficial for some, and torture for others:
1) the subject site has not worked out methods, processes, or a system that can be fair to all, and
2) they seem to act similarly to most long-running businesses, i.e. they give you as little as possible for what you pay them, and keep as much as possible for themselves. (Enough to make you wonder if they once worked for Bernie Madoff, or on Wall Street).

My description is not meant to claim the site is totally useless, but to help people understand what - and how little - to expect if they choose to sign-on there. Caveat emptor.

Epilogue: you may have noticed that I've avoided naming the site. I realize that may be useless, given the venue and topic I'm posting this to. However, I still retain some level of paid membership - and a satisfactory ranking - there, and didn't want to risk having that tainted or ruined by someone at the subject site.

I wrote this comment in response to another post and thought I would bring it to the surface. Hopefully, my experience and view will be useful to someone.

I'm a copywriter and have had success finding clients on Guru. My main complaint, however, centers on the large number of bottom feeding "employers" as they are called. Most are unwilling to pay appropriate fees for quality writing. They're frustratingly cheap, and I'm sure get substandard work from the "pros" who drop their drawers for these folks.

I HAVE found a few gem employers on Guru that I've added to my client list. After completing the initial project, I began working directly with these great folks to avoid Guru's annoying fees. A provider just has to be willing to dig for the good ones (ignore Guru's dumb ranking system and concentrate on writing strong proposals). When you consider the cost of getting clients in the usual ways, adding Guru as another channel is justified for me.

Guru.com was a complete waste of money. This site is of no use to anyone is a first class country as people in 3rd world countries will bid unbelievably low. So unless you're willing to work for about 50 cents an hour or less it is a waste of time.

Look, there are some legitimate jobs on Guru.com and there are even more scams. We are a U.S. firm hiring U.S. citizens exclusively. We aren't cheap, but we are very good and have a very high ranking (until tomorrow) on Guru.com. However, the new ranking will take us from the double-digits (around 15th) down to around 65th. After reviewing the calculations for raking extensively and having multiple conversations with Guru.com customer service, it is very clear the goal is to increase the revenue coming into Guru.com at the expense of vendors providing services.

Think about it - you get a better ranking if you low-ball bid as many projects as possible - thereby increasing your ranking with higher fulfillment rates, then come back in later and charge the employer extra money (holding him/her by the balls since you've already been chosen and received some of their budget) - sound geared to questionable practices currently used in countries outside the U.S. and Europe - you betcha.

Also, the more money your clients send to you through guru's escrow service, the higher you will rank. I hate to say it, but about 75% of my clients really don't like to use Guru's escrow service and want to send us a corporate check or pay via our merchant processing system here in the U.S. We're a legitimate business - no weird hide-and-seek tactics here.

And on and on...

It's frightening what these folks are getting ready to do to those of us who have been loyal providers on the site, but frankly it's motivation for us to clammor together and build a new competitor for Guru.com....

Anyone else in?

I'm reading a lot of negative reviews here. I'm an employee and have had overall a very positive experience, although I can understand why perhaps 'guru's' have had a bad exp.

I have put up 3 projects so far and paid out about $4500 and have achieved all my objectives. I have had good work done, for a pretty low price.

Some recommendations:

1. If you are a coder/programmer DO NOT use this site if you live in Europe/America. There will ALWAYS be someone in India or Pakistan who can do the same job for perhaps 1/3th the cost. The people I have hired are usually a well organized team of 15+ developers. I see them as a sort of coding factory, just taking on the ample jobs out there and sucking up all the projects us Westerners cannot 'afford' to take.

2. If you are Western then you probably will get hired if you are looking for say advertizing/Legal/marketing etc. I am reluctant to hire a non US person for marketing or legal advice as I know they probably don't have the correct background.

As an employer I have found the guru site very easy and smooth to use with a lot of good features for managing projects. I have found great guru's who have helped me build my business from scratch. guru.com helps me find some decent pro's out there.

Guru is a slave-labor operation that is very pro-client and downright hostile to their contractors, the people who pay them.  Also, they were one of the first contract work sites to allow competition from overseas, so I guess you can say that started outsourcing American jobs almost 10 years ago.  Avoid.

Mind blowing website with everything which makes it stand different in this domain. Those who say that the bids by others is not visible, I must tell them that when bids by others is visible people make idiotic bids as they do in Rent A Coder. Bid for the amount which you feel is fair enough for that project. Those who say that they did not get a project in 5 years listing on Guru, I must say, they need to do some soul searching. Better yourself and support your bid with work you have already done.

You cannot bid on any projects unless you become a paid member !! Their Basic free membership is a harsh joke on people looking for work.

Putting one star here is being generous - but there are no lower options!

Guru.com used to be good. Now it is turning into a complete cash grab.

They've started using several new methods; one is how they calculate your ranking. I had a pretty good ranking due to the number of good projects that I was awarded and landed (based on professional rates). In January, they are going to change the ranking method so that providers that get the most jobs (and by extension, charge slave rates) will be ranked FIRST.

That is a complete ripoff.

Second, they have implemented 'Premium Proposals', which means that you can get your bid seen faster if you - guess what - pay more. And, surprise, surprise - the lower your ranking, the more you pay.

They are turning into a money-sucking machine - and ripping off the very people who keep their business going in the first place!

They are turning into an Elance-type operation, and I would NEVER work with Elance in a million years. Unless you want to give away your services for basically free, stay away.

The job descriptions are too vague to make an honest price evaluation. Too much time wasted in trying to figure out what to charge. Don't waste your time.

Do I have to give them one star? I have been a registered member on Guru for several years now, first as a basic, free, member and then under a paid subscription. I am now approaching the end of my first full-year subscription and I can tell you that there will be no way that I will renew. I have been awarded only two small projects in that whole time. I used to submit proposals on just about everything that I was qualified to do and I kept track of all my bids, periodically checking on how many were awarded, etc. For quite awhile, the percentage of projects that went unawarded was well over 60%, and many of those that were awarded seemed to be for ridiculously low rates. For the past 6 months or so, I have been much more discerning in what I chose to bid on and guess, what? The results are still basically the same. Of the nearly 200 closed projects still listed in my project tracker, some 50+% of them have never been awarded. However, you really start to get a feel for Guru, though, when you spend time writing questions to employers trying to get enough info about a project to submit something more than a generic cookie-cutter proposal and almost never get any kind of response. If employers can't be bothered answering questions about their projects, the projects can't be all that important to them. Now that Guru will be changing their rating system to a method that will basically punish those who write generic bids, there is no reason to bother paying them another penny.

Stay away from Guru-Period. My small non-profit was doing a simple website...the first guy took 8 months to do a website and guru released escrowed funds to him without our permission! We never did get a website, nor the money back. Instead we contracted again (boy were we stupid to listen to guru that they would make it right) and the second guy has yet to produce anything. All the elemnets have been done by outside people and a simple site navagation is all we need. It has been 2 months and the "web guy" is now telling us it is going to cost us more money! If we don't pay, we don't get our web site. Guru is saying that as long as he shows them the site, they will release the escrow funds to contractor. Guru even indicated that they would be no arbitration in our case because the contractor has shown good faith. I can't even get him to respond to any of my phone calls or e-mails. Again, I am out of money and patience with no results.

I am an employer on Guru.  I have acted in good faith toward those I hired to do graphics jobs and I have been impacted negatively by two freelancers on Guru.  They took the job and used up weeks of time "working" on it and then stopped taking calls and pretty much ditched us.  The last person to do this was Travis Wiggins.  I warn any emplyers not to use this man.  He is extremely unethical and cost our company an important deadline because he simply refused to respond.  His Guru number is:  ID : 1003609. Guru is biased toward the freelancer.  The only way for an employer to review the conduct of someone like Travis Wiggins is to PAY HIM even though he did not deliver anything.  Also the freelancer is completely in charge of invoicing.  Apparently all the freelancers know this and they ditch employers at will knowing the employers have no recourse.  I filed complaints with Guru, but nothing was done. They are on the side of the freelancer in such matters and I guess their reputation is not important to them.  I warn employers to avoid Guru.com until they fix this very unfair review system and by all means avoid Travis Wiggins who at the same time he refused to answer our calls or emails, was logging onto Guru everyday completing jobs for other people.  We would have found another designer if he had only responded.  We kept OUR word.

The site is expensive and yes...few gigs for a few people out of the masses. I speak as a freelancer who got burned buy a project buyer... Consumer fraud that goes on at guru and other sites needs to be stopped. Please sign my petition and pass it on to your contacts. The time for reform is now! http://www.gopetition.com/online/21088.html 

I don't want to step on anyone's toes but I do have one question, for all the people saying "I have been bidding for three years and didn't get one project" ....are you any good? I have been on the site for four days and got two well paying projects (completion this afternoon) and one that I am still in negotiations with. These three projects total $2350. Not bad for a weeks worth of work and only eight bids. Both projects that have been awarded to me were paid up (in the escrow) and I've had no worries.

Steer clear of Guru.com!!! I hired NGBM Solutions through them and got royally ripped off. I paid ngbm.net through Guru.com after they showed me great work on their test server. However, when it came time to deliver the project the developer, whose name is Rajan Kumar Upadhyay, became suspiciously hard to get in touch with. To make a long story short the developer used his superior knowledge of the Guru.com system to not only steal my money but also to steal my concept. That's right, I caught the bastard trying to launch his own site with my concept!!! In the end Mr. Rajan gets away with it because he is in India and all Guru.com can do is say "too bad, so sad." A bunch of thieves if you ask me!

Save your money. You have a better chance trying to get web jobs asking 50 welfare bums on payday for a web job. What annoys me the most that nobody else posts are the fact that so many jobs are repeats. That gets me to wonder why the same jobs with same names get posted every so often. I am wondering who is doing that and that was my biggest fear when I got a paid membership, wondering how valid a free job posting could be on a paid service. The numbers fooled me, don't let them fool you. Not only that, there are also so many postings from webmasters posting jobs at insane amounts. No offence, but unless you work in the India (where the founder has roots) and can do devepment work for below minimal wage, stay way from these clowns.

When I finally got a couple of people interested in my bid, I saw trouble because he presented me a contract and had no soul to be able to do the project like reasonable human beings. I felt a webmaster trying to get as much built before taking a half-made project for free, or a guy who may pay if he was dragged through the court process with his make-shift contract. Been there, done that once.

I would like to have some good things to say, but, even a pro writer/webmaster like me finds a loss of words. Okay, here is a happy ending. The website is well built and works well, even though it is a failed system.

Recently forked over the bucks for a membership to try to upgrade the quality of the projects I could bid on. Hasn't happened.

There are just so many hilarious project proposals, it's hard to choose the best, but one of my favorite kinds is when the employer claims to have a complete spec in hand and will release it to the winning bidder. How does one bid without a spec, unless you want to work for free? Catch-22! You have to be broke and desperate to bid on guru.com and if you aren't already you soon will be.

I have over 25 years of prepress and design experience. I have actively bid on guru for 5 yrs plus under the free account they offer. I received one project award and two invitations to bid. I have encountered numerous bogus fake project listings. One time I offered the work for free in the description field and emphasized the fact that I would do it for free and still NO responses! Also an issue is the going rate bids by the astronomical amount of designers is very very close to $10 per hour or less! That is fine for a text only biz card but for pro work on full color in depth logo and brochure kinds of design? These employers should sell me their products for same! dollar store money!

My rating is not really a one star, sorry to appear to give guru such a high rating, rather it is one star divided by 100 and one piece goes to guru for sending me emails :) moving on...

I was a company hiring independent contractors on Guru, & they had attitude almost from the very beginning of my stay there which was around 3 years. Some (not all) of the ICs were immature, arrogant, unskilled, unreliable, disappeared, or refused to fill out simple job applications. This shows me they aren't quality professional people. Sometimes these ICs would get me going trying to blame us instead of taking responsibility for their actions, so I would speak my mind. These little babies would run & cry to Guru, & the next thing I know, Guru is telling me I'm in the wrong & the ICs are in the right. This happened several times. I even had someone at Guru tell me we were too small a company, & we should go elsewhere. I was shocked at how I was being treated by Guru. Guru didn't like it when I didn't rate the ICs with 5 stars. I found this out when an IC wasted my time, I was very nice to her, we talked back & forth, & then all of a sudden she refused to fill out the application or something, & then blammed it on my ratings of others. This spoke volumes about her confidence in herself, but once again, she ran crying to Guru because we were upset that she wasted our time & then used some other excuse instead of just not responding to the ad in the first place. I was once again told that this IC was in the right, & I was wrong. So a company isn't allowed to say what's on their mind, they have to tip toe around Guru's precious immature, insecure independent contractors. I never swore at an IC because I would never do that, & many times I was unable to say how I really felt because I felt like Big Brother was watching me. Not ONCE did Guru ever admonish an IC. Not when I was spammed with tons of ICs that don't read the hiring ad & complained, not when they did anything wrong, or instigated any kind of argument between me & them. I even had an IC who told me he was an assassin & Guru still did nothing. Finally after spending what I feel is a lot of money with Guru, I was banned from the site for once again telling an IC that he was unprofessional b/c he refused to fill out our simple online application. I guess Guru feels that a company's application is not necessary because that is what I was told, that the IC has the right to refuse & while I agree, I would never force anything upon anyone, I don't respect people who refuse to adhere to mandatory business practices. Why the majority of the Internet feels applications shouldn't be standard is beyond me. This is no different than any other position one might apply for. I have heard other stories of how Guru has sided with the IC, & never with the company. It's very clear it's a one sided company. Guru is in it ONLY for the money, they don't look at each incident on its own merit. If you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars they won't do anything to you, but if you are a small company & can't spend that much, they don't like it when you speak your mind. I'm glad I didn't listen to that one Guru employee who told me to get lost. She was lying when she said they didn't have anyone in my price range because everyone on there was of high end quality. I came across many ICs within our budget, & even other high end priced ICs didn't have the skills or work ethic their hourly rate commanded. In my opinion Guru is nasty, & shouldn't even be in business. In the last year I've barely had any responses to my ads, whereas before I used to get tons. All Guru does, in my opinion, is enable these insecure, immature independent contractors by allowing them to be unprofessional, act like babies when they are told why their attitude is terrible, & rather than enforcing good work habits & treating a company online just the same as they would offline, they allow these ICs to cause undo stress by being flakes, or refusing to be properly screened.

Well, gotta add to the bad vibe here, and give my 2 cents.

DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY!!!

I have been a paid member on guru.com for 7 months (about NZ$200 for the privilege!), submitted a total of 60 bids so far, and got a total of 3 genuine projects from it.

Now, out of those 3 projects, 2 led to work offline of guru.com with clients in the US. Both of these clients received my services at a rock bottom price, and still thought I was TOO EXPENSIVE!!!
Luckily I have made the money back on my membership, but have got a total of about US$1000 for approximately 200 hours work.

I am also a graphic designer with over 7 years experience, who studied for 6 years at design school in London. Yet, that counts for nothing when you have Pros in Bangalore that can produce 20 page fully designed brochures for 50 bucks!!!

The (kosher) employers that are looking for freelancers really dont see the you get what you pay for message unfortunately.

My bids have been informative, accurate (albeit at well below my normal going rate), honest and realistic, still no joy though.

I have just got my project message board rights back after being banned for 15 days for writing two sarcastic posts along the lines of xyz work for less than x dollars, are you serious. The whole site is set up with the employers on the high ground.

I wish I had found this post 7 months ago. Totally frustrated with Guru.com, but still trying to get work on there, wasting hours writing bids, but Im an optimist (much to my detriment).

I also set up fake job (scarily easy) early on to find out what other pros put in their bids, and was also shocked and dismayed at the ridiculously low prices some of them were willing to work for. I live in New Zealand where the US dollar is great, but even working for US$15 takes the piss for high end design work.

That leads me on to the employers project descriptions. Someone else said it here already, but a huge majority of the project descriptions go something like this:
Brochure needed, dont want to pay too much, want it to look like it was designed by Saatchi and Saatchi (ok that last bid I added, but you get the drift).
And that is seriously as bad as some of them are! How on earth can you accurately bid on a project with such scant detail?

I could go on..but I have project bids to write.

Hope this helps your decision!

The huge "credibility" issue about guru.com is why every employer don't publish their information online. What are they afraid of? Are they hiding something? If you've been following all postings at guru.com (especially under the Business Consulting and Admin Category, you'll notice a similar pattern of postings. Like for example, a ghost employer will always say "I want a business plan for x,y,z" or " I want a list of some kind". Check the following day and you'll see more of those but with a different type of business. I say almost all postings are bogus just to keep the flow going and get you excited. Try to create a decent proposal and you don't even get aknowledgement from these "ghost" employers. Oh I get it, the ghost employees at guru.com are paid $10 an hour to create these postings. Very clever! For those of you who had the blessings of landing a legit job at guru.com, or so you say, maybe you're one of the ghost writers - congratulations! But I'll bring my business elsewhere..

This site is very nearly a complete waste of time. I'm an illustrator/designer and have been a member for over a year now and have gotten a few nibbles and have been awarded one job. You have to lowball your bids to the point where you can't make any money. Often the budget that the job offers is unreasonable (for instance - $100 to full color illustrate an entire 30 page book??!) It's a fact that employers often award the job to the lowest bidder, not the best qualified. Or worse, they don't award the job to anyone. So you waste your bids on jobs that really never come about. (I noticed the exact same job postings over and over. Possibly the person is hoping to get the absolute bottom dollar bid??) I contacted Guru and recommended that after a person posts 3 unawarded jobs they should be kicked off the site. Their response? "No, we don't require that." NO S#!+!!! The only benefit I can see to Guru is it could be a way to get new business connections, if you're very patient and willing to work for nothing at first. Then maybe they will recognize the quality of your work and do repeat business. It did happen to me with that sole job but like I said, that was just one hook up in a YEAR.

I've been using guru.com for about two and a half months now, and so far, I've gotten quite a few nibbles, and three solid writing jobs that will be ongoing. Is it the best paid work I've ever done? No, but it's hardly an embarrassing rate, and the work is fun and interesting, and will yield me good clips that could easily lead to higher paid work elsewhere. I agree with others who say there is a lot of crap on the site; I never even look at anything for web content postings, which seem to want 100 articles tomorrow for about $20. But there is legitimate work to be found if you're discriminating, and willing to lower your rates a bit. I look at it like match.com (where I found the most wonderful guy who I've been with for nine months) -- you have to be patient and know how to recognize the prince among the frogs!

In the last 5 years I obtained three significant jobs from Guru.com. The first project was a B2B site that brought pharmaceutical sales reps together with medical service providers via an online calendar. That job netted $35000. The second project was a custom VB project for a highway information system provider, which required the use of TAPI. That job netted over $50000. The last job was an online testing application, which netted $6000. So in seven years I've made about $91000.

Obviously, this isn't the only source of revenue for me. But it has worked. I have been burned by some companies. And many of the postings are bogus. But you learn what looks real and what doesn't, and you ignore those that are fake, look fake, have mispellings, or say something like "I don't have or want to pay much for this...".

They have an escrow service now. And it works fine. I've used it. And they paid me quickly. Not only that, but I could divert the funds to my Paypal account for free. I like that.

Guru.com is a exploitation laboratory where "employers" can find pros, contact them any way they like, even pretend that they didn't find you on guru.com, and then get your long-standing, highly-reviewed service provider profile closed and reased with one word of complaint to Stacy Norman at Guru.com, who is quite simply an insane person with serious issues that need to be examined by a trained therapist. These people don't care about proof or facts or reason. These people are rude, cold, and unreasonably harsh on their bread and butter (the service providing members). If something goes wrong with an employer, they blame the provider regardless, and expect them to work for free at times if an employer knows how to get it without paying first. Guru.com is simply a low-rent operation. If an "employer" wants to, he or she can get your account closed and all your reviews, verification of your services and expertise erased at any time. If they do it to you, just sue them. I am!

Scam. I've had a free account with them for 3 months. Have never bid on a job because of what I've seen so for. The biggest putoff for me though is that employers are bottom fishing, ie $3000/month (full-time!) for a six month project. $18.75 per hour? Not in Boston (or the USA for that matter!), I could clean toilets for better. The only benefit to me is to get a feeling for what skills are in demand.

Hi
I have been working with guru.com with last few yrs and i wouldnt say they are scam. But yes i agree their support system sucs big time they are rude and cold. I would rather use elance they are far better than guru.
Regards
Sandy

well i am a paid member on the site and I earned some money on guru.com but when time came to withdraw that money they just wont reply. I think its a big scam they are just using money for themselves
Regards
Nik

I've had a free account with Guru for about 6 months now. I refuse to pay anyone to find me work, until the contract has been signed, then I don't mind paying a commission. Anyway, I just won my first job on Guru. Not impressed. I told the person who hired me, that I require half down to get started. I never heard back from them. As an artist, and from experience, I will never take a job without a 50% deposit. Never had a problem with serious clients. It is a good way to protect yourself from scams.

I must give it one star simply because I got hired for a project--2 years ago when I used the "free" subscrption. Thinking I could at least double that success by upgrading to the "Membership" package....I was badly mistaken. First you have to fill out IRS paperwork and forego your SS#. Then you have set up a portfolio that is excruciatingly slow and non-user friendly, which forces you to go through 500 "enter this information" before you can upload one piece. After 2 days of setting that up, I rolled up my sleeves and went to work submitting proposals, only to discover that there are a ZILLION "designers" (and I use that term very loosly) who will do a logo for $30!!! Are you kidding me? Even worse than that, most of the clients' descriptions read like this: Want brochure. There are no specs, no details, no professionalism on this site, which accounts for the poor penny-designers and the demanding clients who want 400 revisions for free. Please. This site is a waste of time for any serious professional. Surf it as a hobby only, and see what you can milk for free...since that's what they'll end up doing to you. (By the way, after a year's membership and 2 million proposals, I got ZERO jobs.)

I am an affordable technology solutions provider located in Santa Cruz, CA. I haven't used the site to find work yet, and after trying a few other sites in this scope, I am pretty skeptical. There is no real way to classify services using this site, so definitely not recommended for generalists like me. I was disappointed by the low, low rates that employers seemed to be willing to pay - c'mon $20-30 per hour is not an acceptable rate in California for serious providers. So, I'll post my profile and won't apply for work here, but it can't hurt to have a free profile.

How is it that every time some third worlder hand-spams the words "very informative" make it in there ?

My husband is a senior applications programmer and has done some work for similar sites.  The best of a bad lot is "RentaCoder.com". They hold the payment in escrow until both parties are fully satisfied. However, his take on this is, "You get what you pay for". Not that anybody has a right to rip another person off. However, my husband invested a huge amount of money in education and years upon years of keeping technologically up to date in order to earn a degree and make decent living in this field. As such... he's a bit cautious about those that will take on some of these jobs for next to nothing. Most of these "professionals"  not only are not Americans but do not live in the US. Doesn't leave much room for reasonable recourse when an "employer" gets screwed. Especially if the "professional" is blacklisted and just turns around and sets up a new account. If the price is amazingly low... there's likely a cause for concern. As always... caveat emptor.

I am an employer who attempted to use Guru, and actually awarded 3 projects, and paid for them all--only to get ripped off by the freelancer I hired. I hired someone in the US, and someone with high feedback. He never completed the work, made a gazillion excuses, lied and begged. At one point even held my site hostage for a pizza!!! When I turned to Guru for assistance, they were just as bad as the programmer. I thank heaven I paid with my Visa for at least part of the work, as that is the only recourse left to me. Guru locked me out of the site so I could not post honest feedback about the programmer and protect others from him. It was a total nightmare, and the Guru people, including Stacy Norman, Customer Service Manager, are some of the rudest and most dishonest people I have ever encountered. I have all of their lies in email. For example, they claim SafePay with their escrow offers the "HIGHEST" level of safety for paying for work, but it does not. In that case, the payer is screwed and subject to mediation assistance paid for by Guru. (Guess who will win that one?) Visa is the SAFEST way to go. Note: If you seek their assistance in resolving an issue with a programmer, Guru will demand that you sign a waiver of all rights with Visa. DO NOT DO THIS!!! Get this in writing (email) and send it to Visa. Once I was forced to file my dispute with Visa, I received email from Guru to the programmer stating he was screwed, as it is NOT Guru's policy to fight chargebacks. This is critical info for everyone. Know the risks you are accepting when you work through Guru. They are ripping everyone off.

nice service.   very informative. great site.

highly recommended.


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>:( AWFUL. SCAM!
http://www.zenofeller.com/scam-guru.com

apparently somebody got pissed off and made a website about them : http://www.zenofeller.com/scam-guru.com

Site certainly is a scam. Here's actual stats :

They have 800,000 currently registered "professionals" and 300,000 or so "employers".

However, the HISTORICAL TOTAL of jobs awarded is about 22,000. Over about 6 years. So let's say maybe 5,000 this year or so.

Now, do the math. One "employer" in 60 actually awards a project. One "professional" in 160 actually gets a project.

And that's not the worse part. The worse part is that you are forced to use their escrow services, and the employers either pay with fake credit cards or dispute the charges.

After which you will get an email from their so called arbitrators, to the effect of "Since professional used contract to protect himself, he clearly intended to deceive." That, in the case you actually upload a contract. Otherwise, obviously, "The employer prevails". Either way you're not getting paid.

Provided you somehow manage to get money in your "safepay" account, which pretty much means you get your own mother to hire you through their system, you're getting any money out of there. Period. Either they want a W8 form (if you're not in the US) or they'll just come up with some other absurdity.

Unless you're in it for the drama, steer clear.

Has anyone had them approach you to work on keyword articles for them? I didn't buy the membership but did the basic with no money down. Received 3 invites and got nothing. WHAT ARE THE GOOD FREELANCE WRITING SITES?

This site is a scam. Seriously. I paid for the dumb membership and got NO WORK. Considering that I bid on dozens and dozens of projects at a lower than normal rate and got NOTHING? Well it was easy to see what half the problem was. HALF of the projects are not real. Fluff to make the site look full. The rest of the projects are posted by people who want to hire people in India because they charge less than $5 an hour.

This site makes me furious and I would give quite a lot to get back all the time and money I wasted on it.