GKauten Consultingv1.2

We all know and love the amazing site known as Craigslist. Chances are one of you has purchased an unwanted couch, sold that dusty bookshelf in the corner, or even found a community of like-minded individuals to share your thoughts with. The wonderful offerings do not stop there and actually extend much further. There is a whole community built into Craigslist of people looking for jobs, or freelance work, and even companies that post their job openings looking for new employees. Now, with a legitimate job offer involving an office of some sort and an actual company that you interview with, submit your tax information to etc… there is a bit more security there that the job  you are going in for is the job you expect to get. With freelance work though, there is so much more you have to worry about to ensure an enjoyable experience for all parties involved.

It is my guess that any one of you readers out there has probably stumbled across Craigslist looking for a quick temporary job or maybe an opportunity to showcase your hobby. I would also be willing to bet that at least one of those posts turned out to be some clever attempt to plant a “Make $50 billion in an hour” type post. For a free listing board, this is pretty typical. Craigslist has even planted their wonderful community moderation tools to allow for users to flag posts that are in the wrong place, promoting in the wrong area, or are just plain inappropriate. Thank you for this by the way Craigslist, I think I have clicked that flag button more than most forum moderators on a busy day. Spam is of course part of our everyday life now and we have all grown quite desensitized to it. The part that you may not be aware of are the more clever groups out there.

I am one of those people who personally loves to organize my email inbox to a point where my reality based life could really use a few pointers. For sites I use often, I create a specific email address for any emails from that site to be delivered to. For this particular example, I would have something like “craigs@mydomain.com” and so on and so forth for my regular sites. This helps me keep track of what email are coming from where so I don’t end up getting confused especially when I can be dealing with up to three of these type sites at once posting my resume over 200 times a day across 50 states worth of job/freelance offers. What I have begun to notice is that more and more of these postings no longer appear to be spam. They fit the category they are listed in, the content of the listing is detailed and seems just about as legit as can be. Over time though, the amount of spam emails flowing back in to my special “craigs@mydomain.com” email address seemed to keep increasing.

There are of course some rather interesting ways people can get your email address, but for as quickly as these emails were coming back in after just creating this email address, I knew something else was up. These seemingly legitimate postings were really just another phishing plow to collect as many email addresses as possible to be filtered into some new list to be sold off to some ridiculous campaign to be used for whatever purpose. Of course these are just deductions from the entire process seeing as how I didn’t actually chase down any of these people and document them in the act. After all, it isn’t really worth it when I can change my email address at will since I own several of my own domains. This is however something I wanted to bring to light so everyone has the chance to realize that spam doesn’t stop at cheesy tag lines and horrible graphics promoting this scheme or that other website. Tactics adapt as knowledge spreads.

At any rate, I shall travel back to more of the guts behind this post. I personally make a rather large part of my living off of Craigslist. I sift through thousands of listings in the job and gig sections quite regularly each day essentially doing all the sales work for my little one-stop-shop type operation I have going on. I have worked with many wonderful people on Craigslist who have turned into great friendships and long lasting business relationships. On the other hand, I have also dealt with many of those people you often see posts about who demand the world for the lint in their pocket, skip out on payment as soon as the work is delivered, or just completely fall off in the middle of a project after half the work has been done to avoid payment. Does it suck when these things happen? Umm DUH! But does that mean Craigslist is at fault, or that we should flood these listings with counter listings talking about how rude or unfair these people are? Not so much.

In the business world, and I do mean the steady 9-5 type work where you have a steady paycheck, maybe a few benefits, perhaps even a neat little desk hopefully with a window view, this same thing happens. It is actually a rather interesting aspect of human nature that causes these type of things to happen, and not just the anonymous type nature that Craigslist brings. The business world just tends to have a few more protections built in which help protect either party in the event that the relationship goes south whatever reason. So what should one do? First of all, always use your gut; do not just assume everyone is honest because they are asking for help with the promise of an exchange be it money or goods. Secondly, discuss every aspect of what is expected and I would suggest over email so you at least have a written record. Thirdly, if you are going to be doing the work, propose a statement of works in which you outline exactly what will be done, the time frame involved, and the costs associated with the work and the timeframe of expected payment. If you are the one looking for the work, ask the person you find to provide one to you. If you really want to get into it and have some search engine skills you can even find a sample contract online for the type of work you will be performing and work it in to fit your needs. Lastly, deposits are always a good idea but a regular payment schedule can actually alleviate some stress on both parties. When you break up the overall payment over the length of the time to complete the project, when someone only has to pay a tiny amount in whatever increment the associated risk is reduced as they will likely be able to see the progress they are paying for.

Now one of the last things I will touch on before letting you get back to exploring your other favorite sites, is understanding. Understanding, or even just tolerance, is probably one of the most important things you can have when working with people in a freelance situation. Often times you will find many posts asking for a logo, website, eCommerce, Flash intros, dedicated servers with SSL, and complete free and clear rights to it all for about $75. If you freelance, then chances are you have already figured out that $75 would not cover even a single item I just listed. Now comes the understanding and tolerance portion. Some people do not have the money it takes to launch a Facebook style website overnight, though they may feel like they have an amazing idea and want to give it a stab. People often do not have a clue what work costs in an area of interest that they are not a part of. I personally would not have a clue what it would cost to re-tile the floors in my house, though I also would not offer $75 to have it done. In most cases, people are looking for quotes to see what it will actually cost and just throw out a ballpark to see what happens.

Ultimately though when people are aware of what the average quote is, and still throw out a silly number like that they get what they pay for, and that is then their problem. Though once in a while there is that person out there who is just doing this as a hobby, or because they have some free time and want some money to go out with on the weekend and will actually do great work, but that is the gamble certain people choose. More or less though, we are built on a competitive business model in which just because you may charge a set price for a type of work, does not mean there is not someone out there willing to undercut you just to get the job and some extra money. If there is an offer out there that doesn’t fit your income requirements then move on and rest assured that there is someone out there that will gladly take that offer. People waste so much effort complaining about “cheap skates” and “scam artists” all because a price doesn’t fit their idea of an industry standard, and it just gets old. At the end of the day, there will always be someone out there like that, and it isn’t worth the ulcer you get spitting at the monitor. Big prices come from big firms. Competitive prices come from Craigslist and other arenas of the like.