What's the best method of winning a bid on RentACoder.com?

Question

I have been trying to win some bids at RentACoder.com, but I haven't had much success. Do you have a particular piece of copy that you use to help communicate professionalism to the clients? Is there a particular formula that you have for estimating the bidding price?

Answer 1

Assuming that you're working alone, I think that the most effective things you can do are:

• live someplace super-cheap
• bid in such a way that people from countries with higher costs of living can't compete.

Living someplace like the US or Western Europe makes it difficult to compete with people on sites like rentacoder.com, although I'm sure that some people might make it work.

Answer 2

I've made a fairly decent supplementary income from RAC, so you can definitely make it work for you.

First, in the beginning you'll have to bid low. The serious buyers are going to be very reluctant to hire somebody who doesn't yet have any ratings. So for your first few projects you'll pretty much have to do them for next to nothing. Try to find people from Western countries, and explain to them that you are new to the site, but know what you're doing, and you are willing to do the job cheap if they give you a chance. Be wary of some of the buyers from third world countries, because they may expect you to do 100 hours of work for $50. But you still may have to take some of those jobs in the beginning just to get your rep up.

Another thing that can help is find some simple projects that you can do in an hour or two, and go ahead and build a quick demo app for the buyers to see. According to the EULA you're not supposed to do work before the bid is accepted, but you're allowed to show demos as long as they have something to identify them as demos. i.e. popup a dialog saying THIS IS A DEMO!

After you get some ratings, then you can be a little more selective in your jobs. It will still take a lot of bids, but they'll come. Make sure you do everything you can to make the project as perfect as you can. Many of the people that outsource through those sites have lots of little projects, and because of the high number of incompetents on there, once they find somebody that really knows what they're doing they will stick with them and be willing to pay more money. You aren't going to get many $500,000 enterprise projects, but you can get a bunch of $300 projects that you can do in a day or two, part-time.

Once you get somewhere in the top 1000 ratings on the site, the more serious buyers will start inviting you to private auctions, and that's when you can really start making some money. You're not going to get rich, but I made about 50k in one year doing it part time, so it can definitely be a good source of extra income if you can handle the initial bottom feeding.

One other thing. Be very wary of anybody who asks you to take the job off of the site. They may post their email or AIM screen name, and get you to circumvent the controls on the site. Don't do it, ever, not even once. First of all it's against the EULA for most projects, but more importantly the ones that will ask you to do this are precisely the ones that will rip you off. I made that mistake twice in the beginning, and both times I got ripped. So make sure you use the site and get them to post escrow before you send them anything.

Also, take one or more of the "Expert Rating" tests. That will give you a little certificate icon next to your name when you bid, and while the tests are not that difficult, it gives you an edge.

Answer 3

I found two ways to win a bid on RAC.

The first was low-bidding. There are (or were - I have no idea now, but it seems that a large proportion of those people are now here on SO :-) a huge number of jobs asking for homework to be done and these are the sort of things you can whip up in 15 or 20 minutes.

Those sort of jobs I generally bid $8 or $13 for ($5/$10 after the RAC minimum $3 cut). This was handy for two reasons - it built up reputation on RAC and, after a while, you can generally start recycling the work (change variable names, a little bit of structure, the comments and so on). That's a little ethically-challenged, but I had few qualms about doing that to people who were too lazy to even do their own work.

The second was professional bidding. Most of the time, you didn't even get a bite until you had a decent rep. In fact, there were only two big jobs (over $1000) that I ever did on RAC, most of the non-homework ones were around the $100 mark. To get those, I had to set out very professionally what the deliverables were, progress payments and so on (effectively what you would do on any tender or contract job).

This let the client know that I knew what I was doing and that made it more likely that they would treat the bid as a good one.

But, to be honest, I ended up getting sick of the whole thing since, as Juliet points out in the comment, most job requests are for incredibly complex systems for incredibly low rates done within incredibly tight time-frames - that's really the trifecta of perfect storms in the consulting world. And, anyway, I'm spending far too much time here on SO nowadays to worry about RAC :-)

I found I could get better rates and more realistic time-frames from non-RAC work, even if there's less of it about. I would say leave RAC to the low-income countries since they'll generally underbid you anyway. Nowadays, it takes $100/hour to get me away from my family during time that's supposed to be theirs but even that has limits - I don't want to be a rich old man with kids who don't even know what I look like.

Answer 4

There are a lot of good points already listed here so I'll be quick.

One thing that works wonders for some reason is to ALWAYS ask questions of the buyer BEFORE you make your bid. Ask for some clarification of the project design or some details you are unsure of. If you really don't have any questions you want to ask, then just ask something random about the project. The buyers almost always respond to your questions as it doesn't require any commitment from them and in the meantime you are building a relationship with your buyer. The more comfortable the buyer feels with your knowledge and skills, the more likely he will go with your bid, even if it is slightly more than other offers.

I have never won a bid where I didn't ask questions first and I almost never lose a bid where I open with an inquiry.

Answer 5

I'm with James on this one. Cheap rent and basic food where I live costs about US$100 per week. There are places in the world with net connectivity where the basic cost of living can be as low as US$1 a week. How can you possibly compete with someone who can afford to charge 1/100th of your bid? Not to mention students, people on welfare, retirees, graduates and first-timers who are happy to do it for free (for the rep or the challenge). It sounds like a poor way to make a living if you aren't poor already.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, I'm fine with this. Anyone living in those conditions probably needs the money a lot more than you.

In short, i'd have to say don't bother. Find jobs and contracts with local companies who can pay you at local rates.

Answer 6

As a buyer on RAC, I can tell you 5 things that I look for in a bid:

1) A well crafted response to the bid request that shows that the bidder carefully thought about the project and describes in unambiguous language a clear solution. Canned responses get instantly deleted.

2) Excellent questions indicating understanding of the core principles but seeking more clarification on some of the finer points of the project.

3) If I am requesting bids for a large project, I want to see a history of large project completion with very good reviews and ratings. Small projects and large projects are qualitatively different from each other. I would consider giving a new RAC bidder an opportunity if 1 and 2 are exceptional - and in this case I will ask for and call references.

4) Excellent communications. Prompt replies to my questions. Articulate responses. I can accept some spelling or grammatical errors in deference to those whose mother tongue may not be English, but sloppy communications, misunderstanding my requirements and illogical comments are death blows for the bidder.

5) If I find a promising candidate for a large project but I have any reservations at all, I would break the project into smaller chunks and test the bidder on that small piece first. Success on the small project will obviously lead to getting the bid for the larger project. If the new to RAC bidder whips up a demo of the project, that shows great initiative and gets my attention.

FYI - The last bid that I accepted was the most expensive bid, and 8 times more expensive than the lowest bid. Price is definitely secondary to quality. Not all buyers are looking for lowballers.

Answer 7

I don't agree with low-bidding. I recommend differentiating yourself from other bidders on quality because even your ultra-cheap rate will probably be higher than some people charge as their normal rate.

You biggest opportunity comes when writing a bid. Make it absolutely clear you are professional and serious. Use perfect English and make it obvious you have read the description properly. Every bid I ever saw attracts a load of template applications "I do this plenty cheap" or obvious blanket bids with tiny cut-n-paste changes for the individual projects. This gives you an immediate opportunity to stand out.

Many people won't get that you can be worth 2-5X as much as another bidder. But some people recognise this or can be convinced, and some are nervous of using very cheap developers from hearing bad stories.

So, I always emphasise quality and explain how I'm different, rather than trying to appear the same.