After two weeks of procrastination, I finally sat down and got my Elance.com profile up and running on my account. The number of projects for editing and proofreading is fairly low, especially when considering how many service providers there are for that subcategory. It seems that the number of open bidding sessions is around twenty, maybe less.

For now, I am on the free plan where there are only three connections (basic bids) per month. The next upgrade would be to spend $10/month for a total of 15 connections. Additional connections can be purchased in lots of ten for an additional $5. Any unused connections at the end of the 30-day billing cycle cannot be used for the succeeding month.

So, there was a copyediting gig of around 5700 words (20 pages) on which I bid. All told, there are over 30 total bidders for that small project. There’s a better project for copyediting two DOC files and combining the two onto a PDF. The writer says that they were less than 50 pages each, when in fact the first DOC was 66 pages in length after the ToC was stripped. Apparently, rarely should an editor take the buyers at their word without question because they **KNOW** how long their documents are. OTOH, I didn’t download the second DOC yet. Maybe it’s less than 50 pages. Right!

This firm–EditFast–claims to have over 1200 editors, proofreaders, and indexers in its stable. Its owner–Robert Kidd–has a very brief public Linked-In profile. Robert appears to be **VERY** selective in his Linked-In connections because as of this date, 2 March 2008, he still doesn’t have any!

Conducting a Google search with the keywords being EditFast complaint or EditFast scam, the following hits to various forums or Web sites were found:
AbsoluteWrite.com forums
WritersWeekly.com forums
Work from Home Guide.net
HTML Forums.com

My gut reaction is that this firm is in fierce competition with other businesses (probably in Asia, where China, the Philippines, and India have far more English speakers than does the US), and EditFast most certainly does not have anywhere near enough work to keep its 1200 or 1300 editors, proofreaders, or indexers gainfully employed. So, any editor paying for extra exposure at EditFast would appear to be wasting his money.

But, perhaps, I might be wrong. Maybe someday I might come across somebody who actually worked with this firm–for fun or profit…

If you ever harbor any doubts whether a business is legit or an ongoing concern, one way to quickly discover if anybody had bad dealings with the concern would be to conduct a simple Web search. You could Google such entries as the firm’s name followed by one or both of the words “complaint” or “scam” and after a few hits, you should get a general idea of what the company is about.

Another means might be reading a Better Business Bureau or some such check online. But the Web-search approach to me seems better because it is usually far more informative and less formal. If most or all of the testimonials or remarks on reputable weblogs, forums, or Web sites are negative concerning a certain business (or business plan), then a safe course of action would be not to do business with it, especially if there are other businesses that are generally accepted as being honest.

In the near future, I plan to run a few such quick checks on firms that purport to have work or gigs for freelance editors (and writers). In the past, I came across some that seemed to stretch the truth a bit or had contradictory or suspicious statements in their Linked-in profiles and their Web sites. Perhaps, other satisfied or disgruntled individuals may offer their own comments on those firms (or possibly another).

I will  post the checks of such firms in The good, the bad, and the ugly category and include links of others who either had dealings with the firms or have their own doubts without too terribly many editorials of my part. In other words, I’ll let others make their own observations or judgments in the various weblogs, forums, and Web sites. However, as is my wont, I may throw in a snide or snarky remark or comment along the way…