oDesk starting paid membership with limited Connects for free members!

oDesk was the only truly free freelance site. Now even that will be gone soon.

Their rationale is that
"By lowering everyone’s quota:

• There will be fewer unnecessary applications.
• Most freelancers will only apply to jobs they are truly interested in and qualified for.
• You’ll be competing against a smaller and more relevant pool of applicants, increasing your chances of getting hired when you’re the best fit."

Think its utter horse crap.
What ya'll think??

https://www.odesk.com/blog/2015/02/announcing-connects-memberships/

 

#1. Of course they are doing it to make money. They are company. Aren't you on there to make money? Duh.

#2. They are absolutely correct. When you have to pay for something you take it a bit more serious. When it's free you have scammers, people who waste your time and people who are just bored.

Take a look at dating web sites... PoF and OkCupid are full of users who have zero intention of meeting anyone, spammers/scammers, and people who are just "checking it out". Match.com and Eharmony cater to people who WILL meet and are serious therefor they PAY.

If ODesk charged $99/mo for Freelancers I guarantee you ODesk will have ONLY serious workers.

And to add...why are you complaining? If you are using a service that generates profit for you, it's well worth the INVESTMENT to pay for their service.

 

I think it's good. I don't know if you've ever posted anything on Odesk, but it used to be that you could post for a simple PHP programmer job and get 150+ applicants. 95% of them hadn't read the job description and were just blasting their resumes to every job that says "PHP programmer". It was totally chaos.

They've since worked on filtering it, and it's gotten a lot better. This move seems to be an attempt at even further filtration of the market place, which, in my opinion, is a wonderful thing. I'm an avid Odesker and I only want serious workers.