How I Got Rich

Is oDesk the worst designed site in the World?

oDesk - Crap Desk more like

Probably not but I do find it a real pain to use. Perhaps it’s just me but I find it very hard to keep track of the communications between me and the people who are applying to or working on my jobs.

When you send a regular message those communications are stored in the inbox area which is fine. But then if you send a message when you hire someone via the form that appears when you actually press the hire button all trace of that message seems to disappear. This is a massive problem as usually when you hire someone you send them the full details of the job. To not be able to see what you have sent later on it can be hard to review exactly what you have ordered.

Also sometimes you get an email notification that a contractor has replied to a message you sent, not a message through the inbox but via the Contracts page. You click on the link in the email and you can see the message which is fine. But if you try to find that message again from within oDesk it is nowhere to be seen. That is unless you go back to your email and click on the link and there it is. This again is a massive pain because often the message will include the piece of work they are sending you. If you delete the notification email you have no way of getting back to that message in oDesk.

I assume ODesk make all their money from the cut they take from the payments that are sent via its website between contractor and job poster but with an interface this poor I’m guessing lots of people, once they have found a contractor they like, chose to leave oDesk and work via email use bank transfer or paypal.

Outsourcing link building with ODesk – Update II

Just a quick update on my experiences of outsourcing the creation of forum profile back links through ODesk.

One of the first sites I did this for has now moved to number one in Google for the keyword I used for the anchor text in the profiles. The site was previously in the bottom half of page one and first moved to number four or so and then moved up to the top spot.

If I try and see if the links purchased for the site are indexed I cannot see any sign of them so who knows if it was anything to do with these links? Its a bit of a coincidence though.

Although saying that the other sites I have aquired links for in the same manner have yet to show much change in the SERPs but again none of their links are showing up anywhere as being indexed.

I started off using two contractors from ODesk to build my links so I could see which one was the best and then stick with them but they both do the work to the same standard so I have been using them both.  They are both incredibly slow though and even though I put in my ad that I required a turn around of 48 hours for a batch of 120 links they take at least five days. 

Due to them both being so slow and me having lots of sites in need of links I have taken on two more people who applied to my advert but again they are very slow.  Add this to the long time it takes to get the links indexed and you are looking at a long process that could take months to really show and benefits or otherwise.

But paying for the creation of these links is cheap and takes me no time or effort so I am continuing with it for now until I find a better way to get links for my sites.

Can anyone recommend a faster link builder than my guys and has anyone else tried this approach to getting links?

Outsourcing link building with ODesk – Update

Since my last posts about ordering some link building through ODesk I’ve had about 5 or 6 jobs completed. Each one has been for 120 forum profile backlinks to a different one of my sites. The jobs all went through smoothly but I have had trouble getting the new links indexed. I’ve tried pinging the list of urls to the profiles but it hasn’t seem to have done much.

I’ve tried to look for the backlinks by using http://www.backlinkwatch.com/ and the Yahoo site explorer but for some of my sites only a few of the links that have been built show up and for others none of these links show up.

This is a bit disappointing as it seems to be slowing the whole process down a lot.

But on the upside two of the sides I have had links built for have moved up the SERPS shortly after their links were build. One was in the bottom half of page one and moved to number two in Google and the other was at the bottom of page one and moved to number seven on page one in Google. It might be a coincidence but the timing is pretty bang on.

Time will tell if the other sites get the same boost.

In the meantime I have been ordering more links for my other sites and also trying to do more blog commenting to try and improve my backlinking efforts.

Outsourcing link building with ODesk – First Job Finished

I just received an email from the guy who I had contracted to build me 120 links using the Angela & Paul packet service thing via ODesk.

I got sent an Excel spreadsheet with links to 120 forum profiles and in each profile my website was given as the users website with the anchor text I had provided.

I have checked to see if the backlinks have been recognised yet using the http://www.backlinkwatch.com/ website but I guess it is too early for them to show up. I will be keeping an eye on this and seeing if my site moves up in the SERPS. It is currently at number two after recently being knocked from the number one spot it had held for a over a year.

I paid $11.11 for these 120 links. I’m not quite sure where the Angel & Paul packet part comes into play but I’m pretty sure I could do this myself if I had the time and the inclination.

I’ve got another order of the same but for another site currently being worked on by another contractor so will see whose work I like best before picking one. Or maybe I will use them both.

At the moment this is the only link building method I am using part from the odd link swap through the a4u forum.

I will report back once the links have settled.

Has anyone else used this kind of link building method or do you know of any other link building methods?