Anyone have any recent experiences with workmarket.com

joshmadakor

I'm planning on using them a little bit for side work once I finish at WGU and am curious if anyone has ANY stories at all or any experiences with how they function.

On a side note, I was doing one of their little tests. I answered all the (easy) technical questions correctly, but I got these first two "wrong" and "failed" the test. Sorry that I'm not willing to drive around with an 8+ foot ladder on top of my Impreza

Iristheangel

Hello there,

I do side work using both Onforce and WorkMarket. I believe WorkMarket is a little newer of a program and their "testing/training" is a little less professional than Onforce. I only do a couple work orders for WorkMarket a month and I notice that the ones I get offered are usually lower pay than Onforce on an average.

If you're going to go the contracting route for side work, I would recommend using a combination of sites including onforce.com, workmarket.com, guru.com, etc. I would also recommend getting a drug test/background check done. It will help get you routed more work orders

bc901

I have a workmarket account but I haven't taken any jobs from them yet. From what I've gathered it seems like companies pot jobs on workmarket and you receive a email if the job matches up with the skills you post on your account when you sign up. I've gotten about a dozen jobs since signing up last month. I would've taken a few of them but they get picked up pretty quickly, so if you're planning on using this to actually make income you will need to setup a ton of alerts (text and email).

Texanist

I've been on Work Market for 7 months and so far I'm diggin it. I make more money on WM than I do on OF because of the lower fee structure. Most of the test that I've taken were to confirm I knew what I was talking about or to get trained on a SOW for a roll out. Just like any platform I turn down the bargain hunters that want to pay $25 bucks for 3 hours of work but I get allot of good stuff from joining the groups. I say ditto to doing the background check and drug test because more clients are looking for those things.

Everyone

It took months before anything worth my time popped up on there. I made a few hundred dollars providing some architecture and design consulting over the phone (a few brief ~30 min calls), all for the same company. I had to stop because my new job has a no moonlighting clause. Also I don't really have time for side work anymore anyway.

joshmadakor

Thanks for the info everyone.

Iris (or anybody for that matter), I have a few more questions...

How do the break/fix jobs work for you? Are they typically for businesses/companies or is it more for home users? How do you present yourself? "I'm here on behalf of [insert organization name] to service your machine." --something like this? Also, how do you go about obtaining a score/rating for your completed jobs? Who is it from?

Iristheangel

joshmadakor wrote: »

Thanks for the info everyone.

Iris (or anybody for that matter), I have a few more questions...

How do the break/fix jobs work for you? Are they typically for businesses/companies or is it more for home users? How do you present yourself? "I'm here on behalf of [insert organization name] to service your machine." --something like this? Also, how do you go about obtaining a score/rating for your completed jobs? Who is it from?

Usually they're fairly specific like replacing a HD, motherboard, reformatting a computer, malware removal, etc.
I get about 4/5th residential but that's because I signed up for a bunch of PPNs and groups that are big name companies who contract out to residential customers. For the business customers, usually it's simple stuff like diagnosing a router or getting a new switch set up. When dealing with residential software issues, my recommendation is if you can't fix it after an hour of working on it, nuke it and pave it. I am sure most of us can deal with a virus but when there's multiple infections or a boot sector virus that's going to take hours to deal with, you need to be cost effective. Hardware replacement is fairly straight forward. Just make sure to call beforehand to make sure the part is out there! Nothing sucks worse than driving 45 minutes out into the boonies and finding out you have to come out the next day since Fedex didn't deliver. I learned that lesson once and that's all it took.

When you meet the customer (whether it's a business or residential), there should be instructions on the work order but 99.9% of the work orders ask you to present yourself as part of the company you are hired by and not to mention that you are a contractor. After the work order is completed, you are scored by the buyer (the company that hired you). Every buyer has a different policy but most require you to call while onsite after you have completed the work and to hand the phone over to the customer to ask if you completed the work and if they are satisfied. I would say that soft skills are EXTREMELY important while doing this kind of work. Whether you're having to apologize for the buyer's messups or you have to come back for a second trip, usually the customers will be willing to forgive everything if they feel like you actually give a crap.

Anyways, my 2 cents.

joshmadakor

Iristheangel wrote: »

Usually they're fairly specific like replacing a HD, motherboard, reformatting a computer, malware removal, etc.
I get about 4/5th residential but that's because I signed up for a bunch of PPNs and groups that are big name companies who contract out to residential customers. For the business customers, usually it's simple stuff like diagnosing a router or getting a new switch set up. When dealing with residential software issues, my recommendation is if you can't fix it after an hour of working on it, nuke it and pave it. I am sure most of us can deal with a virus but when there's multiple infections or a boot sector virus that's going to take hours to deal with, you need to be cost effective. Hardware replacement is fairly straight forward. Just make sure to call beforehand to make sure the part is out there! Nothing sucks worse than driving 45 minutes out into the boonies and finding out you have to come out the next day since Fedex didn't deliver. I learned that lesson once and that's all it took.

When you meet the customer (whether it's a business or residential), there should be instructions on the work order but 99.9% of the work orders ask you to present yourself as part of the company you are hired by and not to mention that you are a contractor. After the work order is completed, you are scored by the buyer (the company that hired you). Every buyer has a different policy but most require you to call while onsite after you have completed the work and to hand the phone over to the customer to ask if you completed the work and if they are satisfied. I would say that soft skills are EXTREMELY important while doing this kind of work. Whether you're having to apologize for the buyer's messups or you have to come back for a second trip, usually the customers will be willing to forgive everything if they feel like you actually give a crap.

Anyways, my 2 cents.

I really appreciate this post thank you, this clears up a lot for me. I'm looking forward to giving WM a try, maybe I'll keep a blog of it or something.

nx1no

Hey guys,

I've just started using Work Market. I'm in the NY area, so I've been getting a lot of small residential or small business jobs. Most of the jobs I get are basic virus removals, printer fixes, or new computer setups. Most of the jobs I have been getting are from iYogi, so make sure to find that group. They don't take any fees from what I see, and it's usually easy to get them to increase their original price.

I've found that if you don't have the customer call the company before you leave, it takes forever to get paid. Make sure you have the customer call them before you leave!!!