Elance Discontinuing Their Select Membership - But Do You Qualify for a Premier Membership?

Elance is one of the few places I would tell people it's okay to pay for a membership because I have connected with very cool clients through there and we still do business today. I have been with Elance a long time and only got hosed by one person-ever. That's a great ratio in this biz.

When I got up this morning, SKinney was going to go work out (he is way too motivated in the morning) and I said I didn't want to - I wanted to do some work and have a cup or three of coffee. So first thing is first, open ye olde email and see if any fires occurred overnight I need to put out first thing and I got this email from Elance.

Dear keywordcontent, Thank you for using Elance. As of December 4th, the Elance Select program, as you know it today, will be discontinued. While we know the Select program was popular, offering many benefits such as restricted access to Select projects, profile differentiation, and a generous portion of bids, the only criteria to become a Select provider was a higher membership fee. Unfortunately, the Select seal indicated a level of quality that just didn’t have much weight behind it. To address this, we are excited to introduce the Premier Program - a new merit-based program that incorporates quality and participation as a requirement for membership. We encourage you to visit the Premier Program overview page for more information. And, if you haven’t done so already, check out the new memberships available December 4th by clicking here now. We truly appreciate your business. Sincerely, Jon Diller VP, Provider Network & Services www.elance.com

Premier membership requirements are here: http://www.elance.com/p/help/provider/premiermembership.html

They made what I would call a good move. Effective December 4th. Because basically (like their letter said and I wholeheartedly agree) the Select Membership gave a false impression that you got a higher quality writer when the only criteria was that you pay something like $69 a month instead of $20 or so. So they are raising the bar and killing off the Select Program.

However, I mentioned this to a writer friend of mine and he flipped out. He has nothing verifiable other than he's one of the best writers I know. He graduated high school - started writing straight away and never stopped. He's a great copywriter, ghostwriter and keyword article creator but he has no verifiable credentials other than a virtual stream of very happy clients and the fact he lives a very comfortable lifestyle afforded by his skills to attest to what he does and does well.

So Elance may lose some good people too in this change.