As mentioned before, I sometimes take on jobs from a company called Creative Moonlighter as a way of making a little extra cash on the side. The site works this way: clients post jobs, pros post bids, the client picks a pro, and the pro shares a cut of the take with the Creative Moonlighter crew.
I’ve written before about the rude and mostly unresponsive support team at Creative Moonlighter. I’ve also given up on sending them any more politely-worded, detailed advice on how to improve the system. (They never even said, “Thanks!”) I will note here, however, One thing the Creative Moonlighter crew could do to vastly improve their service and make more money for everyone:
Creative Moonlighter needs to charge a listing fee to the clients who post jobs.
Currently, clients pay nothing when putting their job up for bid. The result? A lot of people who are posting jobs … shouldn’t be.
Example: earlier this week, I bid on a job looking for someone to write, very quickly, a good b-novel. The client posting the job offered a fair wage for something dashed-off … so why not?
Here’s why not: the client posting the job didn’t really have a job to post. “I just thought it would be a neat idea, you know, to assemble, you know, a whole team of ghost writers and, you know, see what would happen.” As it turns out, he’s a self-described “first-time author” who thought my “network of publishing contacts could really be of value” to him!
And, of course, there are dozens of listings from people who want to pay $15.00 per hour to “a best selling author” who will “make my life story into a guaranteed New York Times Best Seller.” There also seem to be a lot of convicts and ex-mental patients eager to find someone “who will get to know me and write a book about my experiences stealing other people’s identities and escaping from the law.”
Oh yeah … let me sign right up for that!
Virtually all of these bogus listings would be eliminated if Creative Moonlighter charged clients a $5.00 listing fee. Folks who want to pay a pro writer $15.00 an hour and kids looking for free publication advice would balk at paying even a modest fee for posting their brainstorms to the system. Overnight, the worthless listings would vanish.
Creative Moonlighter would win, because their listings — now free — would become a revenue stream. The pros would win, because we wouldn’t have to waste so much time submitting bids to bogus clients.
Simple. Elegant. Easy. Can the CM crew catch on to that? Time will tell.
Mark,RE: your comment on creative moonlighter
I was with guru as a freelance biz writer when it was purchased by creative moonlighter. i think the whole thing is a sham to obtain registration fees from creatives.Best,Vivian
CreativeMoonlighter is a sham – unethical…the client and CM stole $500 from me – unprofessional, unintelligent company with hick, uneducated clients who want to be writers…
I just about signed up for CreativeMoonlighter before stumbling across your article. I was uneasy about the high registration fee to begin with. Thanks for bringing me to light on the scam.-Codi
I just came from searching the Guru site…they have 47 Copywriter jobs listed and every one requires that you pay the fee to apply. As a beginning copywriter I was tempted, but decided to think about it. Glad I saw your page!Thanks. I won’t go there.