What Is Guru.com About? Is This The Right Freelance Marketplace For You?

Good opportunities (to make money online) can often be hard to find and validate, however, freelancing platforms give you access to a marketplace of good gigs which can usually bump up your salary substantially.

Freelancing is a popular method of working online which can either supplement your current income or be used to build a full-time career depending on your skill set.

Guru.com is a freelancing system which claims to make it easier for expert employers and freelancers to connect, work together, and get the job done in a secure and cooperative environment, but does this platform provide you with the salary that you’re looking for?

The fact that you’ve taken a moment to scrutinize this product before buying it should be applauded. You’ve done yourself a massive favour. Your due diligence will save you from wasting money and time.

A good bit of research always goes a long way in the fight against online scams. The good thing to know is that creating a sustainable full-time online business is not difficult. You just need to know where to look.

Let me make one thing clear, I’m not linked to Guru.com and I’m NOT trying to sell you this product.

Instead, I’m here to reveal whether Guru.com is the real deal and if it provides any true value compared to the leading freelance platforms out there…

Guru.com Review

Name of Product: Guru.com
Creator: eMoonlighter.com
Type of Product: Freelancer Marketplace
Cost: Free to join or Monthly Subscription
Who Is This Product Best For? Expert freelancers

Guru.com Summary

Guru.com is a freelancer platform that lets you bid for profitable job postings against other freelancing experts. Although the earnings are good, you might not end up getting paid as much as you’re expecting because the system is designed to place freelancers in a bidding war for projects so that you end up taking a job for the lowest possible pay.

After all of that, you might not end up getting the job. It all boils down to whether the client wants to work with you. Be prepared to jump through a few hoops.

Product Rating: 10/100

Would I Recommend This Product? Nope

Guru.com Explained

Guru.com is a place where employers can hire freelancers to undertake various projects, tasks and a platform where freelancer can find work. The company is based in Pittsburgh, PA and is run by a guy called Inder Guglani with a team of just under 10 people.

The business is a subsidiary of eMoonlighter.com and was created in 1998, however, it has come up against some strong rivals in recent times.

The Guru.com website shares many similarities with sites such as Freelance, Constant Content and Upwork although they are a few distinctions.

The problem is that Guru is not rated as high as its rivals due to various drawbacks experienced within the platform.

Exploring Guru.com

Guru.com can be used by freelancers over the age of 18. To get started you have sign up and choose whether you’re an employer looking to hire or a freelancer looking for work. We’ll concentrate on the freelancer side of things.

The Guru.com Bid System

Bids are distributed to both paid and free memberships, however, paying members are given a bigger number of bids compared to free members.

The free option gives you access to 10 bids each month with the choice to pay for a higher number of bids as follows-

$10 for 20 bids
$20 for 40 bids
$30 for 60 bids
$50 for 125 bids
$100 for 250 bids

Bids that are provided to paying members are different to bids that you can purchase. Memberships bids can only be used within the month that they are given to you and will expire after that month, whereas, purchased bids are indefinite.

Guru.com Memberships

Fee-paying members get certain advantages over free memberships, and one of the biggest benefits is that paid members enjoy a lower fee (the percentage taken by Guru) when they get paid for completed work.

Below is a breakdown of the membership costs:

Basic Membership Cost (free) – 120 bids per year and 8.95% job fee.
Basic + Membership Cost ($11.95 per month or $8.95 per month paid annually) – 600 bids per year and 8.95% job fee.
Professional Membership Cost ($21.95 per month or $15.95 per month paid annually) – 600 bids per year and 6.95% job fee.
Business Membership Cost ($33.95 per month or $24.95 per month paid annually) – 600 bids per year and 5.95% job fee.
Executive Membership Cost ($49.95 per month or $39.95 per month paid annually) – 600 bids per year and 4.95% job fee.

Extra bids can be purchased on any of the above memberships.

Creating Your Guru.com Profile

You’ll ready to get started as soon as you’ve registered your details. But you’ll need to create your profile before you can proceed. If you’ve used a freelance marketplace before then the process should be familiar.

Your profile should contain the following details-

Skills that you offer.
Your credentials.
The rates that you charge for jobs.
Your experience.
Your strong points and any weaknesses.
Testimonials for previous work.

Extra Expenses

As a freelancer, you’ll also bear some extra expenses, for example, there’s a 2.5% handling charge that Guru places on their employer’s invoices.

You can also undertake optional skill tests that can improve your chances of receiving better gigs. Pricier memberships are provided such tests free of charge in addition to other benefits.

Below is a breakdown of the skill test fees-

Basic members – Skill test cost $4.95
Basic + members – Skill test cost $2.95
All other members – Free

There’s a controversial fee that I don’t agree with, where freelancers can pay to get negative ratings deleted from their profile. Naturally, this skews the ratings and isn’t a true reflection of the freelancer’s standard of work. We’ll discuss this issue in the following sections.

Calculating Your Pay

Guru.com is an open platform for freelancers, therefore, the rates of pay will be different between clients. The pay is dependent on the bid placed by you versus the bid placed by your rivals. The employer will also need to agree to the bid prior to the work commencing.

You can reach an agreement on rates and work out payments using the methods listed below-

Specific Tasks: Negotiations can be based on specific tasks, which is the ideal scenario for short-term gigs. Therefore, these can be invoiced individually and paid when each task is completed.
Staged Payments: These are ideal for longer projects where payments can be divided into smaller installments when the freelancer reaches specific milestones of the project or a specified date such as monthly or quarterly.
Agreed Hourly Rate: An hourly rate is often challenging to negotiate, specifically if an employer has not worked with you before. The majority of employers also insist that you implement time-tracking software to monitor your productivity for the time that you are billing them. The software isn’t encroaching, however, most of them will capture random screenshots of your desktop including any multiple displays that you might have set up.
Recurrent Pay: This is a set amount of money that you will be paid by the employment over a predefined time period. The amount and frequency of pay will be agreed beforehand. This type of arrangement is favoured by employers who would rather not pay hourly or milestone rates for long-term gigs.

How Do You Get Paid?

Guru utilizes a Safe Pay framework, therefore, the money is placed into an escrow account and verified to ensure that employers have funded the project prior to commencement of work. This should give freelancers peace of mind that they’ll get paid, however, employers still need to approve the payments before they’re transferred over to you.

Funds are deposited through one of the options below:

PayPal.
Direct Deposit (Specifically for US banks).
Payoneer Prepaid MasterCard.
Wire Transfer (non-US banks).

Is Guru.com The Right Platform For You?

The Guru marketplace is designed for expert freelancers with a solid track record. You will also need to know how to bid effectively. The platform is fiercely competitive, therefore, may not be suitable for beginners or intermediaries.

Guru.com Exposed!

(1) Problems With Payments

One of the biggest gripes, experienced by the freelancers at Guru, is around payments. Getting paid seems to be a frustrating process.

Escrow payments are meant to protect both parties i.e. clients receive their work and freelancers get paid, however, that isn’t always the case.

The screenshot shows some of the issues that freelancers encounter. This can also happen the other way around i.e. clients getting swindled by freelancers.

The escrow system isn’t always foolproof and there are periods when the system prioritizes employers over freelancers and as a result of this, some freelancers might not get paid.

(2) Bidding System Can Stunt Your Earning Potential

My issue with the bid system is that you are often forced to reduce rates to land a project. You’ll often have to bid against freelancers that don’t mind reducing their rates, however, it might not be ideal for your lifestyle and time commitment to lower your salary expectations.

If you intend to go for big-ticket projects, then you should lower your expectations as you’ll most-likely have to reduce your rates substantially to remain competitive.

The salary might not reflect the work involved and you might not end up securing the project after all of that effort and heartache. There are several factors that determine whether you’ll land a project including experience, the amount of labor required and time.

(3) Flawed Rating System

The rating system at Guru allows employers to rate freelancers on the quality of their work. Positive ratings will show your profile in a good light and demonstrates that your work is of a high standard, thus, you’ll get more jobs.

Unfortunately, the rating is flawed because of the paying member’s capability to delete bad comments from their feedback pages. Guru offers this service for a fee of course, therefore, it doesn’t give clients an accurate picture of the work quality of potential freelancers.

An unreliable freelancer can simply pay to get their complaints removed and the client would be non the wiser.

Guru.com Advantages

Personally, I don’t see any advantages of using Guru.com because when it comes down to it, you’re still negotiating for employment and it’s highly likely that you’ll be underpaid for your work when forced to bid for jobs.

You do get flexibility to choose your working hours and how much work you want to take on.

In light of the above, there are better online freelance platforms out there and these include Upwork, Constant Content and OnlineJobs.

Is Guru.com a Scam?

Guru.com is NOT a scam. It’s a genuine platform with genuine freelance opportunities, although the platform itself suffers with several drawbacks. I wouldn’t recommend Guru for newbies seeking to begin a freelancing career. It’s not the place to start.

The earning potential isn’t great and this is down to the fact that you’ll be bidding for jobs, therefore, it’s a game of “how low can you go?” with intense competition.

The bidding system doesn’t work in your favour because you’ll often accept projects at a rate that’s lower than what you’d like.

There are several obstacles getting in the way of freelancing with Guru that make it a challenge to be a full-time venture.

The escrow system doesn’t always protect you from non-payment of completed work. Some clients might even come up with silly reasons to make it appear as though the work wasn’t done to wriggle out of paying you.

Naturally, this leads me to my next question…

How Do I Use The Internet to Make a Full-Time Salary?

Like with anything else, making money online is a skill that can be learnt, it only requires a bit of dedication and consistency but it’s totally worth it when you can one day walk into your boss’s office and fire him/her.

I’ve personally learn’t how to generate a monthly income stream, with no previous knowledge. I can work where I want and when I want. You can do the same too. Find out more here.