Thoughts on Joining oDesk

I joined oDesk today, as craigslist is not really providing any freelance or contract writing work of note lately.

I have to say that I was initially impressed by the scale of the site, the amount of jobs offered, and the professionalism and simplicity with which everything was done.

That said, when my account was finally established, my profile written, and few competency tests were taken, I started to really go through the job marketplace and see what was going on.

Now, like I stated in the beginning, I just joined oDesk, so I could quite easily not have any idea as to what I'm talking about. But the bids on some of these jobs are so low as to be insane- their are groups posting for 50, 60, 100 articles to be written- 400, 500, 750 word articles- for 1$ USD an article!


I'm a fairly fast writer. I'm no one-man sweatshop, but in about one hour, I can research a knowledge-extensive topic, and write a 750 word keyword-laden article about it, proof it, and lay it out in a fairly standard, but attractive way.

Now, of course, that's an hour of really working, not an hour of passively messing around on the internet every few minutes and getting distracted by every shiny link that comes my way.
To be sure, there are many more realistic bids on oDesk I came across, but they seemed to be vastly outnumbered by the sheer horde of vaguely slave-labor types- and what's more bizarre is that these super-cheapo  posts have tons of bids.

I joined the website because I need money- and obviously, there are a large pool of people, seemingly predominantly from third-world, or under-developed countries on oDesk, who need money much more then I do, as they are taking these unfathomably low jobs.

And while part of me wants to say good on them, and another part of me wants to curse them for forcing me to work well below my countries minimum wage, I can't help but wonder about the thin line between providing opportunities and exploitation.

I guess sometimes the two just go hand in hand? Thoughts?