Now here are some people who know just what they want:
"ABSOLUTELY NO TEMPLATES - ONLY UNIQUE WORK We need a creative, attractive front-end and over-all design. We are looking for an original artist who can combine concepts from several different sites into ours (we will give u examples).
We are looking for full website/online solution.
- CMS to manage our website (products description, price, categories, sub-categories, products variants, shipping module, content manager, image manager, seo adding meta tags and description, promotional/discount code manager, inventory, custom reports, media manager with automatic image resizing and watermarking, promotional tool like recent view products, similar products, send to friend, RSS Feed, social networking.
- A complete accounting program, ideally web based that will automatically manage the payments of our clients, the payments to our suppliers, sync shopping carts with partial automatic CC payments, shipping options, the inventory, billing, invoicing...Creating reports on inventories and sales.
- CRM application mass email,
- Critical requirement Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Google site map and .html pge for better seo. Be able to do Google Analytics and Reporting. Be linked to social networking websites.
Listing with all Australian business directories. - Easy to amendment and modify as this website will need ongoing changes to keep up with the changes in market and technology.
- I don't mind what it’s developed in php or .net or any other but it should run smooth. We will take source code at final delivery.
- search - based on brand, category, price and filter the result to the fitest.
- SSL and Payment integration with paypal, Bpay and other Australian payment gates
- Mobile friendly (mobile application so user can open the site on mobile)
- Affiliate program
- No upfront payment, 10% on design and html, 30% on alpha version, 30% beta version, final delivery with source code 30%)
- I want to see demo and other ecommerce websites you have done earlier. Demo should include front and back end both."
Well, it sounds like a lot, doesn't it? But don't worry - I'm sure the pay is commensurate with the amount of work involved.
Nice, eh? Well, you could argue that it's just an absurd asking price from a deluded poster. But that doesn't explain the four people who applied for the job.
Have fun yourself - oDesk is a veritable smorgasbord of opportunity. Copy writing jobs which require you to rewrite fifty book reviews (so they pass plagiarism filters, obviously), 500 words a pop, for $4 each? Entire web sites designed - with content - in two days, for $100? Steady work doing technical writing, IT admin, and audio production, for under $4/hour, with 400 hours of oDesk experience required? Check, check, check, and check!
It's a brave new world, gentlemen - thanks to the miracle of the internet, we're now worth less than a 16-year-old burger flipper in Tulsa.