Water Cooler

With the spirit of the Summer Olympics in Beijing fresh on our minds, we thought it would be appropriate to spotlight Matt Shields, a high school teacher, dedicated track and field coach, and Elance employer who brought his vision for a track and field tool to life with the help of an elancer.



Matt began teaching and coaching track and field in 1998, and as much as he enjoyed coaching over the years, he was often frustrated by how difficult it was to record, compile and report track meet times for his athletes.

Effectively communicating the benefits of your products, services, and points of differentiation with prospective customers is critical to generating new business. Effectively communicating with current customers so you build a long-term business relationship is just as important – after all, it’s widely assumed that it costs 6-7 times more to find a new customer than to keep an old one.



Here’s a list of 20 projects you can hire Elance writing professionals to ensure you get your message across in a professional and engaging way. For ease in reading, we’ve organized the list of jobs into functional areas, but be sure to browse the entire list:

Andrew Simmons, an Elance employer and entrepreneur, is also a modern-day Sir Isaac Newton - you know - the guy who had an ‘a-ha’ moment when he accidentally discovered gravity by observing an apple fall from a tree?  Similarly, Andrew had his own ‘a-ha’ moment that launched his lucrative business.



“I was creating a tiled mural design of Venus painted by Botticelli for my bathroom, and had the tiled pattern on the floor of my living room. A friend came over and thought it was cool - he started telling people about the tiled design,” said Andrew.

As an IT professor at the University of Connecticut, Alex Tung knows a lot about web programming and development. But while he’s teaching the technical side of things – his mind is constantly working on the creative side.



Alex is never short of ideas for new websites to develop, and in 2006, he founded Idea Yoga – the parent company to host the numerous creative websites Alex creates with the help of elancers.

You could say Rebecca Stigall (username: ForewordCommunications) was born to write. She spent most of her formative years in education programs focused on writing and research, and as you would expect, wrote for her school papers. Even in college, she was to the go-to girl for editing projects for her close friends.



Now as a newly hired provider, she continues her twenty plus years as a freelance writer on Elance. Learn more about Rebecca’s Elance journey in her own words: