Elence

Elance was first launched in 1999, its name inspired by a 1998 Harvard Business Review article titled "The Dawn of the E-Lance Economy". It was initially developed as a technology for supporting virtual work. Two years later Elance introduced a vendor management system (VMS) for contractors and third-party services used by large enterprises^] In 2006 Elance sold its enterprise software division and developed instead its current web-based platform for online, contingent work.

As of February 2013, Elance is used by approximately 500,000 businesses and 2 million registered freelance professionals, who have collectively earned nearly $850 million to date.

The Elance website allows businesses to post jobs, search for freelance professionals, and solicit proposals. They can evaluate the contractors applying for the job and, once a contractor is selected, communications and files are exchanged through the Elance system. Payment for jobs, which can either be hourly-rate^[7] or project-based jobs, is made by the client through Elance's system, which deducts a percentage of the fee, 8.75%, as a "commission. Elance offers a Work View tool provides an official record of work completed. For project-based jobs statement or milestones are used to indicate progress toward completion, and funds are held in escrow by Elance to ensure payment upon completion of the milestone.

Skills

Information technology jobs such as web and mobile programming and development, account for the majority of earnings on Elance (59%), followed by creative jobs (24%), marketing (7%), and operations (7%). Jobs for writers and graphic designers are also popular.  Elance maintains a current list of their overall top 100 in-demand skills, and in 2011, the most in-demand skills were PHP programming, Wordpress programming, article writing, graphic design, and HTML programming  Specific data, including global job growth numbers and earnings on the most in-demand skills, is made available on Elance's website.