Getting Started as a Geek

This guide is meant to help geeks learn how to use our site.

Registering as a geek

Before you may bid on projects, you must sign up as a geek. You may do this through the “Sign up as a geek ” link under the “geeks” section of the navigation bar. After clicking this link, you will be presented with several questions about your identity, location, and finances. This information is used for payment and collaboration with other users on the site, so it is important that it is entered correctly. If you are already logged in and signed up as a buyer, you will be presented with a simplified form.

The first question that you will be asked as a geek is what you wish to choose as your username and password. Usernames are limited to 100 characters in length. Your username may contain spaces, letters, numbers, and punctuation, but may not contain HTML or the word “HireGeeks” (the latter being reserved for our own personnel). Your password must be at least 4 characters in length (anything smaller is too easily cracked by a brute force attack). You may use any characters in your password. It is recommended that you use a combination of letters, numbers, and punctuation. Never give out your password! It can be used to access your financial information, which is otherwise encrypted very securely.

When prompted for a timezone, please choose the location nearest to you. The timezone you choose will be used to calculate the correct time to display to you when you are logged in. The system used to calculate time is very sophisticated, and can calculate daylight savings time or even leap seconds that may take place in your timezone.

When prompted for your financial information, you must choose one method of payment: Paypal or check. In the near future we will add wire transfer payments, but for now, you can process wire transfers through Paypal (see their site for how to do this). Checks are usually mailed two weeks after you elect to withdraw funds from your account.

When you have finished answering the questions, please click the “Create New Geek Account” button. This should create your account with the settings that you specified. However, in order to verify that your email address is correct, you will not be able to log into your account until you click on the link sent in your confirmation email. If you do not receive this email or the confirmation link does not work, please contact support as soon as possible; your account will be deleted in one week from the date of creation if you do not confirm it.

Once you confirm your email address, your geek account will be active and you'll be ready to bid on projects!

Bidding on a project

The first step to getting paid for your skills is to place a bid on a project. To do this, locate the project that you wish to bid on, using either our powerful search engine, browsing by category, or viewing a project link directly. Click the project's title. You will be taken to a “view project” page, where you may view all details of a project as well as any bids and comments placed on it up until one is accepted. What you can do with this project depends on its phase.

The project's phase is the current state of the project. The following phases are available:

• Open for Bidding: Geeks may leave bids on the project (or withdraw them), buyer may cancel the project or accept a bid.
• Bidding Expired: Geeks may no longer leave bids (but may still leave comments or withdraw their old bids), buyer may cancel the project or accept a bid.
• Waiting for Escrow: A bid has been chosen but we're waiting for the payment to clear. No one may do anything at the moment.
• Work in Progress: The geek is working on the project. The geek may notify that work is complete. Communication should be taking place between the buyer and geek. All comments left on the project during this phase or later are private.
• Pending Acceptance: The work has been marked complete by the geek. The buyer may accept the work (or notify the geek that the work is insufficient and must be revised using comments). The geek may submit additional work via comments.
• Work Accepted: All work has been accepted by the buyer and the geek's account has been credited. The buyer and geek may rate each other. The buyer may also leave a tip for the geek if the quality of work was exceptional.
• Project Complete: Both parties have rated each other. The buyer still has the option of tipping the geek.
• Dispute Resolution: The project is in dispute resolution. Neither party may do anything (other than leave comments for each other or the mediator); the decision is up to a HireGeeks mediator.
• Cancelled: This project was cancelled by the buyer. Nothing can be done by either party.

You can only bid on projects when the phase is “open for bidding”. To place a bid, navigate below the currently posted bids and you will notice a form with several options. This form will allow you to place a bid or a comment. A bid may be accepted by the buyer and may only be left in the “open for bidding” phase, but a comment is strictly informative and may be left when the project is in any phase. To leave a comment, select the “comment” option and fill in the “title” and “comments” fields. You may also attach a file to your comment (viewable only by you, the buyer, or a mediator). Comments are used as the primary form of communication even after a bid is accepted.

Leaving a bid is similar to leaving a comment, but you will also be asked to specify an amount, a “geek fee” (more on this in a moment), and forms of communication that you are willing to provide. The amount is how much you believe that this project is worth and must be within the range specified by the buyer. The “geek fee” is what percentage of the 15% fee that HireGeeks charges on projects you wish to pay. The remainder of the fee must be paid by the buyer, and again, you must specify a fee within the range that the buyer specified. The geek fee will be subtracted from the amount paid to you, whereas the buyer fee will be added to the amount that the buyer must pay upon bid acceptance.

You must also choose which forms of communication you can provide on this project. This list is not enforced by the site (with one exception), but it will give buyers an idea of what sorts of communication you are willing to engage in. You are expected to provide all forms of communication that you select here on request. For example, if you choose “email” and don't respond to emails, you're probably going to lose a dispute resolution. The “travel” option is special because you may not specify it if either you or the buyer is under the age of 18. Consider both your own and your buyer's needs when choosing how to communicate. You must always support on-site communication.

Do not travel if you find out that the buyer is under 18 years of age. If this happens, contact HireGeeks immediately. Do not specify the travel option if you yourself are under 18 years of age.

There is a set of allowed HTML tags that you may place in a comment or bid.

When you click “place bid or comment”, your comment or bid will be created instantly and the buyer will be notified.

Withdrawing Bids

If you feel that you may no longer carry through on a bid that has not yet been accepted or if you post a revised bid, you may withdraw a bid. (Posting a revised bid does not automatically withdraw the old bid; you must do it yourself). To do this, locate your bid on the view project page and click the “withdraw” button to the right of it. Once a bid has been withdrawn, you may not re-open it. You must post a new bid.

You may not withdraw a bid after it has been accepted, though you may cancel your bid without penalty in the first 24 hours following its acceptance. To do this, please contact a mediator.

Accepted Bids

If the buyer accepts your bid, the project will change phase. If an escrow must clear, the project will go into the “waiting for escrow” phase and you should not begin working yet.

Once the escrow clears, the project will enter the “work in progress” phase. You have 24 hours from when this phase begins to cancel your bid without penalty. To do this, contact HireGeeks immediately. If you do this without a good reason (such as a buyer accepting a bid you placed months ago when circumstances allowed you to work on it but no longer do), you will probably make the buyer angry at you, so please don't abuse this feature.

From this point on, all bids and comments placed on the project are private. They may only be viewed by you, the buyer, or a HireGeeks mediator.

Once the project enters the “work in progress” phase, you should contact the buyer on the site with relevant contact information for the methods of communication you specified in your bid. If you selected “remote desktop”, you should help the buyer set up a remote desktop server (your choice of which, so long as it isn't malicious) on his system.

Following this, you should begin work.

Reporting Work Complete

Once your project enters the “work in progress” phase, you will be given the option to report work complete. When you do this, the phase will change to “pending acceptance” and the buyer will be notified that work is complete. If the buyer accepts the work, great! Your account will be credited and the project will move into the “work accepted” phase. If not, please contact the buyer and ask what needs to be changed before the work can be accepted. If the buyer insists on features that were not in the original project specification before accepting the bid, you may send the project into dispute resolution and you will probably win; do not feel pressured to do work that was not in the contract you agreed to.

Rating

When all work is accepted on a project, both the buyer and the geek may rate each other's performance on that project. Ratings are on a 1 to 10 scale, but you may also leave a comment without a rating. Mediators may leave ratings outside of the 1 to 10 range, but if they do that, the description is probably going to contain superlatives. In all cases, a description explaining the rating is required. “Great communication; will use again” is sufficient (if not ideal), but please write something. If you leave a rating without a description and the buyer complains, the rating may be removed.

All users have the opportunity to rebut their ratings if they think that they are inaccurate representations of their performance. This does not affect the rating score, but it will be displayed below the description that the buyer gives. Your profile is not the place to flame or attack the other user. Buyers (and other geeks) probably won't think very highly of you as a geek if you post something like “user is a real loser” as a rebuttal.

In any case, you may continually revise your rebuttal into a polished piece of prose if you wish, but the original rating description may only be changed by a mediator.

Once both parties have rated each other, the project will move into the “complete” phase, which indicates that there's really nothing left to be done by either party.

Tips

If you did an excellent job, the buyer may opt to leave you a tip. It is not a breach of etiquette to leave no tip, so please don't interpret lack of a tip as anything wrong with your performance; there is no such thing as “stiffing” here.

The fee taken from a tip (10%) is typically less than the project fee, though not too far less (to prevent abuse of this lower rate).

In the future, you will be able to tip buyers as well, but for now, only buyers may tip geeks.

Withdrawing / Getting Paid

On HireGeeks, your user account has its own balance, representing how much of your money is currently in our escrow account. Funds in this account have already cleared escrow and thus can be used immediately. You are not automatically paid whenever you have a balance in your account (because some buyers that are also signed up as geeks may wish to use funds from work as a geek on a future project as a buyer and also because we can't access your financial information without your password). You must withdraw funds from your account. To do this, visit the “withdraw funds” link under the “geeks” menu.

You will be presented with a form asking how much you wish to withdraw, as well as a “description” (which will appear on your account history when we have processed the withdrawal) and “instructions” (which are just anything you'd like to tell the person processing your withdrawal). Withdrawal requests usually take about 2 weeks to process. If you chose paypal as your payment method, you will receive a paypal payment. Otherwise, you will receive a check. If we cannot send a payment to the paypal email address you have recorded with us, we will attempt to send a check to you anyway.

What next?

Did that answer your question? If not, try some of the other resources available to geeks. You may always contact support as well; we'll be happy to help.