I first heard of Elance during a mentor session with a retired owner of a $20 million/year advertising agency, Phil.

He knew that my (now) business partner Derek and I were shifting our focus to web design, marketing, and advertising, so he briefly mentioned Elance to us and said that it would be worth checking out.

The next day, I headed to the mountains of Pennsylvania for vacation and, luckily, that simple recommendation from Phil changed my life.

3 hours into the trip, I had already created an account on my iPhone and added multiple job postings to my 'watchlist' to submit proposals on when I arrived.

When I arrived, before I began submitting proposals, I read every review and tip on Elance out there. Just like you're reading this, I wanted my proposals to be flawless.

After hours of research, however, the only information I could gather was that 50% of the reviews said it grew their business and 50% said it was awaste of time.

On the fence, I submitted my first proposal.

Within 1 hour, I had a message from the job poster and was awarded the job to write a Youtube marketing plan for $30 (only took me 45 minutes.)

I immediately called my soon-to-be business partner and told him about my success. He hopped on Elance, created a profile, and within 2 days had landed several jobs amounting more than $1,000.

We felt so empowered, that we decided it would be a good idea to incorporate Elance into the beginning foundation for the company we had been developing, Flight Media.

After that, things went uphill.

By time the 7-day vacation ended, I had landed a $15/hr WordPress management job for 10-15 hours per week, a $1,000 WordPress web design job, an article writing job for a $35 article (took me 1 hour to write,) and a graphic design job for $50 (took 2 hours.)

When I got home, Derek & I quickly became a full-time freelancers on Elance. We gained clients, lost clients (due to work overload,) and within 45 days, we had earned more than $6,500 combined. (Pretty good for 21 & 22 year-olds!)