Read the following questions and answers only if you are interested in applying to become a mentor on our site:

What is RACsuccess- One-On-One and how it works for mentors?

RACsuccess- One-On-One service is a mentoring service dedicated to helping members with anything related to succeeding with any major freelance website like RentACoder.com, oDesk.com, guru.com, Elance.com, etc.. . We have different subscription credit packages that we sell to our members. As a mentor, you get access to your own admin area - an easy to use web-based application from which you will process all the submissions from members.

What type of submissions can you process as a mentor?

Mentors process 3 types of submissions:

How much money do I get paid as mentor?

We appreciate the fact that you will share your vast knowledge and experience with our members so we don't feel is right to ask you to do this for free. We DO pay you for each advice that you give, for each question that you answer about how to use your favorite freelance website and for each proposal you write.

The following is the list of fixed rates of how much you get paid:

For each advice you give you get: $1.00 ($1.50 when you become a super mentor)
For each bid text you write/project description: $1.50 ($2.00 when you become a super mentor)
For each question: $0.50 ($1.00 when you become a super mentor)

Depending on the membership plan of the member with whom you work with, that's how much advice, bid text and questions the member is going to be able to make and as long as you are working with the member, you are entitled to get paid for all the submissions that the member makes. You are not limited to the number of members that you can work with at the same time.

Why would I ever want to become a mentor?

There are many reasons why you would enjoy being a mentor processing submissions at RACsuccess.com. The main reason being - you don't do it for free -  we pay you for each completed submission. The second reason is that we don't impose limits on the number of members you can work with at the same time, you decide how many you can comfortably handle. For the details on our pay rates, please send us a message through our contact us form. For now, all you need to know is that there are NO LIMITATIONS as to how many members you can work with as a mentor.

Another reason why you benefit by being a mentor is because you will get access to a very encouraging atmosphere. You'll be constantly motivated with "success" points and it is a real confidence boost to gather ratings and comments the members will leave for you. A member will always give you a rating for each completed submission. Read more about 'success points' by reading the questions located two questions below this one.

Will I be hired as an employee or as an independent contractor?

RACsuccess.com will hire you as an independent contractor. You don't get a monthly fixed salary, you work from the comfort of your own home at  a time you find convenient. We don't impose work loads, we don't assign members to work with (it's the member that chooses you.) For these and other reasons, you are hired as an independent contractor and not as an employee. A 1099-MISC form is sent to all U.S. mentors and a copy is also sent to the IRS for tax purposes.

Do I need to maintain the required average ratings to continue to be a mentor?

Yes, let's suppose you already signed up as a mentor with us and you were accepted and then after 2 or 3 months you start getting bad ratings that cause your freelance profile average rating to decrease below our required average rating which is 9.2 or higher. Your account here will be temporarily deactivated until you raise your average rating to meet our requirements. This applies to the ratings of both buyers and coders (freelance) mentors.

If for instance, you have a 9.2 coder's average rating but all of a sudden you get bad ratings in your buyer's profile in your favorite freelance website that causes your average rating to go below our required rating, then your account will be deactivated because your buyer's average rating doesn't meet our requirements. So that means that you must keep always your average rating of 9.2 or above for both your freelance and buyer profiles (if you are both a freelance and buyer mentor) if you want to continue mentoring our mentors. Whenever you want your account reactivated because you have increased your ratings as per our requirements,  contact us and your account will be activated.

Browser compatibility

Mentor's area web based system currently operates on Firefox 3+ (won't work with Firefox 2), IE7 and IE8 (it may work with IE6), Safari and Netscape. If you experience any problems while using the system, its probably because you have not upgraded to the latest version of browser. We strongly suggest that you upgrade to most recent version of the browser of your choice in order to use the system.

What are "success points" and how do I earn them?

Success points are actually what RACsuccess.com uses to identify how successful a mentor is while working as a mentor inside our web-based system. The way you get awarded success points depends on the rating that you get for each submission that you complete. 

The way it works is as follows:

• 10 rating= 1000 success points
  
• 9 rating= 900 success points
  
• 8 rating= 800 success points
  
• 7 rating= 700 success points
  
• 6 rating= 600 success points
  
• 5 rating= 500 success points
  
• 4 rating= 400 success points
  
• 3 rating= 300 success points
  
• 2 rating= 200 success points
  
• 1 rating= 50 success points (gets half the success points it was suppose to get)

There is also a "Mentor of the Month" which is the mentor that has accumulated the most success points throughout the month (not the one that has accumulated the most success points throughout the time they have been mentoring.) This is an award we give to honor our mentors, it is always nice to be recognized by your peers for your hard work.

What are ratings and comments and how do I get them?

When you work on a member's submission as a mentor and the member closes the submission to finalize it, 2 things happen. 

1. Your money gets credited to your temporary RACsuccess account.
2. The member leaves you a rating and a comment which gives you success points as described in the previous question.

The member decides from a scale of 1-10 how they think you processed their submission. In the end this DOES NOT affect how much money you get for the submission, but it does affect your mentor reputation within RACsuccess. The member is also able to type a message to you expressing how he/she feels you performed on their submission.

What is a personal overview?

Whenever you write an initial comment/bid request description for a member, you must also accompany that with a personal overview of why you wrote the bid request description/initial comment in the way you wrote it. This personal overview can be something general of course, you don't need to go into extreme details. As long as the member is able to understand why you took a certain approach when writing a specific bid request description/initial comment, that should be enough.

If you also want to talk about why you wrote specific things, you are also welcome to write that for them without going into deep levels of detail. If you provide an initial comment/bid request description without any personal overview, the submission is considered incomplete, consequently the member should not finalize or close the submission until you provide him/her with that general overview. Also remember,the better personal overview that you provide for the member, the better the rating the member will give you for that specific submission. Just make sure your personal overview is brief but concise!

What does it mean to process a submission?

This is what you will be actually be doing when you work as a mentor. Processing a submission just means that you reply to any member submissions. It also means following up with him/her until he/she is satisfied with your answer then the member can close the submission. However, RACsuccess does have a way to prevent abuse of the system. It won't happen often, but sometimes a member won't  want to close a submission and may try to exploit you by refusing to finalize the submission. This means you won't get paid and you could become a slave to the member to get the submission closed. This a situation we definitely don't want you to endure which is why we  implemented a way to prevent this inside web based system which allows you to contact us to look further into the problematic submission.

Is there a specific time to process the submissions?

No, you choose your own convenient time. However, we do strive to provide high quality service to all of our members so we would really appreciate if you could reply as soon as possible to member submissions. In the end, remember that the faster you process submissions, the faster you get paid by us! There is an option on our web-based system that can be activated which allows you to receive email notifications whenever one of the members you are working with replies to a submission. This, of course, comes in handy as you're notified immediately whenever a member replies. This allows you to reply to him/her, in a timely manner, at your earliest convenience. We also offer you the RACsuccess-B-InTouch messenger applications which actually lets you receive live notifications of what's happening in the system like when a new member subscribes, etc...

Mentors have their own profile?

Yes, all mentors have their own profile inside the RACsuccess mentor's web-based system which shows information: screen name, picture, submissions completed and other information. Members that you apply to work with can review your profile at any time. You may enhance your profile and add details about your experience in working in your favorite freelance website as a buyer and as a coder.

Please note that in your profile, members can see ratings and comments left by other members. Your personal information is the only  part of the profile which will be kept private (the information you entered when signing up as a mentor.) Your profile will not display your "Background" information that you write when editing your profile because this information is only displayeed to members you work with.

What are public listings?

Whenever you access your mentor admin panel, you will see a link that says: "Public listings". When you click on the link, you will see the list of all subscriptions and individual submissions exposed publicly TO ALL MENTORS.  You will be able to apply on any of them. Applying just means - you write a comment to the member to convince them that you are the right mentor for them based on their expectations of their "ideal" mentor. It is then in the hands of the member to select a mentor from the list of mentors who applied for his/her subscription/individual submissions.

It is important to note that here on public listings, you will always see all the subscriptions listed. The reason is because whenever a new member subscribes with us, their subscription is automatically made public to all mentors by appearing on this public listings. The same applies to members that are not subscribed but make individual submissions, their individual submissions also appear on public listings for mentors to apply. In that way, the member can select the mentor they wish to choose for their whole subscription period.

Gain access to the mentor's area