Elance, Odesk Outsourcing Experiences !!
- Thread starter RICK430
- Start date
MrBradshaw, I like your method of giving small parts of a project to different coders or companies and see who does what they promise. How about payment does anybody pay upfront? I was interviewing an Indian company on elance the other day and he wanted 40% upfront and I told him to take a hike. How is everyone paying?
Sometimes you don't have to pay upfront depending on your power of persuasion. But, it's good to budget a small amount to pay depending on how large the project is.
Considering the project is a relatively simple Wordpress project I think you will be able to find someone to handle it easily. Remember that more than anything you are just looking for competance and ability to actually complete a task as easily and quickly as possible. Usually the same companies that can do something small quickly can do larger tasks.
Idiots make themselves apparent quickly.
Also, for something like this look for people from the Ukraine over India.
Check your PM for a reliable and cheap provider.
Considering the project is a relatively simple Wordpress project I think you will be able to find someone to handle it easily. Remember that more than anything you are just looking for competance and ability to actually complete a task as easily and quickly as possible. Usually the same companies that can do something small quickly can do larger tasks.
Idiots make themselves apparent quickly.
Also, for something like this look for people from the Ukraine over India.
Check your PM for a reliable and cheap provider.
40% up front for a small project with a new company / person is not going to happen.
However, try setting up say 4 milestones where they get 25% for each milestone completed. That way you get to see results and the freelancer isn't worried about getting stiffed.
However, try setting up say 4 milestones where they get 25% for each milestone completed. That way you get to see results and the freelancer isn't worried about getting stiffed.
I've had better experience with vworker.com (formerly rentacoder)
I generally avoid Indians for programming quality - not because of racial preference, but because of oversaturation in that market that leads to the potential of getting a lower quality programmer as opposed to Romania or somewhere. You never know.
However, as for general success - it depends on how well you outline your project in detail, in easy-to-understand and very specific terms. Saying something like "I'd like it to look good on iPad" will get you a totally different response than "It needs to be set to 1024 x 768 resolution", etc.
Good luck!
I generally avoid Indians for programming quality - not because of racial preference, but because of oversaturation in that market that leads to the potential of getting a lower quality programmer as opposed to Romania or somewhere. You never know.
However, as for general success - it depends on how well you outline your project in detail, in easy-to-understand and very specific terms. Saying something like "I'd like it to look good on iPad" will get you a totally different response than "It needs to be set to 1024 x 768 resolution", etc.
Good luck!
I was a coder/seo on Vworker, yes it's good for client - free, money back, project guarantee, arbitration (free of charge!), etc.... but complete BS for coder for reason stated above + like 18% fee for practically nothing! Arbitration is ALWAYS in case of buyers no matter where truth is, lot of degenerates run with my job for free, lots of cheap ass clients with $10 budgets, etc. etc. etc... shady as fuck company.
There were even people who do money back just for fun a lot of times...
probably that's why they changed their name to vworker to cover bad shit, just take a look at their revenue lifetime in Inc. com and compare it with ANY other solid freelance site, laughable at best, owner is stupid freack (if you are reading this Ian!)
All that maybe found on any freelance site, but RAC or Vworker or whatever have it ALL 100%
There were even people who do money back just for fun a lot of times...
probably that's why they changed their name to vworker to cover bad shit, just take a look at their revenue lifetime in Inc. com and compare it with ANY other solid freelance site, laughable at best, owner is stupid freack (if you are reading this Ian!)
All that maybe found on any freelance site, but RAC or Vworker or whatever have it ALL 100%
You can find gems on all of them. eLance has more workers from western countries and more high hourly specialists that are moonlighting from their corporate gigs though.
I signed up at oDesk as a marketing copywriter, and practically gagged at some of the project fee scales at the job board. $1.50 an hour for researched content done by a native English speaker? LOL LOL LOL
I bid on one flat rate project, but the decent paying projects are few. If I bid on other projects I will gamble and bid on the high side, while talking up my experience as an affiliate marketer — including and especially the technical aspects of the business. I saw some employers asking for copy that is keyword optimized for SEO, etc.
I think it's best to specialize for the higher paying jobs, and I doubt most copywriters know much detail of our business.
I bid on one flat rate project, but the decent paying projects are few. If I bid on other projects I will gamble and bid on the high side, while talking up my experience as an affiliate marketer — including and especially the technical aspects of the business. I saw some employers asking for copy that is keyword optimized for SEO, etc.
I think it's best to specialize for the higher paying jobs, and I doubt most copywriters know much detail of our business.
Yep, same here. I gave the last guy the benefit of the doubt, but he burned me twice on the same project... my bad. But oDesk has horrible customer service, too. They contacted me through Twitter about my experience and acted professional and helpful, but then treated me the same shitty way through CS. I'll never use them again. GAC has always been good, so I think I'll try them out again next time. Just figured I'd give oDesk a shot. Bad move on multiple occasions.
I found a dev company offshore that did great work. He still modifies the source code every now and then for nothing so there is good follow on support. I think I found his company via elance, but all of the work we do now is outside elance. Let me know if you want his contact information DM me. The company work was PHP/MySQL related and was great.
My tips:
1. Always hire individuates, no company, even affiliated company. Odesk is better at this point.
2. You can publish projects for free at odesk. So if you can't find one, repeat.
3. When you see a man have too many skills, php, mysql, zencart, drupal, magenta, blah blah, run as fast as you can. Man, fully command of a skill is not that easy. If he is superior at even one, it's not easy to see his bidding on your project.
For design project, if it is not very small, say a landing page or a simple wp site, split it. Hire a designer good at English to make mockup and psd. Then hire a developer to convert it to a full site.
1. Always hire individuates, no company, even affiliated company. Odesk is better at this point.
2. You can publish projects for free at odesk. So if you can't find one, repeat.
3. When you see a man have too many skills, php, mysql, zencart, drupal, magenta, blah blah, run as fast as you can. Man, fully command of a skill is not that easy. If he is superior at even one, it's not easy to see his bidding on your project.
For design project, if it is not very small, say a landing page or a simple wp site, split it. Hire a designer good at English to make mockup and psd. Then hire a developer to convert it to a full site.
Odesk is decent, have found some truly independant programmers through them in the past.
The key is bidding really, really, reallllllllly low - so the companies overlook you, and the starving programmer in bangladesh will jump on it.
Sad but true.
The key is bidding really, really, reallllllllly low - so the companies overlook you, and the starving programmer in bangladesh will jump on it.
Sad but true.
I haven't read the thread but Odesk is absolutely awful ime, trawling through endless pasted messages from people/companies that haven't read the project got boring real fast.
Elance on the other hand, easy to use and I've found some true individual experts on there.
Elance on the other hand, easy to use and I've found some true individual experts on there.
Ultimate recruitment spots: xbox/ps3/gaming forums
Plenty of talented native english speakers who are willing to do stuff cheap since most are still in school and unemployed. Odesk workers wanted $300 - $700 with 1 - 2 week time frames, I got a college kid from Florida to do it for $200 and he was done in about 8 hours.
Plenty of talented native english speakers who are willing to do stuff cheap since most are still in school and unemployed. Odesk workers wanted $300 - $700 with 1 - 2 week time frames, I got a college kid from Florida to do it for $200 and he was done in about 8 hours.
Always demand the hire use WorkView, Timesheets, Status Reports and Escrow and Elance will work great for any job. I have no experience with odesk, but there is also Guru.com, Freelancer etc....which I can only vouch for Guru.
I have always found for me the best thing is to print out a fuckin stack of fliers, the kind with the little flappies that have your number on them ... head down to your local university or college and place them on every bulletin board you can find within the computer science or computer engineering departments. I have usually found that you can get students to work for as close to as cheap as overseas workers and you can keep much better oversight on there work.
It's amazing that these idiots get away with this stuff all the time, but yeah; they have a huge network of other people who don't know anything -- and they all work together to up their buddy's ratings. If you complain, they nickel and dime you to try to salvage as much of the service fee they can, then ultimately refund if they can't wiggle a profit out of you. They profit from the people with low standards or others who just don't give a shit about quality.
Everyone here on WF has seen this shit happen. Look in any Buy/Sell section of an online forum and you will see the same review/feedback bumping going on. All you need to do is ask for a sample, or two from those with awesome feedback and you will see the game that's going on. You have to give them credit for trying to make a buck, but unfortunately it makes all of us have to waste valuable time weeding through the posers to find what we're looking for.
I would suggest reputed job boards like Kijiji, or whatever is popular in your area. With Kijiji, I always specify that I need to speak with whomever wants to write for me.