The Best Place to Find Outsourced Talent
Though my wife and I live in Atlanta, my custom-made blog site was actually created by a team of expert WordPress programmers in the Ukraine.
I've never met them or even spoken to them on the phone, yet they put this micro-site together.
And they built it for a fraction of what it would have cost to have the work done by my web programming contacts here in the States.
Outsourcing is nothing new and virtually every business regardless of its size has processes that should be outsourced for greater cost effectiveness.
Even individuals can free up time by outsourcing personal tasks, regardless of whether you're a CEO or wageworker.
I want to recommend a resource for finding outsourcing providers that I've used both professionally and personally.
I hope it will benefit you as much as it has me.
It's a website called Elance.
In a number of online surveys I've read, it has ranked by far as the best website in its category, an opinion I share.
Elance has an excellent feedback rating system, communication tools, and interviewing/request for proposal features that make the process of finding the right provider painless.
It even has an escrow service to manage payments and ensure performance of the work, and the site can automatically generate 1099 forms when necessary.
But most importantly it has a large selection of providers - over 100,000.
If you are new to Elance here a few guidelines to help you hire a great provider: 1.
Be picky.
Because the competition in the Elance marketplace is fierce, you can nearly always find a provider that will meet a high standard at a reasonable rate.
Out of the five jobs to date on which we have requested proposals, each time we have been presented with multiple qualified providers asking extremely reasonable rates for their work.
Be very selective.
If you do your research you should be able to find a provider that is exactly what you're searching for.
2.
The three key traits to look for when hiring are competence, excellence in communication, and competitive pricing.
3.
Consider the provider's feedback rating carefully.
The site showcases thousands of providers of which usually hundreds are qualified to do the type of work for which you're hiring so limit your search to those with high feedback ratings for best results.
4.
If possible institute a trial period to see how they handle the specific work you will be asking them to perform.
In the past I've used two weeks.
Most will give a discount for the work they do during this time as a way to get their foot in the door as a candidate.
Discussing the types of work that can be outsourced is beyond the scope of this post, but I will say that if you are new to non-local outsourcing, you will almost certainly be surprised by the wide array of tasks that other firms can perform: Web programming, graphic design, writing, administrative support, sales and marketing, finance processes, legal work, and even manufacturing and engineering.
If you are apprehensive about sending work outside the country, the site will allow you to perform a search by location, limiting your scope to only your country or a region you specify.
Whether you're looking to save time by having someone else enter Christmas card addresses into a spreadsheet or save money by hiring a skilled, lower labor cost team to create an entire new corporate website, outsourcing processes through Elance is often a very good decision.
I've never met them or even spoken to them on the phone, yet they put this micro-site together.
And they built it for a fraction of what it would have cost to have the work done by my web programming contacts here in the States.
Outsourcing is nothing new and virtually every business regardless of its size has processes that should be outsourced for greater cost effectiveness.
Even individuals can free up time by outsourcing personal tasks, regardless of whether you're a CEO or wageworker.
I want to recommend a resource for finding outsourcing providers that I've used both professionally and personally.
I hope it will benefit you as much as it has me.
It's a website called Elance.
In a number of online surveys I've read, it has ranked by far as the best website in its category, an opinion I share.
Elance has an excellent feedback rating system, communication tools, and interviewing/request for proposal features that make the process of finding the right provider painless.
It even has an escrow service to manage payments and ensure performance of the work, and the site can automatically generate 1099 forms when necessary.
But most importantly it has a large selection of providers - over 100,000.
If you are new to Elance here a few guidelines to help you hire a great provider: 1.
Be picky.
Because the competition in the Elance marketplace is fierce, you can nearly always find a provider that will meet a high standard at a reasonable rate.
Out of the five jobs to date on which we have requested proposals, each time we have been presented with multiple qualified providers asking extremely reasonable rates for their work.
Be very selective.
If you do your research you should be able to find a provider that is exactly what you're searching for.
2.
The three key traits to look for when hiring are competence, excellence in communication, and competitive pricing.
3.
Consider the provider's feedback rating carefully.
The site showcases thousands of providers of which usually hundreds are qualified to do the type of work for which you're hiring so limit your search to those with high feedback ratings for best results.
4.
If possible institute a trial period to see how they handle the specific work you will be asking them to perform.
In the past I've used two weeks.
Most will give a discount for the work they do during this time as a way to get their foot in the door as a candidate.
Discussing the types of work that can be outsourced is beyond the scope of this post, but I will say that if you are new to non-local outsourcing, you will almost certainly be surprised by the wide array of tasks that other firms can perform: Web programming, graphic design, writing, administrative support, sales and marketing, finance processes, legal work, and even manufacturing and engineering.
If you are apprehensive about sending work outside the country, the site will allow you to perform a search by location, limiting your scope to only your country or a region you specify.
Whether you're looking to save time by having someone else enter Christmas card addresses into a spreadsheet or save money by hiring a skilled, lower labor cost team to create an entire new corporate website, outsourcing processes through Elance is often a very good decision.
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