Begin Your Outsourcing

Freelance Hunting

In this lonely world of hundreds of thousands of service providers, how to find the right one is a troubling issue. While bigger companies can directly invite leading offshore companies on their projects, small-scale entrepreneurs can do it best via freelance websites. On such websites you can post your project complete with project description, requirements or any other specifications, and freelancers willing to do it for you can bid on them. After the bidding time gets over, you can go through all the bids and select the best. It’s important to start your business off with the right foot. So it’s best to find not only find workers, but build your personal contacts. Think of it as testing the waters and building your team of workers that you can rely on time and time again for specific tasks.

Best Freelance Websites

I will only side with 4 freelance websites:

• Elance.com
• Getafreelancer.com
• Guru.com
• yourmaninindia.com

Unless my projects concern a specialized job, I usually rely on these four main sites alone. These are the places I rely on heavily the most, and the place where you should start building your team of contacts with.

It is good to explore more than one website, as each one usually attract different sorts of freelancers. So by hanging around at different ones, you can enjoy more diversity in the talent pool for your company. Out of the freelance sites, elance.com and guru.com are the most professional and have the most diversity for online . The freelancers there are more dedicated and have a better working experience. If you are just starting off, then by all means start off from there. You will have to pay a higher price too.

Prices on getafreelancer.com are much lower, but it has fewer options and is more informal in its nature. Freelancers who like to work proper with professionalism and work code prefer elance.com, while those who want a freer, less strained environment stay on getafreelancer.com. This is also the site to use if you ever want cheaper work, since most workers here are from foreign countries.

Yourmaninindia.com is very specialized and will handle mainly tasks that you need. It’s good to be creative with them, as it makes everything easier on yourself. The trick is to choose websites on your list, and depending on the type and budget of your project, prefer either one for posting: if it is important or requires top notch professionalism, like most on-going procedural tasks, post on elance.com; if it is less critical and do not require strict procedures, like website building or article writing, go
for getafreelancer.com.

Posting the Project

You want maximum number of freelancers to bid on your project. You also want all of them to know exactly what you want. Having the right project description to your project is the way to catch both birds. You have to make it concise, specific and accurate, so that if any dispute arises, you can refer back to it as the original project requirements.

Project description on any of the freelance websites has:

1. A title
2. The main body
3. Budget
4. Categories

The Title

Your title has to plain and descriptive of the work. This will make sure that when a freelancer views the list of all the projects posted, your project grabs his/her attention. So instead of choosing ‘website building’, make it ‘E-commerce website building with credit card facility’. There are no formalities and rules; you only have to make sure you convey the proper message, so don’t get bothered about being too unflattering in your title.

Main Body

Your main body must have all the essential information, and yet should be concise and unambiguous. Having a clear and meaningful description preceding the actual project keeps a lot of unforeseen problems and issues at bay.

You should give a brief idea about what this project is geared towards. If it is an order for 20 articles, will it be sprinkled on a shopping website or posted on an expert article submission one. That way the freelancers know the quality of work you are talking about.
You may be holding back information about your true motive behind the project, but be absolutely clear about project specifications.

Example Questions To Ask Yourself:

• What platform do you prefer for your website building?
• If it is about writing, which style do you prefer?
• What background do you want your writer to have?
• You should mention the time period by which you want the project to be completed, and whether it would be followed by other similar projects. You can also add samples or links to other websites to give a clearer idea of what you have in mind.
• Finally you have to clearly state that you possess exclusive rights to all the work, and that all work needs to be 100% original.