Odesk.com: Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Give it a Try
Before I start the review…here’s a quick question for you..
Wouldn’t it be nice to get up at 11 AM on a weekend, check your email account and then feel like you’ve been incredibly productive while you slept?
..I certainly love the feeling! It’s excellent especially after a long day working on unrelated things… I really do love outsourcing and the time zone difference. Getting up in the morning to see what’s been happening to make me money while I slept is as good as it gets 
So you love the idea of outsourcing and have read tons about how outsourcing can save you tons of time, stress and headaches… the main question then is how do you get started?
There’s 3 options as I see it..
1. Contact freelancers yourself
2. Go to a outsourcing platform and post a request for a bid
3. Ask people you know for referrals..
While number 1 and 3 are great ways to do it…today’s topic is number 2..
There are tons and tons of these sites out there that connect buyers with providers and help you find someone to do something for you like designing your website or writing your resume etc..
Some of the most popular ones include elance.com, rentacoder.com, getafreelancer.com and guru.com…and of course oDesk.com
oDesk is a fairly “new” service and I love it! If you do any sort of outsourcing or have been thinking of trying out outsourcing check out oDesk…I absolutely love the service!
And here’s the top 5 things I love about it…
1. oDesk lets providers showcase their abilities and help them stand out with tests etc - As a freelancer you definitely want to stand out from the crowd and showcase all your skills… Now, as a buyer you want to find the people who have the skill-set you’re looking for… And oDesk makes that incredibly easy by letting providers take tests to prove their skills..
That’s especially good when you don’t get to “see” potential employees or see them work infront of you..
2. oDesk is much more than a hiring place - Again, I love this! I love the fact that oDesk makes managing teams so much easier. For example, when you hire someone for a hourly task…odesk will automatically calculate the number of hours they’ve worked for you and take the money out of your account without YOU having to do that work..
3. You get to “see” progress - Alright, this isn’t a feature I use a lot but if you do hire someone hourly you can see screenshots of their screen and figure out what they’ve been doing. I think I’ve used the feature about twice but again, it’s good to know that the people I’ve hired weren’t playing Soltaire while they claimed to be working for me..
4. The “Hire” Screen saves time - I love the Hire Screen and especially the fact that I can preview the cover letters. This is a big plus…it saves me time from having to click everyone’s name and look at their comments. I can easily look at their coverletters and decide if I even want to look at their profiles.
Now for the number one reason…
I know what you’re thinking all the techy bells and whistles are good but….what about the providers..are they top notch?
And here’s my experience: I’ve loved most of the providers I’ve worked with through oDesk. I found them highly qualified and professional.
Of course choosing the right provider is a lot of work but I found that there’s more of these high quality providers out there on Odesk!
Give it a shot! I think you’ll love the service (and please do let me know what you think of it if you decide to try it out)
Popularity: 25% [?]
New ‘Twitter’ Site for your Business (and How to Increase productivity with it)
Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly what everyone involved in ALL of your projects is up to? And, how would you organize that information?
Well, here’s a pretty cool web 2.0 service that can help you keep tabs on what everyone’s doing (and what they are not doing) and of course to coordinate activities and fix schedule based on that…
Yammer.com - “Twitter” type site for business
Here’s a couple ways to use this one for better productivity..
1. Check up on stuff that people aren’t doing… So you got person A to do a couple things for you…they’re off doing it and will sumbit a report to you next week…That’s all well and fine but wouldn’t it make sense to see if they’re doing something wrong, missing something? So you can correct the problem faster and stop wasting time due to mis-communication?
2. Coordinating too many projects? No worries! Keep up with the members in your team so you know exactly what to do next… Think about it…you’re working on 3 different projects with 3 different groups…you start working on project A because to you it’s the most important thing….But…team B is having slight issues and can’t deliver on time…. Now, when you are done your part for the project…you get the “news” about the problem …team B calls in to say everything’s done and ready to go…
Here’s your problem: The stuff you worked on now has to be delayed
The stuff that could’ve been done now..can’t be done because you haven’t done your part yet..
Sound familiar? Coordinating team work was never an easy task and this is where most “teams” seem to waste too much of their time…
And that’s where I see the promises of Yammer…in facilitating short to the point updates for team members to work together more efficiently..
3. Keeping everyone on the same page
4. Organization: If you work with more than 2 people and have any sort of team management or project co-ordination role…I know how though it is to keep tabs of what everyone is doing…especially if you do this for more than 2 projects at the same time.. So being able to get a quick overview is extremely helpful : )
Something else — How about Yammer for Students?
I think this is a good area of development for sites like Twitter and Yammer…think about university students who work in tons of teams on various different projects..
I remember doing tons of that..in fact, we even had a course on project management and team management in first year engineering but…even with that team management is pretty hard. You always get people who work at different paces, who’re passionate about different parts of a project and you’re sitting there scratching your head trying to figure out how to pull it all together and hand in the project!
At least that’s what engineering is like, I can’t speak for all faculties but I do think something like this would catch on in that world.
Anyhow…back to the main thing…
Here’s the link, test drive it with your team and see what it does for you.
I’ll be using it with my team for the next couple days and let you know how it goes!
Yammer.com - “Twitter” type site for business
And in case you’re wondering Yammer launched on Sep 8 08 at TechCrunch50
Popularity: 25% [?]
Quicklink: Increase productivity by speeding up Your Computer
When it comes to productivity….one of the easiest ways to improve and optimize things is…anything that’s already automated. Streamlining automated processes can end up saving a lot of time really quickly…
And if you feel that your computer slows you down and decreases your productivity at times, here’s a quick link for you..
Nothing to sell you on that site…just a lot of really cool tips. I suggest starting with their 50 lightweight applications and seeing if there’s something on that list that can be used.
I recently switched from iTunes to Songbird and the speed increase has been pretty significant.
Also, using aMSN instead of MSN messenger reduces the memory used up by quite a bit. aMSN is fully functional and without all the random features that you probably don’t use anyway!
Take a look at the list…a lot of really good tips there.
Do let me know what you think of it : -)
Popularity: 15% [?]