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 probably you 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 are 3 options as I see it….
1. Contact freelancers yourself.
2. Go to an 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 are the top 5 things I love about it:
1. oDesk let providers showcase their abilities and help them stand out with tests and 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 in front 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 an 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 this 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 solitaire 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 cover letters 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 techie 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 are 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).
Rigdha,
I am thrilled to hear that you find oDesk productive and helpful.
I want to comment about #3 (You get to “see” progress). You say that you don’t use this much and I would like to share my experience with that.
I find that seeing screenshots of my providers’ work is super helpful particularly when they are just starting their first assignment with me. It gives me an opportunity to see how they are progressing and in return I can then provider feedback on the work as they go. For example, if you hire a web designer to develop your homepage and see that they are using a certain color you don’t like, you can ask them to change it on the spot. If I wait until a later point to change colors, it will be much harder to do so, take more time and cost much more.
Once I created the understanding and channels of communication with the provider, I find that I use the screenshots in the work diary less just because both of us already know what to expect and how to best communicate. No one really likes to micromanage, so establishing the trust and understanding in the beginning makes the relationship productive.
Another reason why I find the work diary helpful is when I get my weekly bill. If there is any item I am not clear about, I click on it and immediately see the work diary and screenshots that pertain to it.
I also like the work diary and screenshot to track how much time is spent on each task. Providers have the opportunity to fill in memos (a reminder pops up once in a while) and I ask them to fill in the task they are working on. Then, I can quickly see how much time (and $$$) each task took so I can better manage it the next time. In fact, I’ve seen quite a few consultants that use it as a basis of billing their clients, and they can provide a bill with a nifty breakdown per task or activity.
Thanks again for sharing your experience. It’s community members like you that make oDesk so valuable.
Orie from oDesk