Experience with eLance’rs
Some thoughts on working with plenty of digital world free lancers and how to manage them
Running a creative/ux/dev/marketing ‘agency’ these days requires a really multi-dimensional approach. Gone are the days of dedicated ‘SEO’ companies, or web site developers or graphic designer.
Its just no point promoting a shitty site, it won’t convert. Its no point having an awesome site without targetted traffic. There is no point having sophisticated software functionality which is unusable. There is no point having a pretty design with no kick.
At the same time, the industry is getting increasingly competitive, you need to stay lean. I find one of the ways to do this is have free-lancers fill the void.
Low skilled work
There is often extremely long and tedious work that needs to be done that can consume a lot of time of your core team, distracting them with tasks that are more on par with their experience and skill set. An example of this is converting a PSD file into HTML, or splicing it. Another example maybe testing of various components or elements. Depending on the project, there will always be a set amount of work which is both not large enough in volume to warrant hiring a full-timer, nor is it worth bogging your team down with.
Highly specialized work
There are other times, when you need someone to do something highly specialized. An example that comes to mind is when we had a requirement to sync a eCommerce store with Quickbooks, an offline version. That needed a specialized script that would perform essentially a manual task on the users computer.
This kind of thing requires specialized experience. No doubt, any experienced developer would figure out how to do this, but would spend a lot more time learning how to do it. He would also inevitably run into bugs, CMS specific bugs etc.
Sometimes, when there is a requirement that is slightly unorthodox, it makes sense to bring in a free-lancer to resolve it.
Momentum & Costs
Hiring freelancers certainly costs more than just trying to do with the core team but it adds a couple of points of saving. First of all, speed of delivery is everything. Everyday a business doesn’t have a digital marketing campaign working for it is lost potential revenue. Same goes for start-ups and SaaS’s. Every-day online is growing traffic, user base and engagement.
Secondly, the costs of outsourcing actually work out everytime in your favour. For example, you have a developer who receives $3000/month = working 160 hours/month = $18.75/hour
Lets say in the case of the low skilled work, if you can get 30 hours of the project done at $10, you have actually saved $8.75 X 30 = $262
Lets say in the case of highly skilled work, it will take your developer 60 hours to the job ($18.75/hour) versus someone who has specific experience with this job who will take 30 hours (lets say $23/hour). Your costs are $1125 inhouse vs. $690 outsourced.
Note: ofcourse this kind of analysis only makes sense if your core-team is sufficiently busy with other tasks and projects. If not, get your senior developer splicing those PSD’s.
eLance.com
Finding, choosing and managing freelancers would be a major headache if not for websites such as elance.com — I stick to 5 major rules on choosing and working with elancers.
- Always carefully read their reviews. Never hire anyone without any money earned on elance or without atleast 3 reviews.
- Always communicate with the free-lancer via skype or chat. Look out for responsiveness, ease of communication and English language.
- Go through atleast 10 candidates before selecting one.
- Always work through the elance escrow system.
- Carefully monitor the activity, hours spent. Demand breakdown, look for suspiciously large amounts of hours spent of tasks.
