Finding freelancers

I've been very interested in the global knowledge economy for some time, and particularly recently when the economy has been going tits up. My task has been how and where to find competent developers, coders, website designers, SEO experts and so on, from outside of the UK to extend the team. And also to ensure that whatever the economy does, there is still a consistent revenue stream into the business, even if it means working for far less than normal for a while to establish a reputation on a new site.



The reason for investigating Odesk, amongst other sites, is that it is a well-established business that gets mentioned frequently on forums and in blogs. Having looked into it, I am particularly impressed by the software which each provider and buyer uses in order to log time spent on a particular project. We use something similar here (EasyTimeTracker) to manage project time for clients, but odesk provide a far more comprehensive version, complete with screenshots and webcam images.

It takes a little getting used to, but there is a very neat test you need to take before being hired or hiring a provider which ensures you are up to speed with the most important functions of the software.

All of this follows on from using Mechanical Turk for a variety of reasons for the last couple of years.

So, whether you are looking to get a job done fast and for a reasonable rate, or just feel like filling in some spare time and earning a little extra cash, both of these sites bear investigating.