Inexpensive Doesn’t Mean Bad in the Freelance World
I often farm out some of the work for my business using freelance services such as Get a Freelancer and Rent a Coder. I find that by doing that with some of the more time consuming or mundane jobs, it frees me up for the ones which I can’t have done out of house, such as customer service and marketing. I do hear many times from people when I tell them what I farm out, that you get what you pay for, indicating that the service is substandard. I couldn’t disagree more.
I decided to prove this to a point in the last job I listed. I always write a VERY descriptive accounting of what needs to be done, almost to the point of discouraging bidders. I would much rather get 5 bidders who know what they are bidding for then 100 who have no idea. It saves both time and money in the long run. I find sometimes that with such a long description some people don’t bother to read it and then disagreements arise later in the process. I decided this time to add a single line at the end and request that people reference it in their bid so that I can be sure they read the entire description.
What followed surprised me quite a bit. I should first state that the “bid range” for this job was set at $100-$300. There was a clear division right away where around 15 providers bid $300 and another 15 bid $100. Out of the high end bidders, only 3 out of the 15 referenced my code phrase proving they had actually read the entire description while 14 out of 15 of the low end did reference it.
I was amazed to see how many high end bidders didn’t even read my requirements. Now you can analyse that all kinds of ways, for example, that they probably bid high and a lot knowing that they will definitely be able to do it and once they get it can dedicate the resources to it. I have another suspicion though and that is that they bid high and if they aren’t able to do it, farm it out themselves to the $100 bidders and keep the profit just for acting as the middleman.
Personally, although I agree to the You Get What You Pay For philosophy, it has not been the case when it comes to freelancers. In fact, many of the people I have hired through a service to do one job, have continued to work for me on other projects. To me its about communication and as long as I can get my point across easily, my experience has been positive so I will continue to judge people on their work and communication, not the price they charge.