Outsourcing Work

For a number of years now, I've been experimenting with various freelance sites and have tried subcontracting certain elements of my domain development work.

Though I am pretty competent with things like XSitePro2 and Dreaweaver, my weak spot is in the area of graphic design.

Sometimes, I only need a nice looking header and footer, so I don't see the need to spend a fortune on this stuff, when there are plenty of designers around on the various freelance sites.

This week, I discovered Scriptlance.com, a wonderful resource that is so simple to use, I think I'll be spending a lot of money there.

Previously, I've used Elance, but the prices of their people seems to have crept up lately and the site becomes ever more difficult to navigate and use - at least for me.

Selecting the right person to complete the work is the most difficult thing, buty I think as long as you go for those with the better reputations and highest number of positive reviews, you can't really go wrong. Let others test the market with the newcomers.

As a safeguard, I also look closely at each of the freelancer's portfolios, to make sure that the quality of their work and areas of expertise is what I'm looking for.

In the past, I've not done too good at selecting the right person and have had many let-downs, usually from web script developers who over-estimate their abilities.

Now I am taking a different approach and am buying in only those skills that I don't have myself.

So far so good. I've awarded two projects this week. One has already been delivered.