Remote outsourcing offers you many advantages, such as the ability to choose from a far greater pool of talent than if you had hired locally. You may even find talented people at extremely competitive rates when you outsource globally.  Our Virtual Assistants at  www.VA4REI.com are pre-trained!

Tell them Duncan Wierman referred you and get a hourly discounted rate!

But the problem is that the freelancers aren’t in the same room with you. That means you can’t look them in the eye to see if they really understand the project. You can’t closely monitor their work (or closely monitor the time they spend working, if they?re being paid by the hour). And they may be more reluctant to ask all the questions they need to ask, for fear or “bothering” you.

End result: You may not get the resulting you were expecting. So how do you deal with these sorts of issues?

 Download Our Introductory Guide >>  Virtually Free

Continue reading below for my best tips and tricks!

Like this, in four easy steps:

1. Set your expectations upfront.
2. Put a focus on communication.
3. Monitor and motivate freelancers
4. Use tools to manage your freelancers.

Let’s look at these four keys separately…

1. Set Expectations
You operate a little differently than the last person who hired your freelancer to do a job. Indeed, your freelancer has dealt with all sorts of managerial styles, personality quirks and expectations.

Because of this – because everyone needs something a little different from the same freelancer – it’s your job to make your expectations clear so that there’s no guesswork required on the freelancer’s behalf.

This starts with you signing agreements with your freelancers.

In some cases, your freelancer may have an agreement that he or she asks you to sign. If not, then you may want to draw up a formal agreement (with the help of your attorney), which will define your business relationship.

This agreement may include:
The scope of the project for which you’re hiring the freelancer to complete. Example: If you’re hiring a writer to create a pack of 10 articles, you should list the title, topic and word count for each article.

Payment terms. Not only should you list how much you?re paying for this project, but also how and when you?ll be paying. ? Example: Perhaps you’re paying half upfront with the remainder due within 48 hours of delivery of the completed project.

Deadlines.

Naturally, you’ll have an overall delivery deadline for the project. However, if it’s a large project than you’re also likely to have “milestone” deadlines.  Example: You may have deadlines for the outline, the first chapter, the first one third of the project, the second one third, the final one third and then the final(proofed and polished) project.

Note: Keep in mind that you CAN’T just arbitrarily set payment terms, deadlines and other details in a unilateral way. These are issues that you must discuss with your freelancer first. Once you come to an agreement on these issues, then you can put the agreement in writing and sign it (both of you). As such, not only does the agreement make your expectations clear with regards to the scope of the project, but it protects both you and your freelancer in case of a dispute. Naturally, there are expectations you have that won’t be covered in a formal agreement.  Example: Perhaps you prefer to get a daily update on projects rather than a weekly update. Likewise, your freelancer may even have expectations with regards to his business relationship with you.

As such, you need to talk about these expectations upfront so you know what to expect of one another.

Note: One note, however: Even if you talk about these expectations on the phone or via Skype, be sure to put them in writing (in an email). Not as a formal agreement; rather, you should put them in writing just so that your freelancer can easily review them from time to time.

While you should make your expectations clear, don’t attempt to micro-manage your freelancers. That is, don’ t try to dictate exactly how he does his job. If you’re happy with the end result, then how he got to that result doesn’t really matter.

Example: Maybe you’ve hired a ghostwriter to create an eBook. And maybe you think the ghostwriter will complete the book in a conventional order: Research first, then do the outline, then chapter 1, then chapter 2… and so on. However, maybe the ghostwriter completes his work in a different order. Perhaps he prefers to write the final chapter first, and then he writes chapters in random order.  It’s not the way you’d do it – but so what?

If you like what he’s written – and if he’s meeting deadlines (e.g., getting one third of the book complete by a certain date) – then it’s not your job to micromanage the project or the freelancer. Remember, he’s an expert – so let him do what he does best.

2. Put a Focus on Communication

The second issue you need to think about with regards to your freelancer is how much you communicate to them. There are actually three issues here:

a. What you share with regards to your overall business model.

b. What you share with each individual freelancer about the scope of a project.

c. What information you have

Let’s look at these issues separately…

a. Sharing Your Overall Business Model and Objectives

You don t have to share the intimate details of your business plan and marketing strategy with your freelancers. However, it is helpful if you share with them your overall business philosophy, company’s mission and similar bits of information.

Example #1: A copywriter will have a better idea of how to write your sales copy if he understands your company mission and branding strategy.

Example #2: Your customer service representatives – the face of your business – will do a better job representing you if they understand and reflect your company’s mission and your philosophy.

b. Creating Project Briefs

The second area of communication is where you share information about a project with your freelancers (usually via a written project brief). This is one of the most important things you’ll write. That’ s because your freelancers aren’t mind readers.
So the more information you can provide to them with regards to the scope of the project, the better the end results.

Tip #1: Check the main H.A.N.D.S. Free Outsourcing guide for information about how to write detailed briefs for your freelancers.

Tip #2: Always be sure to clearly define any benchmarks or other goals you’ve set for the project. Also, make sure these benchmarks and goals are easily measurable.

c. Getting Freelancers to Communicate With One Another

If you’re building a team of freelancers, then oftentimes they’ll need to work together on a project. If they don’t work together, then it just creates more work for you. That’s because your freelancers will need to send their pieces of the project to you which you then pass on to the next freelancer.

Example: Let’s say you want to create content for your blog.  Perhaps you hire one person to do the keyword research, a second person to write the content and a third person to upload the content. If you need to approve each step, then it’s fine to have these three freelancers report to you as needed. However, if you trust these freelancers and their work, then you can have them work together.

In this case, the keyword researcher would complete his work and send it to the writer. When the writer finished his work, he’d send  it to the person doing the uploading.  All of this would happen without any work nor input needed on your
part.

You’ll discover a set of tools just a bit later that will make it easier for your freelancers to work together.

3. Monitor and Motivate Freelancers

The third issue you need to consider is how you?re going to monitor and motivate your freelancers. Now, monitoring isn?t such a big issue if you’re paying your freelancers per project (rather than per hour). In other words, you don’t need to track their hours. Instead, you just need to make sure that your freelancers are on track with your projects so that the projects will be completed on or before the deadline.

Here’s how to make sure that happens:

Request regular project updates. Depending on the project, you may request updates as often as a daily basis. With other project, two or three times per week may be sufficient

In still other cases (such as with small one-off projects that don?t take long), having freelancers check in once per week with their progress updates will suffice.

Tip: Have your freelancers check in regularly for big and/or important jobs.

Example: If you have a freelancer check in just once per week on a big project, then you’ll assume that everything is going fine and the project is right on track. But after a week you may find out that the freelancer hasn’t done anything, which will likely delay your project at least a week (and sometimes more).

Require approval for certain steps or create milestone deadlines. Sometimes it’s not enough to merely have your freelancer check in – instead, you may want to actually check their work. You can create milestone deadlines, which will give you a peek at rough drafts as the project progresses.

Example: If you hire a ghostwriter, then you may set a deadline for half the book to be complete (at which time you’ll see this rough draft). Just keep in mind that when
you set these sorts of deadlines, you are likely to see rough drafts – so don’t nitpick these drafts, as the final product will likely be much more polished.

So what happens if you’re paying your freelancers by the hour?

In that case, the single best way to monitor them is to have staff in your physical location. That is, hire local freelancers (or even employees). If that?s impossible, then use tracking tools that allow you to monitor the freelancer.

Example: If you hire a “per hour” freelancer via oDesk.com, you’ll automatically get access to tools that allow you to receive screenshots, keyboard data and even web cam footage from your freelancer’s computer.

Maybe that sort of close tracking is too invasive or otherwise impossible for a freelancer. In that case, then always seek to pay per project rather than per hour.

The second issue within this discussion is how to motivate your freelancers. In other words, how do you make sure they continue to do a good job for you?

Here are three ways:

1. Praise generously. This is simple, and it seems like common sense, but many business owners forget to offer praise and kind words for a job well done. However, it’s one of the biggest motivational tools you have.
2. Give financial bonuses. Another highly motivating incentive is to offer cash. You can offer cash rewards for jobs well done, without the freelancer knowing about it in advance. Or you can let the freelancer know upfront that cash will be offered if certain benchmarks and other goals are met.
3. Offer other incentives. For example, you can offer gift cards and other incentives as bonuses for good work.

4. Use Tools to Manage Your Freelancers

The final way to get the most out of your virtual team is to use tools to help track productivity and generally manage your freelancers.

Here’s a short list of tools that you can use to accomplish these objectives:

• Skype.com. You probably already have this VOIP-based software already installed (on your computer… or even on your smartphone or tablet) – if not, it?s well worth the download. Skype allows voice calls and video calls, anywhere in the world for free. In addition it has a message function as well. It has made voice communication virtually free!

• Freemind.com. This is a fantastic free mind mapping software that will allow you to “mind dump” all your thoughts on a particular project, be it a completely new website you?re developing or the next best-selling mystery novel you?re writing. It’s a great planning tool.
• Gliffy.com Another free tool that lets you take step-by-step instructions and create them in the form of a flowchart. A great tool to use in developing critical paths for the business but also a good training tool to give to contractors for a particular project.
• Dropbox is a free tool that allows exceptionally easy sharing of documents. Both you and the contractor have to have DropBox installed in order to share but the download is quick and easy. It’s a simple matter of dropping a document into the contractor’s folder. Any time that document is modified, such as when the contractor makes a change, you receive a message. It’s a simple system with adequate security built-in.
• Jingproject.com this is a great piece of free software that allows you to make complex training or presentation videos. This isn’t your typical YouTube video; instead, this is a 5 min. video of what appears on your computer screen. As such, it can be used as a walk-through of the process or a personalized sales presentation. It’s easily distributed via e-mail, a webpage or IM.

Conclusion
And there you have it – the four key issues you need to consider if you want to get the most out of your virtual team. Remember, overall the key is to communicate. Communicate your expectations. Communicate your project objectives. Keep in communication during the entire project. Point is, the better your communication with your freelancing team, the better your end results.

Download “How To Outsource Your Content Creation” >>>> Content Outsourcing

Don’t even think of hiring a freelancer unless you use these checklists!

Note: Your first step, of course, is to evaluate your own short- term and long-term needs for different freelancers.

Checklist #1: Advertising Jobs

• Have you evaluated your needs? Do you have a clear picture in mind of the type of freelancer you need to hire for this particular job?
• Have you created a clear and detailed project description?
• Did you post the project on one of the top freelancing sites, such as: Elance.com, Odesk.com, RentACoder.com, Guru.com, Freelancer.com.
• Did you browse the service provider ads on the above sites?
• Did you search CraigsList.org for a suitable freelancer?
• Did you post your own ad on CraigsList.org?
• Did you ask your offline colleagues for recommendations?
• Did you ask your online colleagues for recommendations?
• Did you ask your contacts (such as on Facebook.com and via your newsletter) for recommendations?
• Did you search your local classified ads?
• Did you post your own classified ad in the local newspaper?
• Did you post an ad in the college newspaper?
• Did you post fliers on campus?
• Did you talk to college professors to ask for recommendations?
• Did you search business and marketing forums ?
• Did you search Google for a freelancer?

Checklist #2: Evaluating Freelancers

• Did you check the freelancer’s feedback rating on the freelancing site? (where applicable)
• Did the freelancer send a personal reply with his or her elance.com (or other freelancing site) bid, which shows he really understands the project?
• If you posted a special instruction in your ad, did the freelancer carefully follow the special instruction?
• Is the freelancer’s bid or rates within your budget range?
• Did you check the freelancer’s portfolio?
• Did you check the freelancer’s references?
• Has the freelancer done projects similar to the one you’re proposing?
• Do you know anyone who can personally vouch for or recommend this freelancer?
• Has this freelancer been in business for six months? If so, how long?
• Does this freelancer have a good reputation?
• Did search Google for the following information:
• Freelancer’s name? Freelancer’s business name? Freelancer’s email address? Freelancer’s phone number? Freelancer’s website? Freelancer’s username(s)? Other identifying information?
• Did you uncover any serious complaints during your search? If so, what were they? Did you uncover any minor complaints during your search? If so, what were they? Did you uncover a pattern of complaints (either minor or serious) during your search.  If you uncovered any complaints, how recently were these complaints posted?

Note: Sometimes freelancers who’re just getting into the business may have complaints from clients, such as missed deadlines, poor communication, etc. However, if you’re doing your due diligence on a well- established freelancer – and if these complaints are in the long-distant past – then it’s possible that the freelancer was just going through “growing pains” when he first started his business. Point is, use common sense.

If a freelancer started three years ago, did NOT have any major complaints (such as fraud), but did have a few complaints three years ago and none since, then it’s quite possible the person will do good work for you now that he’s more experienced.

On the flip side, take note that a freelancer who’s just starting out – even if he has a perfect feedback rating now – may experience growing pains down the road.
Example: If someone has been in business for only a month or two, he’s probably not yet experienced enough to know how to handle a full project load. Thus he could easily take on too much work, which will create delays.

Checklist #3: Hiring Freelancers

Did you start with a small project with your new freelancer??Note: In essence, don’t give a new freelancer one of your bigger or more important projects until you’re sure the two of you will work together well.

Did you create an agreement that defines:

• The scope of the project?
• Project milestones and goals?
• Payment terms? Deadlines?
  • Did both of you sign the agreement?
  • Did you tell your freelancer about your expectations?
• Did you ask your freelancer to tell you about his or her expectations?
• Did you ask your freelancer to contact you with project updates on specific dates?
• Did you ask your freelancer to complete and turn in parts of the project on specific dates?
• Did you offer your freelancer any incentives for finishing the task early?
• Did you educate your freelancer about your overall company mission, vision and your business philosophy?
• If local, did you ask the freelancer to come in for an interview?? If remote, did you ask the freelancer to conduct a phone interview?

Here’s what to look for during the interview process:

• Did the freelancer show up on time for the scheduled start of the interview?
• Did the freelancer make some effort to look professional?  Note: Part of the appeal of working from home is not  having to get dressed up – so don’t read too much in what someone wears, especially if they are otherwise qualified.
•  Did the freelancer come prepared? Example: Did he or she bring a portfolio and references?

• Did the freelancer share his or her relevant experience?
• Did the freelancer seem excited about his job?
• Did the freelancer seem excited about your project? ?

Checklist #4: Creating Project Briefs

• Did you create a clear and detailed project brief for your freelancer?
  •  Does the project brief list specifics, such as colors and imagery for a graphic, word count and topic for an article, etc?
• Did you provide samples, links and other examples to give your freelancer a clear idea of what you want?
• Did you tell your freelancer how the project will be used? (For example, if you hired a ghostwriter to write a report, it’s important for him to know the intended audience, the topic and that it’s a lead-generating report)
• Did you encourage the freelancer to ask questions?
• If needed, did you provide training tools? This includes things such as:
  • Instructions on what type of writing you prefer. Example: US English versus UK English… or first-person writing versus third-person writing.
  • Written instructions which detail how to complete a particular process.
  • Flow charts and/or decision maps to help a freelancer make relevant ?decisions.
  • Answers to frequently asked questions that are relevant to the freelancer
• Tasks.
  • Tools that make the freelancer’s job easier. Example: Such as “copy and paste” answers that a customer service representative can use for common email inquiries.
  • Video instructions.
  • Instructions with screenshots.
  • Audio instructions.
  • Mindmaps to give the freelancer an overview of a process.
  • Access to another experienced freelancer on your team who?s in charge of training new freelancers. Example: A project manager.

  

Checklist #5: Project Management   

• Did you provide an email address for your freelancers? Did you provide a phone number where they can reach you?  Did you tell your freelancers your Skype username?
• Did you tell your freelancers your preferred means of contact?
•  Did you exchange information about your time zones?
• Did you establish the best times to contact each other?
• Are you using project management tools to make the freelancer’s job easier?
• Have you given your freelancer access to the other relevant members of your freelancing team? Example: The copywriter and designer often work together to create a professional, persuasive website.
• Have you created a mindmap that shows how the work flows through your organization, and specifically how it flows between freelancers who all work on different pieces of a project?
•  Have you set up weekly meetings with your team?
• Have you established what days and times your freelancer usually works (e.g.,
• Monday through Friday, regular business hours)?
• Did you determine what days your freelancer may not be available? This includes during religious holidays, during national holidays, etc. Note: Obviously, if you’re hiring a freelancer who resides in a different country than you, it’s a good idea to learn more about national holidays.
• Does the freelancer have any potential issues with connectivity, such as an ISP that goes down often, a satellite connection that goes out during inclement weather, or perhaps an electrical system that has frequent brownouts or other outages? Note: Some of these issues are more common than you think in certain regions of the world, especially if your freelancer lives in a developing country or rural region. While this may not be all that big of an issue if your freelancer is completing a project such as an ebook for you, this can become a big issue if the freelancer is doing something like customer service for you (which requires her to connect to your site daily).
• Have you asked your freelancer to check in with you on specific days?
• Do you offer constructive criticism to help the freelancer do a better job? If so, do you ensure your criticism is polite and professional, never personal?
•  Do you brief your freelancers thoroughly, let them know they can always ask questions, but then leave them alone to do the job you hired them to do? (In other words, do you avoid micromanaging your team?)
• Do you offer generous praise for jobs well done?
• Do you offer cash rewards for good work?
• Do you offer other incentives for good work?
• Do you offer cash bonuses for early delivery of a project?
• Do you offer other incentives for early delivery of a project? Note: Other incentives may include things like paid days off. If you have local staff, then you can do things like buy lunch for the entire team or even take the month to dinner. If your team is particularly invaluable to your operation, you may even enjoy weekend “junkets” or parties once a year.
• Do you have any performance-based incentives? Example: You pay a writer his or her usual rate for an article. But if the article makes you money, you send a cut of the profits to the writer.
• Do you offer cash or incentives when the entire team reaches a milestone or meets a goal/benchmark?  Note: This can be powerfully effective. That’s because an individual freelancer isn’t just working for himself. Point is, if one person “messes up” his end of the project, NO ONE gets a reward. Thus this sort of incentive promotes teamwork and good work, because no one wants to be blamed for the team failing to reach a goal.

• Have you asked your freelancer what you can do to make their projects with you run more smoothly?
• Have you asked your freelancer what you can do to make working with you and working in your environment more pleasant?
• Do you “retain” your freelancers by keeping them busy every week.  If you don?t have enough work for a freelancer – or if you have a limited need, such as a web graphic – have you referred them to your colleagues?

Note: The freelancer will appreciate this and will definitely remember you for it. Thus the next time you need this freelancer’s services, he or she is likely to accommodate you if at all possible.

Conclusion

You can see why I said you shouldn’t even think of hiring a freelancer unless you have all five of these checklists in hand.

Go ahead – print them off and hang them by your computer. You?ll find them absolutely invaluable the next time you need to hire freelancers, send them project briefs and manage them!

Introduction To Freeleancer and VA’s Hiring Sites

Quick, what do you think of when someone refers to a freelancing site? If you’re like most people, Elance.com comes to mind. That’s because it’s one of the biggest and most well-known freelancing sites. Truth is, there are plenty of other places to find great freelancing jobs. Just run a search for “freelancing sites” in Google, and you’ll see plenty of options. But some of these sites are simply a waste of time for you.

Example: The site itself may not be bad, but it may be aimed at a specific kind of freelancer (one whom is not suitable for your project). In other cases, there may be known problems with a site such as the site not having a built in escrow system, which means it’s easier for a service buyer to scam you.

Either way, let me save you some time by telling you about the top freelancing sites. These sites are all well-known and well-established, so you can generally feel confident using any of them. However, you?ll want to read the following overviews to get a better feel for which sites are best for you…

OTHER OUTSOURCING SITES

Elance.com
Elance.com one of the biggest and most well-known sites. As such, there are a lot of service providers on this site. This gives you two benefits:

1. You can find established freelancers. Since Elance.com is one of the older sites, some of the freelancers on the site have been around for many years. Thus you can easily do your due diligence by checking their feedback rating, seeing how many projects they’ve done while a member of the site, checking samples, etc. In other words, researching their freelancing history is easy.

2. Plenty of freelancers will bid on your project. I always say you should cast a wide net when looking for freelancers – and simply posting one project on Elance.com helps you do that, because a good project with a good budget is sure to attract plenty of qualified service providers.

These aren’t the only advantages of using Elance.com. Here are three more:

1. Safe payments. Elance.com provides an escrow system, meaning both you and your freelancer are protected. You never have to worry about paying for work that doesn?t get completed.
2. Productivity and tracking tools. Elance.com also provides you with all the time tracking, communication and productivity tools you need. That?s because each project is assigned its own virtual work room.
3. Pre-written contracts. Don’t have an attorney to create agreements? No problem. Elance.com will provide you with agreements that define the relationship between you and your freelancer. ?It?s free for you to post jobs on Elance.com. Elance makes money by deducting a percentage of the profits from the payment that you send to contractors. However, you don’t need to pay any additional fees.

oDesk.com

oDesk.com is another big, well-known freelancing site, which means it’s a dependable source for you to find a broad variety of freelancers. And while you can certainly post projects where you pay a flat fee per project, the emphasis on this site is for workers to get paid by the hour. Thus if you need to hire something like a virtual assistant or customer service representative, oDesk may be your first choice.

What makes this work – meaning, what allows you to trust your freelancers to work by the hour – is that oDesk has a virtual work room with tracking and productivity tools. You’ll be able to see screenshots of your worker?s screen as well as data on their keyboard activity. You may even be able to see web cam shots of your freelancer working.

It’s free to post jobs on oDesk.com. However, oDesk.com then adds its fees (10%) to the contractor’s fees. This means that the rate you see is the rate you pay when hiring a contractor, so you don’t have to worry about any hidden charges.

ScriptLance.com
Based on the name alone, you?ve probably already guessed that the emphasis of this site is on workers who provide technical talent. If so, you?d be right. If you?re looking for programmers, database managers, web developers and other technical workers, you may want to make ScriptLance.com your first stop.

Tip: While Script Lance focuses on technical talent, you can also find other freelancers, such as writers or marketers. However, the talent pool isn’t quite as big for these other categories, as most people come to this for programming and similar technical jobs.

The upside of Script Lance is that it tends to have a talent pool that’s cheaper than other freelancing sites. That may be because a large portion of the talent pool comes from developing countries and poor regions. So while the programmers are talented, they tend to charge a bit less because they have a lower cost of living where they live.

The downside is that you really need to do your due diligence to make sure that the freelancer you’re hiring is able to speak good English. That is, you need to make sure that the two of you are able to communicate well enough so that the worker can complete the task to your satisfaction. Thus be sure to pay particular attention to the worker’s profile and feedback ratings.

Script Lance doesn’t charge any sign up fees or ongoing monthly fees. Instead, the buyer (that?s you) is charged a flat fee of $5 when you select your winning bidder. However, there are fees for listing options, such as featured listings, listings marked “urgent” and other listing enhancements.

vWorker.com

vWorker.com is the site formerly known as RentACoder.com. Now it’s known as vWorker, which stands for “virtual worker.” As such, the site is trying to move away from its former focus, which was on “coding” tasks such as programming, script development, web development, mobile application development and similar. These days you can find a wide variety of freelancers on the site, including virtual assistants, writers, copywriters, marketers and more.

However, even though the site has expanded to become more of a general freelancing site, the fact that it was once primarily a coding site means that it?s a good place to look for coders. Thus if you need technical talent – such as someone to create a script or an app – then check this site out.

vWorker does have extensive history available for its freelancers, so you can quickly see feedback ratings, comments left from previous employers, certification and more.

The downside of vWorker is that the fees tend to be on the high side of the spectrum – as high as 15% for “per project” jobs and as high as 9% for “per hour” jobs. However, these fees aren’t charged directly to you. Rather, these fees are taken out of the service providers paychecks.

Make no mistake, however – since the service providers have to pay these fees, they will of course pass some of this expense along to you. Thus you’ll receive slightly higher bids than you would on other sites, especially from those workers who are well-established with good reputations on vWorker.com.

Guru.com
Guru.com touts itself as the world’s largest online marketplace – and that may be true, since at any one time there are hundreds of thousands of workers competing for tens of thousands of jobs.

This is one of the general freelancing sites, meaning you can find talent for just about any type of job or project you have on tap.

However, one item of note is that the site seems to have more U.S. based freelancers than freelancers from any other country.

Example: At the time of writing there are close to 195,000 workers
from the U.S. The next biggest country is India, but there are only one quarter as many Indian workers on the site as U.S. workers.

What does this mean to you? It means that this is a good place to find workers with English as their native language. This is ideal if you need something like content creation, or if you have a complex task that requires good communication between you and your freelancer. This U.S. focus is also good if you?re based in the U.S. and looking for someone local to hire (as you can search by zip code).

Guru charges its freelancers monthly membership fees as well as commission fees (from 5% to 10%, depending on membership level). For you, however, posting is free. You may have to pay fees such as escrow fees and credit card fees.

Freelancer.com
Freelancer.com boasts a freelancer pool of over 2.5 million workers – thus you?re sure to enjoy plenty of competing bids when you post on this site. And indeed, this is another well-known and well-established site where you can post a wide variety of projects and get a wide variety of bids in return.

When you post a project, you pay a $5 refundable fee. Once you select a worker for your job, this $5 fee is refunded. When the project is complete and you’re satisfied, you then pay a $3 fee or 3% of the project total, whichever is higher.

These are the basic fees. If you’d like to add enhancements to your listing – such as posting a “featured project” or hiding bidders? bids – then you’ll pay extra fees. Freelancer also charges its freelancers fees, including a $5 or 10% commission fee (whichever is higher) per project. Thus, as usual, you can expect the workers to pass some of their fee

Conclusion
And there you have it – eight good sites that you can use to find your next freelancer! Of course there are other freelancing sites (like Fiverr.com) as well as other places for you to network to find freelancers (such as Facebook.com and LinkedIn.com). However, if you need to tap into a large pool of talent, then above eight sites are all good choices.

Download the:  Takeaways Checklist