First time Elancing

[weinerschizel]

I posted up my first elance project. It's for Wordpress development, and I scoped it as precisely as I could (I'm a systems engineer mountains of experience scoping design and writing requirements). The project is very small, simply integrate two things into my plugin and should only take the developer a few hours at most...

(1) create a CSS style sheet and use divs to replace my table
(2) integrate Wordpress image handler into the admin panel portion of the plugin to select images for my advertisements the plugin hosts.

My goal is to get people talked down to the $50 mark. Of course $50 is still a fortune for what I'm asking but I want practice doing this. I have a couple questions with the whole process...

1. Some proposals are requiring I hold a virtual meeting with them. For something this small the meeting would take more time than the work. How do you guys handle this?

2. How do you guys typically approach getting your bids? I only have 3 bids in and several of them are refusing to post a price up front.

3. Do you guys use the paid site features? What extraneous charges are associated with Elance if any?

Thanks!

[10smom]

You will want to interview the freelancer even though small project to be sure they are legitimate and can handle the work. Thye do not want to make a bid and be locked in until they are sure the price you want to pay is equal to what you are asking them to do. They need to message with you to find this out. I have many bad experience with freelancers. It is worth it to take the time to spell out exactly what you want before they make a bid and to be sure they even have the skills to handle the job.

[10smom]

I forgot to mention that you will want to do a search for qualified freelancers through their system and invite them to bid on your project. Otherwise many will not even see your project unless the happen to log in on the day you posted it.

[charlestown]

I've never used Elance, but this outsourcing business is not always as simple as many would have you believe and I've had mixed success with those I have employed so far across various sources including oDesk, Getafreelancer and Guru. Some have been great, while others have clearly lied about their past experience and abilities. One particular website designer I hired springs to mind as I write that...

Recently I hired a guy to handle the transfer of all my domains from one dedicated server to another and go through everything to make sure it was all running smoothly. He knew his stuff but had this habit of disappearing for days at a time and leaving me waiting there by Skype for ages when we were supposed to discuss something. The end result was that a job which should have taken no more than 48 hours without any great intervention on my part ended up absorbing two weeks of my time.

Judging purely by the sites I have gone through I think I like oDesk the best. You can search for people who have passed their certified tests and at least use that as a way of judging their basic competency within the chosen area. The site I like least is Getafreelancer now called freelancer.com because their support staff are downright awful if you have a problem.

[weinerschizel]

Well. I'm not holding meetings for the small beans stuff. Otherwise it's a waste of my time.

I've already delegated my next 6 articles for my Fitlish blog. The first milestone is article one which I set for this Sunday. I want to review the author's work before I let her finish off the remaining articles. We'll see how that goes.

I've actually delegated hundreds of work tasks but all within the companies I've worked for. Any reputable engineering business has a system similar to Elance where work tasks can be documented and delegated. Most always I refused all meetings and found it worked nicely so long as I was explicit about the task.

Now I've never worked with Elance. I figured I would be overly specific and leave no margin for question. Plus try and I follow up on the work shortly after they begin working to make sure they are headed in the right direction.

I just bought a livescribe pen to better illustrate the various work products I want completed on Elance as well. Have yet to get it working though

[weinerschizel]

Hit my first difficulty. I funded the Escrow and had the web programmer I hired complete the first milestone. Instructions to him were to complete the milestone then demonstrate his work to me before proceeding.

Elance paid him out for that milestone before I could approve the work he did for it. So I'm not sure how to keep Elance from paying out until after I have signed off work. Here's how my milestones are setup for work on my Wordpres plug-in:
1. Complete CSS layout ($20.00)
2. Complete image handler plug-in integration on admin panel of Wordpress. ($90.00)