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Freelance Programming Sites?
CarrotLord asks: "I have some small, fairly well-defined programming projects that I need done, but I don't have time to do them myself. So, I've been looking into sites like Get a Freelancer and ScriptLance. Does anybody have any experience of these types of sites? Specifically, I'd like to hear your recommendations and advice, as well as your experiences. My concerns include: getting very poor quality work; communication and language barriers and also losing control over the work that I've paid for -- if I'm paying for some work, I want it licensed on my own terms."
I've done some work for people through sitepoint. Basically, it involves a lot of trust on both parties, which in a lot of cases, will leave somebody screwed. I've almost always done the work in advance and trusted that the party involved would pay me when the work was completed. So far this has worked out well for me, but in time, I'm sure I'll get burned. Generally speaking, searching the history of that user in the forums will give me some idea of my likelihood of getting paid. For larger jobs, there are a variety of escrow services out there.
It all depends on how big the projects are. If you want something between notepad and say wordpad then you shouldn't have a problem. If you want something like more complicated (a project that will take more than a month) then it is fairly complicated and it will be easier if you are in the same room.
My Dad sells stuff on line and a few of his products are things that people have asked for that only cost $200 from a freelancer then he has sold about 20 copies and made the money back.
That being said his main product took about 6 months to make and other people keep on asking for resale rights (he does commission). He says no and they chuck a fit saying we'll just get a freelancer to make it and wipe you off the market. They get freelancers and say copy this. They always fail because 80% of the product is the little things that are done automatically to make it nice and easy to use.
Now there are also a couple of things to watch out for:
* Lots of freelancers don't care about copyright. They use other projects in your and your in other projects.
* Start of with a small contact and if your happy then get the same person to do the bigger one.
* Freelancers come and go. They might not be interested next time.
* Use an escrow service the first few times. It good for them and for you.