James SpillaneDespite what folks say, outsourcing is not a dirty word. In fact, more and more businesses are jumping on the outsourcing train by hiring freelancers to assist them with various projects and tasks in their businesses.
In all honesty, this is a practice that I have been using for the last past 3 years since I have been an entrepreneur and I am here to tell you….it has worked out very well for me.
If you are an independent entrepreneur, or a small business owner with limited staff, hiring freelancers to help you in your business is the way to go!
Why You Should Consider Hiring Freelancers For Your Small Businesses
There are 5 main reasons that hiring freelancers is a smart move for small businesses and they are as follows:
1. Lower overhead costs – Yes, you can save a ton of money with hiring freelancers on an “as needed” basis to work on various projects in your business at a set rate. This is much more cost effective than hiring a full time staff of employees.
2. Saves you time – If you are currently inundated and overwhelmed and are having a hard time keeping up with multiple projects—it’s time to remove the “cape” and delegate some of those responsibilities to a freelancer. This will save you a lot of time and allow you to work on more important tasks in your business.
3. Access to a wider pool of candidates to choose from – Various freelancing websites on the internet make it super easy for you to find eligible candidates that you can outsource work to and on a very small budget.
4. The ability to set “specific” budgets for your projects – You get to control how much money you’re willing to spend on your projects, which gives you greater flexibility.
5. Staffing flexibility – Outsourcing projects to freelancers will give you the freedom and flexibility to bring people in for a “specified” amount of time. This will help you keep down operating costs in your business.
The Best Places To Find Freelancers
As I’ve mentioned previously, there are a number of online marketplaces on the web that you can use to find great freelancers to outsource work to.
Here are a few of the most commonly used websites and some of the features they offer, so you can make an informed decision before hiring a candidate to take on your projects:
1. Upwork.com (formerly oDesk) – is one of my absolute favorite sites for finding freelance talent.
This site is extremely thorough, and has a very large pool of talent. Upwork has a very easy to use platform that allows you to search for talent by geographical location and more.
oDesk makes it easy for you to sift through candidate profiles to check their portfolios, client ratings and feedback… that will help you gauge whether certain freelancers are the right fit for your project.
2. Elance.com – Like oDesk, Elance has a very large pool of freelance talent to choose from.
Here, you can easily search through candidate profiles, view their work, feedback, ratings, specialties and more.
Everything from marketing to legal, freelance writing to web programming is covered—making it a one-stop shop for your outsourcing needs.
3. Fiverr.com – I can’t say enough about this platform. Fiverr is an online marketplace that allows you to outsource projects to freelancers starting at a fee of $5. Yep—that’s right.
And the best part about using Fiverr is that there is a lot of excellent talent out there for the taking.
With Fiverr, you simply use their search function and add keywords in there to search for Fiverr “Gigs” closely associated with the project that you want to outsource.
So for instance, if you are searching for someone to create an eBook Cover for you, simply search “eBook Cover designer” in the internal search bar on the site to get a list of designers. It’s that easy!
10 Things That You Can Outsource To Freelancers
Here is a list of different things you can outsource simply by finding qualified people online:
- eBook Graphic Design
- Copywriting and editing
- Virtual assistant duties
- SEO (search engine optimization)
- Live telephone assistance
- Data research
- Report writing
- Social Media Marketingg
- Content creation
- Graphic design and logo design
A Few Tips For Hiring Freelancers For Your Small Business
1. Carefully scan through candidate profiles. Review their work, client feedback, ratings reviews, and etc. before hiring them.
2. Write effective “Job Posts” and “Descriptions.” This matters a lot guys. You want to be as specific as you possibly can about what you are looking for in a candidate and your project requirements.
3. Give trial tasks and assignments to freelancers before committing to larger projects. This will help you determine if the candidate is a good fit for your project. If they do well with your trial tasks—hire them for larger projects. If they do not, continue the search for the right candidate.
There you have it, my quick start guide to finding and hiring freelance talent. Please be sure to share this information with others on social media. Cheers!
This article was written for Business 2 Community by James Spillane.
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Nice article, I agree that those three are the most popular marketplaces for freelancers but if you’re a multilingual freelancer, you’d like to use a place which enables you to increase your reach by posting in a few languages and having full support in those languages.
The key is writing a crystal clear order. Be sure to say what you want, give specifics like size, color, deadline and also an example. If you’re doing graphic work, tell the freelancer to be inspired by your example but not to plagarize.