How do you hire contractors / freelancers to help you?

We recently started Froggodoggo (https://froggodoggo.com) to help companies hire founders who are looking for a side gig (sorry for the shameless plug).
Having hired freelancers before (and looked for jobs as freelancers), we found that often you don't want to just outsource a project to a freelancer and get something back after x months. It's often better to hire them part-time and work with them as a real part of the team. Therefore, we pre-screen founders and companies on Froggodoggo and try to be a small and premium place to find great people and companies.

Not sure if this helps you :-) Let me know if you have any questions.

From the top of my head:
(1) Start with fixed price, no matter how cheap the hourly rate looks.
(2) Always run a paid trial project first. This will be a small but important part of the project, not more than a week. You just don't know what you don't know.
(3) Spend time on specs and answer questions as soon as you can. Be the client you'd love to have if you were a freelancer.

Hey there,

Upwork is good, but the price might be higher.

I would suggest going on niche Facebook groups.

You should post your jobs there.

For example, if you want a developer, you join JavaScript groups.

I think you got the idea.

Good luck! :)

Have you tried peopleperhour.com? I am not, in any way, affiliated with promoting that website but I do have a profile on there and have used the platform to both freelance and hire freelancers. Worked for me!

My best experience was with 99designs.

I ran a Platinum contest to have my app designed.

I submitted a project brief, along with about $2500 and within a week, I had upwards of 30 designs, from which I had to select a final 3. The designers made revisions based on my notes to them and a couple weeks later, an excellent final product was delivered to me.

I ran a separate contest (not Platinum) to have my logo and app icon designed. Same process as before, almost 50 options to choose from, and about 2 weeks from my initial request to a final product I'm very happy with.

My next best experience was with TopTal, where I hired a developer part time (20 hrs. / wk.) to code my app. I spent about $12k over 4 months.

My contacts/project managers at TopTal stayed very much in the loop throughout the project. The developer was very professional and although I'm pretty sure I didn't get a full 20 hrs./wk. from him, he did deliver milestones mostly on time. Overall, he did an excellent job, and the app works better than my initial designs because of changes he recommended based on his experience and expertise.

When my contract with Toptal ended, I still needed development work, but not enough for another TopTal contract. So I reached out to a member of a board game forum I spend way too much time at.

This member made a cool supplemental app to a board game we both play. Impressed with his app, and by his personality I've gotten to know through his forum posts, I pm'd him and asked if he does freelance development work. He does, we agreed on a flat, per-project rate, and he delivers generally when he says he will. I give him 50% when we start each project, and the balance upon delivery.

So far, this arrangement is working out great, and I expect we'll continue working together through the life of the project and hopefully beyond.

I'm in the middle of a contract with upwork, where I've turned to for help with copywriting. This isn't going so hot. I think more because of me and/or my app than upwork.

I wrote an ad requesting help with promotional reddit posts I wanted written, but I outlined my full marketing plan, along with all the future copywriting needs I expected I will need.

I invited 20 specific copywriters to the job. 2 replied, one of which asked for $1k to look at my app before we get started.

I went with the other guy. He's got talent, but won't meet deadlines, is clearly lazy, last-minute and won't be good for me long-term.

I wrote a new ad for upwork, this time being more specific with my request for 3 reddit articles and nothing more. 2 out of 10 replied, and we're working together now. Both seem similar to the 1st guy I hired, both in work ethic and talent.

I'm sure there are great copywriters on upwork, but I'm having a very hard time attracting them. Sucks that it seems I need to hire a copywriter to write a job ad to hire a copywriter.

[recycling a previous comment about hiring on Upwork]

I've done 65 hires on Upwork and spent $20k+ on the platform. I've had some fantastic hires from the platform, but I've also had lots of duds that wasted my time and money.

I really should write a full-length blog post about this, but here are my quick tips:

Maintain expectations that it will take you several months to save time by hiring from Upwork. The more complex the task, the longer it will take before you come out ahead on your time investment. Outsourcing requires a lot of up-front effort in the form of writing job postings, writing thorough, clear specifications for what you want, interviewing candidates, and reviewing work. Once you find someone good and find a good rhythm with them, it's a great way to save yourself time, but you're likely to find a lot of bad candidates first.

The #1 thing I look for in any candidate is communication. Miscommunications are extremely expensive with freelancers, especially for highly-skilled tasks like software development. Avoid candidates who ask vague questions or need re-explanation of things you've explained clearly. The best people I've hired tend to be people who are highly specific and detailed in their communication.

Take ratings with a grain of salt. Most of the people on Upwork are hiring for things they don't know how to do themselves, so a terrible freelance programmer might have a 4.9 rating because their clients can't tell that they produce code that's hacky and unmaintainable. Similarly, some legitimately good freelancers have dings on their record from unreasonable clients who gave them a 1.0 rating because the freelancer refused to do extra unpaid work.

Resist the temptation to hire cheap freelancers. You'll always get bids that are tantalizingly low (like $12/hr for "senior-level" Python development), but they often can't deliver what you ask for with reasonable quality. The freelancers who are good can command a good wage. With the bargain basement freelancers, you'll spend so much time managing them and fixing their work that you won't save time overall.

Finally, start small. Don't hire someone to build an entire mobile app from scratch because it's far too complicated. Start with a job that should take a few hours (and set a cap on their hours so there are no miscommunications). As you get into a groove of working well with your freelancer, gradually give them more hours and more complex tasks.

Some blog posts I've written about hiring freelancers:

• Hiring a Copy Editor
• Hiring a Cartoonist
• Hiring a Writer (Who Tried to Scam Me)
• Hiring Content Writers: A Guide for Small Businesses

It varies a lot depending on what type of work you're looking to outsource. Different communities/sites are better for one service, while maybe not great for another. I haven't had great experience on Upwork for developers, but have had pretty good experiences there for more routine data entry type tasks. That said, I would probably have had better experience had I picked developers who were charging more. I would say to totally avoid going the cheap route on Upwork (ie anything less than $20/hr). There is a reason they are that cheap.

A great service I've found for hiring developers is www.codementor.io . It's geared towards getting people to provide live help with challenging programming problems. Essentially you can use it to hire a pair programming partner to work with you. Then if you find they are good to work with you can discuss hiring them for development work where they are doing the work all themselves, and not just helping you do the work.

When working with freelancers avoid starting out with projects with large scopes. Give them something small and specific to do. Then give them another larger task if they can handle the first small task. Over time give them more challenging and larger tasks as you start to understand how best to work with them based on their working style and your's. It can take a few tries before you find someone good.

Another thing to keep in mind is that when you are starting out you might not realize if you are giving instructions that are unclear until the work comes back and is totally off the mark. It's easy to write off the person as being dumb, that they didn't understand, but it often has been that my communication was not clear. This is where it can take some time to understand each other's communication styles. This is especially true if you're sending the work to someone who speaks a different language than you as their first language.

I've worked with a lot of freelancers and gained a lot of experience on who and where to hire them, basically made many mistakes along the way.

That's why I've created DEVY.io

We remove all the necessary work and time needed to make a good decision when hiring someone, that's our job. We choose the right freelancer for the task at hand and manage everything ourselves, so you can focus on more important work than hiring and overseeing the freelancer's work.

A lot of people dislike it, but I really like Upwork. The reviews really help understand if the person is legit or not.

Hey Ghyslain!

I am a big fan of outsourcing / using contractors and built my main business around that idea.

Basically the mindset I follow (I quote my friend Davis Nguyen) "If it is not exponential, it is not essential". I try to focus only on exponential tasks and outsource all the rest.

In terms of outsourcing my biggest learning are:

1. Hire someone with great communication skills
2. Spend time (and money!) on hiring (make paid tests, make video calls with candidates...)
3. Design a system where freelancers can thrive without you (document processes, SOPs, record videos on how to do tasks...)

Now going back to your question as regard to reading recommendation, I wrote a full book on this: http://www.productizeteam.co

Upwork > fiverr (in term of quality/pricing)

1. in your job description, at the end of the job posting, ask to the freelancer to start their answer with a specific world, like :
   [INDIEHACKERS].....
   This way, you will filter in a click all the freelancers that didn't read the full job posting requirement (I mean you check those have write this specificc world)

2. for the first contract with a freelancer, prefer a fixed price with milestones (demo...) and ask the source at the end of each milestone/payment. (even an incomplete code, but at least, if something happen in the future, you'll have a bit of code)

3. if the project is a bit complicated, and the freelancers doesn't ask many questions about the project and want you to start ASAP, be careful. It means that he will ask some questions after the contract begins, so you may add some $$ for any misunderstanding.
   If a freelancer asks many questions before, it's a good sign (at least, for my interpretation)

Upwork is good.

Make sure you have a clear job posting. Explain exactly what you are looking for. Have the right documents up front and ready for the freelancer to be able to do their job.

Interview the top candidates.

Test out the top candidate with a smaller task.

Focus on aligning your benefits with their benefits to get the best outcomes.

Don't use fiver just don't. The good ones are really overpriced and you are better at UpWork. I use Fiverr only for clients who don't have money.