Outsourcing Online: Finding Good Help Could Not Be Any Easier

Are you a small business? Internet startup? Or maybe you just don't have exactly the skills you need amongst your team. A new generation of freelancing websites could offer the solution to your problem. These sites exist to provide a controlled environment where clients like you can post projects to an audience of thousands of skilled freelancers, who will see your project and bid on it if they can offer what you need. Once your listing deadline is up, or as soon as you are happy with the choice of bids, you can choose the contractor you want to work with and kick off the project straight away.

Web and graphic designers, web developers, programmers, writers and translators are just some of the skilled professional freelancers who register with these sites, so that they can be put in touch with markets they couldn't reach unaided. Typically they will be based not only in the USA and UK, but all over Europe and Asia. This gives you, the project sponsor, a much more responsive and competitive marketplace to choose your contractors from. The size and variety contained within these freelance marketplaces means that you can be sure of a good choice of skilled freelance professionals at short notice, and at competitive rates.For example, Project4Hire.com, a freelancing site, presently has more than 5500 registered contractors, spread over all aspects of custom website development, programming, graphics design, freelance copywriting and translation. The site operates a feedback-based rating system for all contractors and clients, so that it is always possible to get an idea of a person or company's reputation and experience before committing to working with them. Work can be assigned one or more of a total of eighty categories, divided up into eight main areas. It is easy to see how freelancing sites can offer a breadth of choice for both contractor and client that is unrivalled by any other form of advertising or recruitment.

The benefits of using these sites can be considerable. As a business or an individual, you will inevitably only have a limited skillset within your staff, probably focused on your core activities. Employing freelancers gives you a way around this, offering cost and time efficiency, and giving you access to a much wider skillset than normal without having the cost and complexity of employing anyone directly. For small to medium size projects and tasks, especially those that are quite self-contained in nature, employing freelancers is often the best way to get the job done.

The other benefit of using a freelance marketplace to find your freelance professionals is that it helps to reduce some of the risks faced when using freelance professionals. Financially, you will want to be sure that you will get the work you paid for, and that the freelancer you have contracted will support you until you are happy that the work meets the specification provided. Most of these sites offer escrow payment facilities - Project4Hire.com provides a system called Safe Transfer - to ensure that neither client nor contractor need suffer any anxiety about the financial side of a project. When the contractor is awarded the project, the client can pay the full amount of the winning bid into the escrow account, where it will be safely held until the completion of the project. Together with feedback-based rating systems, this kind of facility means you can be confident when assigning work through a freelance marketplace site.

Whether you need a web designer and programmer, some graphics designing, or some professional copywriting, freelance marketplace sites can give you access to a responsive and competitive group of professional freelancers, together with the reassurance of dealing with a reliable and known organisation. Next time you want to outsource a project, why not give one a try?