Hiring Freelancers The Right Way By Avoiding Costly Fees On Popular Platforms
If you are an employer looking online for freelance talent to get your work done, be it programmers, designers, testers or anyone else, chances are that being cost-effective or efficient is one of your reasons.
If you aren't worried about the costs, you'd probably be hiring the old fashioned way by posting a newspaper ad and conducting an offline interview like many companies do. Now, what's the use of going online if platforms like Freelancer.com or Upwork eat away most of your savings?
In general almost all platforms charge high amount of commission which isn't really justified for platforms which act simply as middleman or facilitator. The platform doesn't do any real work here, all they do is provide a web application or app where you can sign-in and find freelancers/employers.
But why pay for this costly app when several social networking sites like Linkedin, Reddit and Twitter allow you to do the same for free! Granted that finding a reliable freelancer on your own can prove to be tricky sometimes, especially if you don't have any searching/filtering skills. But honestly, the quality of both clients and freelancers has degraded so much on the platforms lately that if you can find a reliable freelancer, you can easily do the same on any other platform too.
Linkedin is the place where most freelance professionals have a profile which describes their work experience, past projects done and endorsements and recommendations given by clients and/or colleagues. Here is my Linkedin profile, for example. Many freelancers also have their own website, these days, I have mine too.
Then, you also need a project management platform to actually manage your work (alternative to "team rooms" feature typically provided by platforms). For this, there are many tools, both online and self-hosted like Trello, Asana, Basecamp, OpenProject, OrangeScrum, etc.
Finally, there comes the question of paying the freelancer after getting the work done. Most popular options here are PayPal and direct wire transfers. You can ask the freelancer's PayPal email or bank account details and transfer them accordingly. Other options also exist like Payoneer, Stripe and Google Pay.
Moral of the story is why allow a platform to get rich at your expense when the same money could be used to hire a better freelancer or getting more work done!
If you aren't worried about the costs, you'd probably be hiring the old fashioned way by posting a newspaper ad and conducting an offline interview like many companies do. Now, what's the use of going online if platforms like Freelancer.com or Upwork eat away most of your savings?
In general almost all platforms charge high amount of commission which isn't really justified for platforms which act simply as middleman or facilitator. The platform doesn't do any real work here, all they do is provide a web application or app where you can sign-in and find freelancers/employers.
But why pay for this costly app when several social networking sites like Linkedin, Reddit and Twitter allow you to do the same for free! Granted that finding a reliable freelancer on your own can prove to be tricky sometimes, especially if you don't have any searching/filtering skills. But honestly, the quality of both clients and freelancers has degraded so much on the platforms lately that if you can find a reliable freelancer, you can easily do the same on any other platform too.
Linkedin is the place where most freelance professionals have a profile which describes their work experience, past projects done and endorsements and recommendations given by clients and/or colleagues. Here is my Linkedin profile, for example. Many freelancers also have their own website, these days, I have mine too.
Then, you also need a project management platform to actually manage your work (alternative to "team rooms" feature typically provided by platforms). For this, there are many tools, both online and self-hosted like Trello, Asana, Basecamp, OpenProject, OrangeScrum, etc.
Finally, there comes the question of paying the freelancer after getting the work done. Most popular options here are PayPal and direct wire transfers. You can ask the freelancer's PayPal email or bank account details and transfer them accordingly. Other options also exist like Payoneer, Stripe and Google Pay.
Moral of the story is why allow a platform to get rich at your expense when the same money could be used to hire a better freelancer or getting more work done!
Good idea and approach. Bear in mind that there are over 10 freelancing platforms now that are not UpWork, Freelancer and Fiverr and some of them don't charge you. Check this useful article on UpMixed :
ReplyDeletehttp://www.upmixed.com/?s=fiver