- Elance can be an awesome source to help you
with your online presence,
but choosing a provider can blow your mind
and it can be really hard to know
who is actually the right fit to help you.
So today I've got three tips to help you
when you're picking your Elance provider.
So check it out.
(rock music)
Hey there, I'm Julie Broad of HaveMoreInfluence.com.
Hiring people on Elance is awesome.
It means you can get all kinds of help for your website,
your social media, your tech problems, your videos,
your podcasts, whatever it is that you're doing
to create authority so people know your name
and recognize you as the expert in your industry.
So it's awesome because you don't need all these skills.
However, it can be really challenging
when you put a job out there.
So you go to Elance.
Let's just head on over to the Elance website, shall we?
Let's go there together
and let me walk you through.
So you'll post a job
and you're gonna wanna put as much detail
in that job as possible.
Now Elance is great.
They give you some examples.
They give you skill sets to choose from.
They even recommend certain providers based
on some of the key words you're using.
So they've made it fairly easy.
But you're gonna wanna know what you're looking for.
So if you're an author,
and you're going to Elance to get somebody
to create a book cover for you,
in order to get the best quotes for your job,
you're going to need to provide them
with all kinds of information.
What size is your book?
What colors do you want?
Give them your profile picture.
You're going to need to include the different texts,
the testimonial options.
There's lots of pieces that you'll need to include.
Give them as much detail as possible.
Then submit your job.
Now often I think the default's 14 days.
I recommend having three, maybe seven days at the most.
Because you're going to probably get a
whole bunch of people giving you offers.
Now, typically, I post my jobs so they have
a set price limit versus the hourly rate.
There's arguments for both, but for me,
I like to know going in how much it's going to cost me
versus multiple revisions.
Or, sorry, versus paying by the hour.
Now, you may want to assure somebody that this is only
for two or three revisions
because some providers may be very hesitant to bid
on your job if they think it's going
to be an endless array of revisions.
So, you posted your job
and now you start getting within minutes,
you'll probably start to get people responding.
And you could end up with 50 to 100 responses.
So how do you choose?
What do you do?
Well, first of all, I skim them
and I will initially throw out anybody
who's ridiculously cheap or ridiculously expensive.
So I'm going to throw out the outliers.
This may or may not be a good approach
but this is how I do it.
I've also typically researched the jobs in advance
so I have a sense of what I can expect to pay.
And I might research it by looking at other Elance jobs
that have been posted,
looking at places, if it's a design job,
places like 99designs or asking around in forums and blogs
and other places that might be appropriate places to ask.
Then, if there's other prices that are just really high,
I might get rid of them, just to eliminate it down to only
evaluating 10 or 15 people.
Once I have a group of 10 to 15,
then what I'm going to do is I'm going to look at
who actually read my proposal
because a lot of them submit a
totally standard template reply.
And that's okay if I have a very standard request.
So a banner for a website, for example.
Which, by the way, small work like that,
I always send over to fiverr.com
but if I have a basic, standard work,
then it's okay if they replied with a template.
But for a lot of my jobs, it's very specified
and I want to see if they actually read it.
Because I want to know if they're replying
and proposing something that actually fits my needs
or if it's just a template reply that they use to everybody.
So I'll then narrow it down from there.
If they actually read it,
maybe if I had questions or comments
or if they have suggestions that specifically apply
to my proposal, then it allows you to rate them.
So I'm going to start giving them ratings.
The providers don't see those ratings, by the way.
That's just for you to filter out to choose your provider.
So number one, have they read my proposal
and really truly understood what I was looking for?
Did they make good suggestions or comments
or ask questions that show they understood?
Subject to that, I then look at other work they've done
to see if it's similar to the work that I'm asking for
and if I like their work.
So if it's design work, I'm going to want
to review other design work to see if I like it.
So I know they read my proposal,
I like some of their work,
now I'm going to read some of the reviews.
I'm gonna skim.
I typically will not pay attention
to one person with a one star.
What I'm looking for is a bunch of people
that have given them three or four stars
and I'm gonna read why.
I'm gonna read why.
If everybody gives them five stars,
or they have no reviews,
not always that keen on that either.
So I'm looking for balanced reviews
that say they were responsive,
they were talented,
they were good, they accepted revisions,
they accepted feedback.
Those are some of the things I'm looking for.
Then finally, I'm going to look at price.
Price is important, but initially I got rid
of the expensive ones and the cheap ones,
so these ones should all be within a range
that I'm happy with.
So now I'm going to filter it based on price.
So I'm giving all of them a rating based on these things.
Assuming they fit all the criteria,
then I'll probably go with the lowest price.
But I may not.
I might go with somebody that I loved their work,
and maybe they're a little more expensive.
It's going to depend.
But hopefully that filter helps you think this through
because I know Elance is awesome
but it can be very overwhelming hiring people
and feeling like you got the best person for the job.