Where do you go to find great people for an incredible price to do one task at a time
from anywhere in the world?
Elance.com.
Check it out in this video.
All right, the website I want to talk about today is one of my absolute favorites (maybe
these are all my favorites, it seems).
This one's called Elance and this is about working with a global, dynamic team.
This is about taking the work that you do (either personally or in your business) and
using a global team who will do a task-by-task at a far higher efficiency (both financially
and what with time) than perhaps what you're doing now with full-time, part-time stuff.
If you're not sure what I'm talking about, take a moment to go to my website, TimLevy.net,
and grab yourself a copy of this one here, called The Entrepreneurial Handbook: and this
particular book goes into this whole conceptual story in detail.
But right now, let's focus on the actual tool itself: in this case, the website Elance.
So what is Elance?
It's the world's (perhaps) largest database of freelancers online, as it shows you here.
You can see they have a hundred and something thousand jobs that are live right now, within
the last thirty days.
They've put $925 million worth of work through this thing over the last few years, and they're
made up of everyone from programmers through developers, designers, writers, marketers,
whatever.
If you want to search for them, you can use this top box here and you can search for freelancers.
Let's just do that quickly: for something a little unusual, let's for example look here
for lawyers.
So if I was looking for a lawyer, I would type in "lawyer", and up would pop (as you
can see) thirteen-hundred active lawyers.
Now, in this case you can see, I've got this guy here Andrew Taylor out of Australia; someone
from Pakistan: maybe I would like to be more specific and hire a lawyer in the U.S.
So if I just click on these criteria here into the country (in this case, the United
States), it will redo the search and now I have six hundred and thirty-five results but
they're all in the United States.
And what kind of level of experience are we talking about?
Well, I'm always amazed at just how extraordinary these people can be.
Let's look at this guy (I've never met him before), Charles Markham: I'm right-clicking;
I'm doing "open link in new tab"; I'm just popping over to him; and you can see here
as I click on "read more".
This guy's fifty dollars an hour; he's licensed with the IRS; he's obviously focused on tax;
and he's got more than fifteen years experience as well as a Master's degree.
As you can see, you're finding fantastic people.
So you certainly can search the freelancers' database, from everyone from bookkeepers to
lawyers to private detectives recently; but the heart of this thing is people who are
working online.
So oftentimes it's designers or writers, editors: all sorts of people like that.
So let's jump into this thing and see what happens when you log into the system and actually
sort of "the rubber meets the road" and you get to work.
So firstly, you'll need to begin by creating a free account: give them your name, email
address, a username, and presto!
You have an account.
In this case, I'm going to log into an existing account that I already have that I've been
working with now for some many years, and I come to my dashboard.
This dashboard is showing me everything that's going on right now.
Up here, this listed out three jobs that I have going on today: I've got some comedy
work going on with a writer called Joel, and I've got some design work going with a designer
called Mary.
Over here on the right you can see that I've got no action required; everything is going
well; no messages waiting for me; and these things�this is an interesting little box
right here.
This just shows you some standard things that Elance has sort of found to be helpful for
you.
So for example, here you can protect your intellectual property; here, you can get sample
documents, nondisclosure agreements and so forth so that you can create a measurable,
legal protection with the people that you are working with.
I've never had any problems there; just worth knowing that it's sitting there.
And you can see here under "Reports", these are my last six months' worth of jobs: you
can see I've spent the most of my money on animation; a lot here on writing; some design
work here; transcription; and so on.
But let's jump into how to actually get a job going.
For that, you're going to need to click this button up here that says "Post Your Job":
let's click on that.
So, this is if you want to actually hire somebody; well, normally what I don't do is go and sort
of hunt someone down: I just post a job and let the people who are interested get back
to me.
You can see here it's asking me if I want to use any of my past job posts as templates,
which I don't, so I'll turn all of that off.
In this case, we need to do an example post based on something from a while ago where
I was looking for a writer for a video, and I wanted that video script to be funny.
So I typed in something�you can type in anything�but I'm going to say "Comedy Writer
Wanted".
And how do you then describe that job?
Well, I like to recommend�again, this is in that book, The Entrepreneurial Handbook�I'd
like to recommend you cover three areas: talent, experience, and culture: what they're talented
in; how much experience you need them to have; and a little bit about the culture of your
business so you find likeminded people.
Now, I've gone ahead and prepared something else earlier, so I'm going to cut and paste
that in�there it is�and let's have a little look together at what I've actually written.
Firstly, what am I looking for?
I'm looking for someone fun, easy to work with on a series of short animations for a
corporate client: these are conversion videos in the style of Grumo Media, which is someone
whose videos I like.
Once the scripts are written, we'll make them into animations.
Each one is the story of a profile character with a business, that there's my client business
being the answer to that scenario.
So that's the talent I'm looking for: someone who can write that kind of script.
Here is the experience I want: ideally, you'll have a strong portfolio full of short scripts
that are going to make me burst out laughing.
A past maybe in improv, standup, and you'll have years of writing creds and maybe television,
film, and other published forms of credibility.
So that's the experience I want you to have.
And then in terms of culture, I've just sort of written this: you know, let's have a chat
on Skype.
I love to speak to people on Skype BEFORE I hire them to make sure they're someone I'd
actually like to spend time with.
So next I need to prepare�select the category of work: you can see there's lots of categories;
in this case, it's going to be "Writing" and the subcategory is going to be probably "Creative
Writing".
It doesn't really matter: you can see they�they've popped up some skills here.
We can add some more skills: maybe there's a "Comedy" skill here; and it looks to me
like they haven't written that one out.
So that's ok; I can just type in "Comedy" and it'll add that one anyway.
So now we know we want someone to write me a script and it's comedy, and here we come
in to the detail.
Do we want them by hourly or do I want a fixed price?
Certainly a fixed price and certainly less than five hundred dollars; and then I've got
some more options here.
I always click on "Show" and jump into them.
Do I want this visible to the public?
Yes; otherwise no one can see it.
Do I prefer candidates from a certain location?
Yes: I would prefer (in this case) North America; Australia's also fine (it doesn't bother me).
Ok, so I've got North America and Australia; and I'll post this job for say three days
and boom: I'm ready to go.
Now, it's asking me if I want to pay some more money: I've never needed to do that,
so I click on "No Thanks"; and now I basically post my job for free.
It's just asking me to go through and confirm it there, which is fine: post this job.
It's as simple as that to actually post a job on Elance.
It hasn't cost me a cent at this point.
So what happens next?
Well firstly, my job goes live and they send me an email to let me know; but let's go and
have a look at when I posted this job previously to see what actually happened once this job
was live.
So I'm going now go back�you can see that job's now listed in my dashboard�to a job
that I archived, which is to say a past job, which was the same job as that: that's where
I sort of stole my copy from.
Here it is: you can see I wanted a comedy writer and there is the job post that we just
posted.
So I did this obviously in April of 2013.
Now here's what's happened that's interesting: as you can see, nineteen proposals came back
within the course of those nineteen days.
Sixteen from North America, which is where I said I wanted them from; one from India;
one, two from Western Europe.
Down here as we scroll down is the listing of all of those different proposals: lots
and lots and lots.
So the question is: how do you sort out which one you're going to use?
Well, the great thing about this Elance system is it gives you all of these criteria here,
by which you can rank these jobs.
So the first one is this guy's in Ireland: well that's ok; I don't mind someone who still
speaks English as a first language.
His rate: twenty-five dollars an hour is his indicative rate; that seems fair.
And this one here, under "Writing and Translation", which is sort of his category of choice, he's
got a rank of six out of ten.
Now actually, that's really good; he's done nine jobs before and earned four thousand
dollars.
That gives you a sense of what he's been up to; and he's got a rating of 4.9 stars.
This is a pretty good guy; let's move on.
This guy here, Norith Soth, in the United States: a ranking of ten; he's a great guy
to talk to.
He's done forty-three jobs and earned sixteen grand with a five-star rating.
This means this guy is close to perfect.
By the way, did you notice that these two people have both given me the amount of money
that they want me to pay them: one hundred and sixty-four dollars; they made that up!
I didn't tell them: they made that up.
In this case, they've both done the same: why $164.38?
Because it's a hundred and fifty bucks plus the Elance fees: that's why those�they count
with those funny numbers.
You can see them just scrolling down and down and down and down: lots and lots of people
to talk to.
Now we come to the first guy I was kind of really interested in.
Look at this guy, Peter Bartels in the U.S.: a ranking of nine; he's done fifty-six jobs,
earned a lot of money; he's got some great rankings; and if you read what he sent back
to me, he sent me a little letter here and he's attached some of his past jobs.
He's got a great price and here you can see I started writing to him; in other words,
I'm talking to him before I've hired him�and you can do that from the proposal by just
clicking on this button here that says "Send Message to this Freelancer."
So we started to have a little bit of a chat (as you can see), and I said to him, "I think
your scripts are great, but I'm looking for something funny.
Can you send me something funny?"
And he wrote back saying, you know, "Maybe not."
So I moved on from him; didn't accept him.
Let's look at this guy, Jon C. Obviously I thought he looked good and we had a chat as
well; and I said, "Could you please send me something really funny?"
He sent me something; I had a look at it; you can of course also look at their portfolio,
which we'll do in a moment.
But down here is the guy that I actually hired.
Look at what we said: I said to him�and you can see we actually�now I hide them;
we had a long conversation�but here, I said, you know, "Could we change the price?"
"Yes," and I know that what we did was chatted via Skype.
Look at these clients though.
This guy's already done work for all these corporate clients: 3M, Coca-Cola, Campbell's
Soup; this guy had amazing experience and a really good rating; and I looked at his
portfolio�oh actually, he sent me some documents here and I got some scripts that I like to
look at.
So when I was ready, I clicked on the green button that was here�I'll show you up here�"Select"
and that's when I awarded him the job.
Once we did that, we went into the Elance system and conducted our business using the
message board and got the job done.
So that's really how Elance works; and I just want to give you a little bit of general advice
here on Elance as well.
First thing is: you don't have to hire somebody to ask them to do a little test for you.
So when you're in that "Proposals" level�let's go back there right now; I happen to be going
to an archived job; let's go back to that one; a comedy scriptwriter here�when you're
actually in this level, you can ask people to do a little test for you.
You can use this thing here that says, "Contact"�"Send Message": you can say, "Listen, I've got twenty
people to select from.
Would you mind doing a five- or ten-minute test for me?
Could you chat to me on Skype?"
And you can get tests from two or three people: maybe, if it's an editor, they could edit
the first three pages of your document; if it's a designer, they could show you some
examples of their work.
So you can work at this level when the proposal hasn't been accepted to try to figure out
who is best, and even then you can hire people in parallel if you need to.
So that's one of my pieces of advice for you.
But really, Elance is as simple as looking at the criteria and connecting with some people,
jumping in, hitting "Select".
You then fund the job: basically when you fund the job, what's important is that you
are giving the money to pay for the job to Elance; not to the person but to Elance; and
that gives you a measure of confidence that, you know, they haven't taken your money and
run; and it gives them a measure of confidence that you can afford to actually pay them when
the job is done.
So I've never had any problems with the funding portion of this: I've always done very well
there.
So that's how Elance works.
Hopefully that's giving you a lot of information about how certainly to get your sort of first
hire going; and then you'll start to gather information on your own.
Again, if you need more information on the details of this: I've written a lot about
this in that book I mentioned to you, The Entrepreneurial Handbook.
It's here, TimLevy.net: you can grab yourself a copy easily enough either via Amazon or
Blurb, for you know, ten or fifteen dollars, and get even more detail about how this works.
All right, hope you enjoyed this video and I'll see you on TimLevy.net and in the future.
Thanks very much.