A friend of mine recently asked me a question about how to protect himself when outsourcing his web design project. He had listed his project on guru.com, elance.com, and getafreelancer.com. His concern was that with bids were coming in so low that he didn’t know if they could actually complete the project for the said amount, and that he would lose his money. My response has a lot of valuable information for anyone looking to outsource any type of development project.
Here is my response to his concerns:
Hello David,
Great to hear from you. A couple quick comments on the low bids.
1. They are great. If you can find a company to do it for less go for it.
2. Check their portfolios. They could have horrible graphic design skills. That would be my first concern.
3. Sometimes a new provider will sell you something for super cheap, just to get some experience and high ratings – to get more work in the future. Don’t be afraid to take advantage of this.
4. Pay for your project in stages, so you don’t have to worry about scams. Example stages below (4)
a. Stage One – Upfront retainer : 25% of total (total 25% paid)
b. Stage Two – Graphic Layout complete – they should send you a picture of what your pages will look like: 25% (total 50% paid)
c. Stage Three –Pages 100% complete – or all pages HTML complete leaving back-end CMS for last step: 35% (total 75% paid)
d. Stage Four – One month later – after testing and debugging 25% (total 100% paid)
5. Make sure to demand completion of each stage before payment. This may seem like overkill for a smaller site, but it will save you some real headaches. Some key things, when they send the layouts, make sure you like them and they send you the original (should be a PSD file). That way if they bail on later stages you can take that to another company and have them complete it.
6. After each stage, copy everything onto another server they do not have access to. That way if they try to hold your site hostage you have a backup.
7. These companies on the freelance sites shouldn’t be too bad, because you can always leave them bad feedback which will really harm their ability to get future work. So I wouldn’t be too worried, but with the basic steps I outlined you are protecting yourself without too much work. If you need help with any of this let me know.
8. SEO strategy (Search Engine Optimization). Make sure they are including the basics into the page (meta tags, page descriptions, spider friendly url strategy). Mention this to them. They will know what I mean, and this could help in the long run without causing you much money upfront. Don’t tell them you want SEO work, they will charge the moon and you won’t get much.
One other thing. When outsourcing work, it helps to be VERY specific on what you want. Otherwise you leave it up to them to make the decisions. This can be good or bad, but I prefer to make my own mistakes. The more detailed page layouts and everything you make, the better chance you will get what you want.
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