[greg_holsclaw]

With new companies like crowdflower.com and cloudcrowd.com making large pushs into this space, along with ODesk.com and similar competition, I see picking the right solution as paramount to helping a small startup bootstrap well.

I have been using oDesk for almost a year for both side projects and regular company work. Finding good workers is the initial challenge, and can be very time consuming at the start. Once you have a reliable workforce tasks start being completed timely and accurately.

Some of the new cloud staffing groups are trying to remove the touch points with individual workers and instead you work with an account manager who distills the job requirements, fulfills the work in their cloud, checks the accuracy, again in the cloud or through proprietary tools and the delivers a completed task project to the buyer. Expect a price premium though.

If you have money and no time, a manage outsourced cloud would be good for, but for a cash strapped startup, managing individual will cut your costs.