[MicroBerto]

It's basically this.

1. Post smallish fixed price jobs and say more is at stake if they do well.

2. Hire several people for the jobs, if there are good candidates.

3. Stick to your typical screening methods. For me, I like checking out their stackoverflow and github.

4. Communicate well, ask for their honest feedback, and don't tolerate BS. If their work in a small fixed price job is good but not great, it will likely only get worse.

5. It's better to have a go-to team of specialists for many things. Ie Don't have a general PHP hacker help design your database. Foundational and architectural stuff is worth paying more for a specialist.

End of day... Small fixed price jobs limit your losses and failures in a major way.

Once you like someone, get a contract going. Rinse and repeat if you're growing and profiting.

[sergiotapia]

> Post smallish fixed price jobs and say more is at stake if they do well.

This is a giant red flag for me as a freelancer. It immediately puts me off as a sign of this guy is being defensive for some reason.

"I know we're paying you lower than your usual rate, but if you do this right, there's another project down the line."

No thank you.

[liquidcool]

Why are they paying below your normal rate? It is a fixed price contract, you are taking on all the risk, so if anything the rate should be higher. I've hired on Elance this way (i.e., audition project) and based on the hours worked, I paid 4X their posted rate. Happy to do it, because I found someone who worked very fast!

Don't forget that the client might not know what the budget should be, and on most sites, you can simply bid above their max and explain in the proposal why their budget was too low. Likely you will stand out if you brought up something they forgot to include or didn't consider.

Question: what if they said there will be an audition project at your specified rate? Not fixed bid, but you would be expected to provide an estimate. That is how I am doing it for my next project and would love to hear feedback.

[josephlord]

I don't think MicroBerto was saying pay a low rate just small fixed price blocks of work. If I was doing it I would probably slightly overpay to keep quality interested but not so high the appropriate rate for the main projects is offensively lower.

[GVIrish]

I think what Microberto is suggesting is to post a smaller unit of work and evaluate the results before committing to a freelancer for the long term. So maybe you put out a 15-30 hour job for $500-1000 to see if that person will work out. If it works out well, move on to the longer engagement. If it goes poorly then you're only out of $1000 and a week of time.

[sergiotapia]

I know that's what he's saying - that's what I find kind of off putting.

[MicroBerto]

FALSE.

Besides, ODesk uses a BIDDING system. They tell you the average bid price. Bid whatever rate you want.

If you are above the average bid rate (which sounds likely) and can sell the client on why they should pay you more, then put it in your cover letter. It's the exact thing that happened with my last devs.

You've seen the bad code out there. We have to be defensive if we want to keep our money around long enough to see the project to fruition. But I never said to underpay. I said to not commit to bigger things until you know what you're getting.

[MicroBerto]

And at what point in my post did I ever say to underpay the developer? I didn't.

Don't put words in my post/mouth. This is garbage.

[JamesSwift]

Absolutely agree. This is one of the instant alarm-bell triggers for me when reading a posting.