vWorker or oDesk | Which Freelance Marketplace Should You Use?

There are a lot of outsourcing marketplaces and communities made available to us, and sometimes it can get a bit confusing when it comes time to finding the right one for you personally. Today I want to put two of the bigger players face to face. vWorker or oDesk?

Let’s Look At The Contenders

vWorker

vWorker.com is a dynamic online marketplace where 143,207 employers hire and manage 296,636 virtual workers to assist them in business and personal projects. Virtual workers span every country across the globe and every imaginable expertise, including computer programming, writing, graphic design, marketing and many more. vWorker.com offers the safety features and money-back/payment guarantees that allow thousands of these transactions to be done succesfully every month. (Quoted from vWorker Website)

oDesk

oDesk is the marketplace for online workteams, with the best business model for both employers and contractors. Our unique approach guarantees to employers that an hour billed is an hour worked, while guaranteeing to contractors that an hour worked is an hour paid.

This win-win approach attracts more work to oDesk than to any other online work marketplace. Each month, thousands of companies of all sizes post jobs on oDesk, representing more than $65,000,000. (Quoted from oDesk Website)

So let’s take a closer look at each of them, and who they are best suited for.

1. Marketplace Size

The more workers in a marketplace the greater the competition – and if economics taught me one thing it was ‘supply and demand’. The greater the supply of workers, the lower the price becomes.

vWorker = 296,636 workers

oDesk = 679,485 workers [Read more...]

Proof That You Can Hire Staff For Under $2/hour Using oDesk! (Plus The How-To)

I have been receiving quite a few emails from people who have read my ebook ‘GEO Arbitrage‘ and the majority of them are saying,

‘I have had a look at jobs on oDesk and I can’t seem to find anyone paying $2/hour or less!’

A few of them have been written in a accusing tone, making me out as a liar and Odesk as a scam, but mostly it is from people who genuinely want to know if it is possible.

YES…You Can Hire Staff For Under $2/hr On oDesk

I wanted to attach an screenshot of my oDesk account, where it shows the amount I paid my employees this last week. This is quite a big thing for me, because in it, it has the names of my staff (which means you can check them up, and try and hire them!)

(Click Image To View Full Screen)

As you can see, my 3 staff range from $1.67, all the way down to just $0.83 per hour!

So that means it definitely is possible, but why are most people settling for paying workers extra?

The number one reason that people pay too much for staff on oDesk is that they let the workers set the price!

Tell me a company that when hiring, says to it’s candidates, ‘This is the job I want you to do, but I don’t have a set salary in mind, you tell me how much I have to pay you!’

Now I am sure there are some big companies who do this when head hunting, but for most jobs that you are hiring for on oDesk, it is like McDonalds asking its young staff to set their own wages – not smart!

The Only Reason That Pay Under $2/hour Is Because I Set A Limit!

In each of the jobs that I post on oDesk I set a maximum price that I am willing to accept and include this into my job description.

If I am looking for a link builder for one of my websites, I may include something like this into the job description:

Please keep bids under $2/hour, all job applications that have a bid over over this price will be automatically declined without reading!

This lets potential applicants know that you are serious, meaning they will put their best offer in.

It really is that simple:

If you don’t ask, you wont get!

So I encourage you, if you haven’t already, set up a free oDesk account, and see what kind of jobs you can outsource for $2/hour or less?

If you are up for the challenge, come back and post your results here, so that others can see!

The oDesk Scam: Really?!?!

I am surprised by the amount of people calling this scams without thinking. As I promote oDesk quite heavily through this blog I occasionally get an email titled: ‘oDesk Scam‘ where the writer goes on a massive rant about how they got ripped off on oDesk and how they will never use them again.

So I thought I would put my ’2 cents’ forward.

Is oDesk A Scam?

I am just going to jump straight into it and say an emphatic ‘NO’.

The people who regularly reference oDesk as a scam usually refer to being ripped off buy a buyer who didn’t pay, or a service provider who didn’t do the work they were hired for.I don’t know about you, but to me that is people who are ripping other people off – not oDesk.

Interesting Comparison

A local current affair tv show here in Australia recently ran a story on a Nigerian scam that would duplicate car listings in classified sections on regional newspapers and online classifieds, and people were purchasing these ‘cars’ sight unseen and only realized that they had been scammed after they had paid the money. The show rightly titled the ad posters as the scammers as the classifieds are just a marketplace to connect buyers and sellers – and it is the same with oDesk.

With the thousands of jobs being posted on a daily basis it would be impossible for oDesk to personally check over each one, and I don’t believe it is their job too.

It is the employer and service providers responsibility to make sure that they are working with reputable people and this isn’t really that hard: [Read more...]

Rent A Coder Changes Name To vWorker

Rent-A-Coder was one of the original freelance communities on the market and was know for specializing in he outsourcing of technology related tasks.

The big news recently is the rebranding of Rent-A-Coder to the new name of vWorker.

The new name ‘vWorker‘ stands for ‘virtual worker’ which the company states:

But today in 2010, the site is not just coders, but also graphic artists, writers, translators, marketers, personal assistants and numerous other types of workers. Our new name reflects that and reminds employers that they can find all kinds of talent here.

So if you haven’t been to RAC for a while, then sign up for an account with vWorker and see how much they have changed.

Outsource Link Building: For 83Cents an Hour!

I am always trying and testing different methods to reduce my outsourcing costs – while no affecting quality. The other day I created a job on oDesk to outsource link building and I may have found an extremely low cost method.

As the title suggests, I have decided to outsource link building for one of my sites to a worker in the Phillipines for just 83cents an hour! That is right -  less that $1 an hour for an employee means I could have a full-time staff for under $40 a week.

If you have used oDesk or Elance then you will know that the wage range for workers can be extremely diverse. Today I want to give you some tips on how you can outsource your link building for under $1/hr!

1. Make Your Maximum Price Known

If you came though a Google search for ‘outsource link building‘ you may have seen an advertisement for oDesk that says the following:

Inexpensive Link Building
Hire Link Building Gurus $10-25/hr.
Interview Experts for Free Now!
www.oDesk.com

Maybe $10-25/hr is cheap seo for businesses, but if I had to pay that much for a link builder I would just do it myself. I needed cheaper – so I asked!

When you create a new job in oDesk you are asked to place a maximum bid (per hr) that you will accept. However the minimum you can place in that field is $3. That is a good start, but I still wanted cheaper.

So what I did was, in the job description I placed a line of text simply saying that I would only accept bids under $2/hr and all other bids would be automatically deleted – it doesn’t stop people bidding more – but it does make some of them lower their price.

This got me down to $2/hr to outsource link building – but I still wanted to see if I could pay less. [Read more...]

3 Ways Your ‘I Will Do It’ Attitude is Ruining Your Business!

Isn’t it funny how when it comes to our business, we always feel the need to do everything ourselves. The constant excuses given for this type of behavior is, ‘ But no one can do it as well as I can.‘ or ‘If I do it, then I know it will be done right.’

While this may be the case in a few situations, the majority of the time you are doing yourself (and your business) a dis-services by having to do everything – all the time!

3 Ways Your ‘I Will Do It’ Attitude is Ruining Your Business!

  1. It Gives Small Tasks Priority

    As a small business owner your focus needs to be on delivering the best results for your customers. If you are babying your employees (or currently  still a one person show), you are not able to give your full attention to customer satisfaction. Each small task that you take on, shifts your focus from running your business to working in your business.

    And with all your time taken up in doing these small tasks (and let’s face it, anyone can do them -  stop needing to be needed!), you are limiting the time that you can spend on developing your business and where you see it heading.

  2. It Shuts Down Creativity and Excellence

    Each time you take over a task that you do not have an expertise in, you are creating an ‘atmosphere of average’. By saying, ‘I will do it’ to things that you  really can’t do great, you are letting your staff and customers know that you are willing to settle for second best.

  3. It Destroys Growth

    And what happens when you get that big job that you pitched for, or you get a sudden influx of new customers? Do you decide to start work earlier and finish later (longer days means more work done), or do you begin rejecting customers because you can’t handle the workload (and ‘no one can do it as well as you!’).

    The problem with this mentality is that you become the star of your business, and while this may be good for your ego – it makes terrible business sense. If you are your business, what happens when it comes time to move on? You will never be able to sell it (well at least not for a decent amount), because you can’t really sell yourself with your business. AND you could never expand your business, because where would you find the time to look over 10 people shoulders at the same time.

What I am trying to get at is YOU CAN’T DO IT ALL!

And once you start to understand this, you will realize how liberating that statement really is.

Doing everything yourself can become so tiring, so let me throw you a rope  by saying ‘Let someone else do it!’

I know it will be hard at first and your mind will fight you the whole way, but once you start letting other people do your work you will come to realize:

  • Other People Can Do Things Better Than You
  • Other People Can Work Faster Than You
  • Other People Can Work Cheaper Than You

Don’t Stop Doing Everything Straight Away

This would definitely be overload!

What I would suggest is to start outsourcing little, simple jobs and wean yourself away from needing to do everything. Slowly, as you become more comfortable transfer more of your work to other workers and free up your time to focus on leading your business into a successful future!

Can you Value An Entrepreneur Salary?

The thing with most entrepreneurs is that their income is really whatever their business makes, minus all the expenses. So it definitely varies for each persons.

So is There a Way to Value an Entrepreneur Salary?

This is something that is almost impossible to do! Each entrepreneur would value themselves in a complete different way and with a unique figure that they would value as their ‘entrepreneur salary’.

What Can We Do Then?

I think that as entrepreneurs we need to stop comparing ourselves with each other and set a value that we would be comfortable working for.

Once you have a yearly entrepreneur salary for yourself, I encourage you to bring it back to an hourly rate. So divide the yearly figure into a weekly income and then once again divide it by the amount of hours that you work!

What this does is allow us as entrepreneurs to set a ‘hourly value’ on our time, which I believe will make us work a lot more efficiently.

Is ‘Checking Your Emails‘ worth your hourly rate?

How about ‘Article Writing‘ or ‘Sorting Out Your Website‘?

As entrepreneurs I find that a lot of us are completing tasks on a daily basis that are no where near worth the ‘hourly value’ that you have set for yourself.

If you are set on making your hourly value stand in your entrepreneur salary then you need to start outsourcing jobs overseas. This strategy is called geoarbitrage and will allow you to find workers who will complete your everyday tasks at a heavily discounted rate – saving you time and money!

Timothy Ferriss: Scam or Genius?

Timothy Ferriss has been able to gain quite a lot of publicity through the release of his New York Times best seller ‘The 4-Hour Workweek‘.

In it he claims to be a productivity guru and created the buzzword ‘geoarbitrage‘ (which is simply another word for outsourcing), sharing how he was able to create an $80,000/month business working 80 hours a week – and then how he turned those 80/hrs into just 4 hours of work a week!

If this all sounds too good to be true to you, then you are probably here to have me confirm your suspicions the Timothy Ferriss scam – but not so fast.

Before we start criticizing Timothy Ferriss, let’s first take a look at some of the accolades he has claimed:

  1. Created a $40,000/month Income From BrainQuicken
    I know there is a lot of debate on whether he actually achieved these figures and if it was gross or net income, but seriously, people are building $40,000/month businesses all the time – so why is it so hard to believe?

    Wikipedia notes that Tim sold BrainQuicken in January 2009 and is now a fulltime angel investor (If anyone can confirm this, please comment below).

  2. Timothy Ferriss Cheated His Way To Becoming The National Chinese Kickboxing Champion
    A lot of people bring up his kickboxing story when the call Timothy Ferriss a scam.

    For those of you who have not heard the story, Tim found a technicality that meant that if people went outside the ring multiple times in a fight – they would be disqualified. Using this to his advantage he proudly boasts how he literally shoved his competitors outside the ring for a technical knockout.

    The fact that he publicly boasts about the way that he did it, and that there was nothing against the rules in what he did – it is hard to call him a scam because he found a technicality and exploited it.

  3. Timothy Ferris Claims To Only Work Four Hours A Week
    Now while I highly doubt that Tim actually only works 4 hours a week with all his speaking and writing gigs now, I think the point he is getting across is that if you are doing what you love, then technically you are not working, and recommends that you start outsourcing jobs overseas and get rid of the time consuming, technical jobs and start doing the things that you love.

So I definitely do believe that Tim has done a little bit of exaggerating (story telling), but there well still a lot of things that I got out of ‘The 4-Hour Workweek
‘ , such as:

  • The Way That Timothy Approaches Problems
  • The Answer Isn’t To Do More….But To Do Less (Focus)
  • The Importance Of Enjoying Life All The Time (Not Just In Retirement)
  • The Ideas I Started To Get While Reading The Book!

So whether you believe that Timothy Ferriss is a scam or not, there are definitely a lot of things that you can learn from his lifestyle experiments and I highly recommend ‘The 4-Hour Workweek
‘ to anyone wanting to get away from the hold of a 9 to 5 job!

If you are interested in the ideas that Tim puts forward in his book then you may way to download my free ebook ‘GEO Arbitrage‘ that will take you through the steps to getting started with outsourcing.

What Is Geoarbitrage?

With the launch of my latest ebook, GEO Arbitrage, I have been getting a lot of questions from readers asking my to explain exactly what geoarbitrage is.

Now I could easily say, ‘Download My Free eBook‘ because there is a section in it that explains the whole concept. But to make it easier for you, let me explain it here.

A Quick Economics Lesson

Now I am sure that you have already worked out that geoarbitrage is made up of two root words. ‘geo‘ and ‘arbitage‘. Now we all know that geo is location – but what exactly is arbitrage?
Arbitrage Is: According To Wikipedia (link)

the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices.

Successful stock market traders and professional gamblers use this technique to make large profits – and with geoarbitrage, everyday people can use arbitrage to work a lot smarter.

So What Is Geoarbitrage?

Well if geo means location, and arbitrage is taking advantage of the price difference between two or more markets, then geo arbitrage is simply:

the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more geographical markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance.

A typical example of geoarbitrage is wages.

We all know that wages are different all around the world for the same jobs. So why not capitalize on this difference and hire staff from a cheaper country.

Now I know this isn’t possible in all industries – but why not take advantage of geoarbitrage in as many areas as you can!

But Isn’t Unethical?

I get this argument a lot when I tell people about how I utilize geoarbitrage to build my online business. For some reason people feel wrong people people as little as $2/hr (or less), because they are so used the the price of wages in the country that they live.

But the simple fact of the matter is, that you set your maximum price, but it is up to the market to decide if anyone will work for you. And in some countries $2/hr is a good wage.

A Local Example

Remember back to when you were a kid and your parents asked if you would mow the lawn for $10?

This is a perfect example of arbitrage!

The $10 is good money for you, and your parents are saving the extra $30-40 they would have had to pay a lawn mowing business. It is the exact same concept, but I don’t see anyone complaining about the ethics in this case.

Learn More About Geoarbitrage

If this sounds exciting (and it should), then you can download my ebook GEO Arbitrage – free of charge, and it will take you through the exact steps that you need to take to start out in geoarbitrage today!

Communicating With Offshore Programmers

If you are visiting this page because you are looking for a place to find offshore programmers – I use and recommend oDesk.

Well I am sure you will be glad to know that I did find a fantastic ebook cover designer on oDesk for exactly $10. There were a lot of applications that were cheaper than $10, but I made the decision as usual based on portfolio and feedback – and the designer I chose had 4.98 (out of 5) feedback after 34 jobs and a portfolio that included some fantastic ebook covers.

My new employee is based in Pakistan, so I can take a guess that English is not his first language. So the key to working with oDesk offshore programmers is the way that you communicate with them.

Tips for Communicating With Offshore Programmers

In my communications with my designer I was reminded of a couple of tips when dealing with people who do not speak English as a first language. I will use this experience as an example and you will also get a sneak preview of the design process of the GEO Arbitrage ebook cover. [Read more...]

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