There is decent cash flow coming in every month. Now I want to expand and get into development of new products. I have a lot of ideas; some of them, I have even researched for months and few of them I can say that they will work or stand out from the crowd. The biggest obstacle so far has been hiring freelancers who are reliable and trust worthy.

What do you recommend?

1) Post the project on some freelance site. Which one?
2) Hire your own programmer in another country.
3) Hire someone locally.

- adill420

Hiring Freelancers is a game. Is really hard to find a good reliable one. I have found a couple and have attached to those.

1) Post the project on some freelance site. Which one?

Some goods I found were at RentACoder.com

2) Hire your own programmer in another country.

Most of there programmers are either from Ukraine, India, etc. Never hire from US (too expensive) (my experience), There is always people that want to do it for less, the thing is to find them.

3) Hire someone locally.

Never. Only if you have a "little company" and you are paying a salary.

Good coder and freelancers are hard to find when you find one hold onto them!!!! Rentacoder is a great site to find coders. Higher someone locally only if they will give you a good deal or you can see a benefit of sitting with them daily. As far as looking for freelnacers i ahve found it trial and error i will put a post out there with looking for the freelancer with a payout but note that if first article or first several articles are good more steady business will come. This has worked well for me.

I have worked with elance.com and had good experience. Most seem like overseas workers so you get good prices and thier "reputation" is at stake.

Always trust your gut.

But mostly I hire out with a local, someone that I can get ahold of. Locals have more at risk since you can visit them and publicly object to problems. The downside is that its more expensive, but your kinda paying for that personal experience.

And most importantly, Always always always, document everything. Even if you have a quick phone call, follow it with an email. This is a lession I had to learn the hard way after a freelance (local) screwed me out of 22,000 and took the client. Which leads me to my next tip - CONTRACT Contract Contract!

Like people have said above, it is hard to find a reliable freelancer. Usually when looking for a freelancer you want them to finish by the deadline and have quality work.

1) For a programmer go to RentACoder.com or GetAFreelancer.com. For a designing freelancer, go to TalkFreelance.com. If you are willing to spend a few $, then make a HIRING thread in the Sitepoint marketplace.

2) Hire programmers from India. They are very reliable (although sometimes hard to keep in touch with). Programmers in India will work cheap because things are cheap in India. They value $5 the same as we value $100.

3) I have about 10 programmers and debuggers working $35/h locally in our office. If you are not willing to spend $$$$ then forget about local programmers.

Hope this helps everyone! Excuse my spelling and grammar (was typing really fast).

Later,
Kyle

1) I have tried a few different sites over the past couple of years and now I use only elance.com ... I really like the interface and I have yet to be really get "burned". The in-system open reputation/feedback system really makes the elance contractors fight for positive feedback from their customers.

2) For over 7 years I've been dealing with outsourced Indian programmers ... managing them for outsourced development for my US based companies. Although I'm Indian (born there) I've been here since I was a year old, so I'm not fluent in the lang, etc. IMO, it can be very, very difficult to work with Indian firms (whether through elance or any other means) if you are on a tight timeline. And you have to invest a lot of time in developing detailed written specs and in reviewing interim milestones to make sure they aren't off-track because of communication problems. Also, if they are building something that you plan to maintain and extend yourself, it can be a real challenge to get an Indian outsourcing firm that will develop a well structured and documented deliverable.

Hiring your own developers through a firm in India is possible ... we did it with a crew of 8 developers in India with my last company and it worked okay ... you will pay 1/4 the price of hiring them here but you will also get probably 35-50% of the efficiency of hiring someone local... still a big savings but don't think the lower price tag doesn't come with other costs in efficiency, output, etc.

All that said, we're setting up our own company in India and are ramping up there because the labor costs are just so low and the software dev talent is relatively high and being there we can hopefully overcome a lot of the efficiency drop .. or so that's the hope.

3) When I don't have the time to spec/review carefully or am on a tight deadline, then I pay the higher costs for US developed. I don't think it's so much skillset as it is cultural/communications issues that I think make the difference. We have 2 full-time staff here and they get the mission-critical work.

Usually I get freelancers from personal referrals. I ask others who they recommend and go from there, networking through the list, asking questions and making sure someone reliable has used the person before.

Other times (for code work on a particular software) I will haunt the software website support forums watching for knowledgeable and kindhearted people.

Once I've spotted someone I approach them carefully with a smallish project. Once they have proven themselves to be on time, on budget, reliable and trustworthy with the passwords to my server/sites, I hire them for more.

I agree its hard to find great freelancers but they are out there. It takes some time and effort to find them.

Here is the latest from the Green / Orange Group of EF!

Interesting answers guys, thanks.

I worked as a freelancer on RentACoder for over a year, and I watched time and time against as customers I pitched to turned me down in favour of a cheaper overseas coder, only to get burned and discover that the person they hired was a teenager who was still in school.

In my experience: RentACoder is cheap with lots of talented individuals, but if you pick someone with a decent track record you're safe. Elance is expensive, since you are often hiring an entire team of people. GetAFreelancer is new to me (since I've been out of the game for a while).

I do all my coding myself. It's doesn't half save money, but it takes a lot of time.

Some things I would like to add to avoid getting scammed if you want to hire someone from outside your country.

Ask them to provide a reference of a previous person who hired them.
Contact the person, and take feedback if possible.
Take a look at the website of the person who hired them. This is to avoid the freelancer from giving you fake contact of a friend who will sing praises. If possible take the contact information from website.
See if they have done some previous work for someone in your country. Being in India or abroad, it will be difficult to provide a fake information of a USA citizen.
Most freelancers also offer their services on their own sites, take a look at the portfolio to make sure this person could do all you need, or need in future.

Then see if they can be reached easily in case of urgent changes etc.
Better if they work somewhere close to your time, so the time difference is minimum. Like I work in nights, and many other freelancers in India too. This is when it's morning in USA, UK etc. This way it will be easier to work.
Then see if they can work off time in case of urgent requirements etc. and can be accessed by phone.

Hope you find someone you can use for long!

I'm thinking between a bright, eager young A+ Cert kid vs. an out of work coder who has 20 years experience but may drop your project if a higher paying opportunity comes around.

Which would you choose for building a site with dynamic content (Flash, etc.)?

:helpsmilie:

I'm freelancer developer for last 4 years and think that best way is to hire individual freelancer for medium sized project rather than team (but I think it's better to hire team for big projects then several individual lancers). I can suggest you GetAFreelancer.com. They have made some nice improvement last month to avoid cheap offers and cheap projects. I think it's difficult to find individuals through Elance but it's good place to start big projects.
From my experience good rating and feedback doesn't mean that you will be satisfied with service provider. I know several providers that have hundreds of cheap reviews… Look carefully through portfolio and stay of away from "Jack-of-all-trade".

I've worked on both sides of the aisle, as both an entrepreneur and software developer.

As a developer, I've had to come in and cleanup after Indians (and Americans) in nightmarish web development projects.

I've also come on board and worked with some pretty clean code. The difference is night and day.

If you are looking to build the next iPod of webapps or websites, please, please don't think you can do so by hiring Patel at $9.50 an hour. You just won't. Your site might seem OK, but underneath, it's crap. It wasn't built with love & passion & all the things that make a nice webapp work really really well.

On the other hand, if you just need something cranked out, and aren't going for something that'll be maintainable in 2-3 years, just hire whoever's cheapest.

ps. I'm having to deal with this very problem with my own code. I built a PHP webapp 2 years ago, when I was still a PHP newbie. Going back to develop in it is a nightmare.

Meanwhile, in my new Ruby on Rails applications, things that would've taken me 1-2 weeks to code in my old codebase, now take days. And it's a joy to program in.

Some Tips on getting good people,

Make Guidelines that a Programmer must have
i.e 3 Websites related to my topic
- Skills in sajax, video

Make sure they send you a private message, exchange a few pm to make sure they arent lazy, see what kind of response time they have.

Ask them when they are able to start, and finish, to make them tell you personally when they can really start, rather than posting a number on a bid.

Clarify that they meet all your requirements.

Never take anyone that spams, their links, or anyone that uses Templates.

With that its still hit and miss to find a good freelancer. Its very hard to hold onto them, because freelancers usually chase the buck.
Which is to be expected.

go to places like elance dot com and ask for feedback from people that have got work done by people on there.

you will actually find the better ones by doing this. They normally cost the higher rates but you will find in the long run the work done is alot better and will save you time and money down the track.

There are many people who claim they offer great outsourcing services etc but they turn out to be a complete pharse. I use a good company which has developers in India but is located in the us (corporate headquarters=here developers=there) i think finding a company like that is your best bet!

Well it's only natural if people say they give an outstanding service. They are trying to make you believe them and hire them. A person who wants to make some cash will do what they have to do to get a client.t

But there are many good coders/designers which you can find which will provide with you great work. I recommend "Garret"!

Originally Posted by Lee

1) Post the project on some freelance site. Which one?

- adill420

You can try www.Project4Hire.com if you are looking for freelancers. You can read the freelancers portfolio and review on the site. To pay them, you should use the escrow service that is provided by project4hire.com just to make sure that the work will be performed.

Elance is the best place to find potential programmers. Tested. It work.

Dont post a job on Rentacoder or RAC and expect good coders to come to you - do get good freelancers you have to be prepared to hunt them down. Good ones don't need to look for jobs.