Hands down, the cheapest way to start finding your outsourcing partner is through an online bidding site. Writers, researchers, VA’s, coders, graphic designers… If a job can be outsourced, you can bet that someone from these sites can do it.
Note, I said cheapest. Not fastest.
In fact, I set up my second company here in the Philippines, Virtual Staff Finder, because of the incredible amount of interest I had from business owners that simply didn’t have the time it takes to go through finding an outsourced worker through this avenue.
However, although this process can be incredibly time consuming, it’s still a relatively straight forward one – you create an account, post a project / job, wait for proposals to come in and then start the process of picking the best of the bunch, interviewing, doing background checks (I always suggest you do this, if possible), speak with past employers, hire, pay at end of project, rinse and repeat.
While there are a hundred job posting sites out there, only four come to mind when you’re looking for Filipino remote workers! And so, I’ll do my best here to walk you through using them a little closer.
Elance.com
Elance offers buyers and providers a range of free tools to streamline their workflow: time trackers, monitoring sheets, chat applets, and the like. Buyers can read through a providers work history, client testimonials, and browse through their portfolios.
Unlike other sites, Elance does vet some provider’s resumes, differentiating them by attaching a “certified” logo to their profiles. This is a select service paid for by the provider, so not all use it. But while it isn’t a sign of a provider’s proficiency, it does show the extent of their commitment.
Posting a project is technically free, but they do require a $10.00 refundable deposit. Supposedly designed to protect providers from insincere buyers who are just there to spy on the market place.
Recently, Elance implemented it’s own freelancer monitoring system. Jobs paid per hour are tracked by taking screenshots of a remote worker’s desktop. There are also time-trackers installed, and freelancers can pause the timer whenever they’re doing something not related to your project.
They also have their Global Payments, making it easy to pay your virtual personal assistant or online personal assistant when they have finished your project. But, this is not as big of a deal as it once was with almost every outsourced workers now hooked-up with Paypal.
Guru.com
Guru’s breakthrough is the ability to see the number of projects a freelancer’s bidding on. This gives you an idea of how many jobs a Guru (virtual assistant or remote worker) is handling at the same time, just in case you want someone more focused on your project. Posting projects is free and payment is done through their online billing system called Safepay.
Guru is the only site that gives loyalty points. If you use eCheck, PayPal or or a credit card to load your Safepay account, you get $10 back. Not a huge amount of money – but if you start using the site regularly (or get a full-time VA to do it for you), then every little helps, right?
Plus, any and all funds that you have loaded into your account for when you need to pay your virtual personal assistant or online personal assistant will only be released when you say so – making it a little easier for you to control the ‘ending’ of a project, for the obvious reasons.
The site also allows you to work with your remote worker directly on your desktop, sharing files and conversing together. Kind of like a watered-down project management system.
