Succeeding on (software development) freelancing sites?

A few notes from a web developer's perspective:

• Many of the best of us have sworn off freelancing sites. Their fees eat too much of what we make, forcing us to raise our prices to levels that small clients cannot always afford, they cause delays in receiving payment, and cost us valuable time with their clunky communication set-ups, all the while attracting more bad clients than good.

  Consider ditching the freelancing sites, and look for a developer through the community surrounding your platform of choice. (Especially look for an open source platform so that you aren't locked in to one developer forever.) A good dev will have a record of community contributions, good client references, and a payment plan that includes both a down payment (to protect the dev) and one or more progress payments (to protect you).

• Especially if you are new to dealing with web development, look for a developer who is willing to sit down with you on the phone or in person and go over your requirements in detail. The typical post by a hiring party has nowhere near enough detail, or the right detail, for a developer to make a good estimate/quote. A good developer will take the time to make sure both you and he/she knows what is expected and what it will cost.

• Always offer your developer a single point of contact at your company. Too often things fall apart because the dev is getting mixed signals from dealing with multiple people on your end.

• This should go without saying, but: Make sure you have more ways to contact your developer than just email. One sign of a fly-by-night shop is that they lack a phone number. Skype is not the same thing.

• A good web developer includes training with every site build. This both protects the dev (from having unsatisfied clients who got what they paid for, but think they didn't because of user error) and you (from not being able to get the most out of what you just bought).

Hope that helps,

Susan

I use odesk extensively but for tasks and would never trust anybody on one of these sites with a full project. You are guaranteed that your code either was used in another project or will be used in another project. I'm sure there are people who've successfully outsourced whole projects on these sites but from my experience it's not something that would go smoothly.

Some general recommendations : 1 - Give an incredible amount of detail and hints and set conditions - for example if I want a graphic to be done i specify max file size, provide some similar art, etc etc. Don't assume people can read your mind and don't let them make assumptions.

2 - Do not pay upfront. Sites like odesk are there so people can trust each other. If somebody asks for payent upfront it means there is a trust issue. Don't deal with them.

3 - Set very clear measures of what 'task completed' means.

HedgeMage has some great comments.

Like HedgeMage, I swore off all those sites because it was a waste of my time. It attracted low quality from both sides.

Some specifics:

• Hire someone you can communicate with - that can mean things like language, geographic area, culture, etc.
• Don't choose the lowest bidder(s).
• Ask to see work

I will also agree that it is better to find people in other ways, through other channels. Post projects on places where developers visit/likely to see the project. Skip the low quality places like elance, etc.