Top 5 How To’s In Hiring Freelance Workers for Small Business

As a small business owner it is impossible to employ all the talent you will need to truly dominate your competition, even the largest corporations in the country outsource work for cost and talent reasons. It is important to understand the two main benefits of outsourcing, one is you are going to get the true expert, someone who knows specifically about what you are trying to do, and two is in most cases it is the most cost effective. Often time’s people only associate cost with the reason for outsourcing and the fact of the matter is for a solid business that is almost never the case, say for example you wanted someone to work on your company’s website and handle some online marketing and you pay that person maybe $35,000 a year. Then when you want to do pay per click advertising and SEO you hire another person at say $45,000 a year, then what happens when you want to start doing email marketing and other types of marketing, most small businesses could never sustain all those salaries but still need those services, that is where outsourcing comes into play.

Another important point to keep in mind is the fact that outsourcing doesn’t always mean to another country, it is about finding the right person for the job at the right price for your business. The only way small business can compete when it comes to online marketing in many cases is if they have better people on it, the larger competitors have more money to throw at it albeit not optimal it raises the costs for small business owners and raises the bar for quality. Now that we have thoroughly educated you about things as a small business owner your likely already know it is time to talk about hiring a freelance worker. There are several things you should keep in mind before trusting just anyone with your marketing plan.

1. Use a reputable source whether that is eLance, Odesk, or Guru make sure wherever you may be posting your job is a reputable place, I would avoid places that your not familiar with or places like Digital Point, even though a lot of people post there, you can find a lot of unsavory people on there at times. Obviously the best source is a referral, another small business owner, friend, or family that had uses someone before and was willing to stand behind them.

2. Check references, you may get someone who doesn’t have a huge portfolio and that’s ok, but you want someone who has at least done some work for people and has results to show you. Talk to at least 2 former jobs and make sure if possible you see the final product.

3. Don’t pay upfront, the most you should is half upfront and the rest when the job is completed to your satisfaction. You should also try and build in an option for a few hours of their time at a later date for tweaks to the final product. Just remember if you give them everything up front best case is they don’t have any incentive to get the job completed on time, worst case is you never hear from them again.

4. Don’t forget to give them a nice testimonial to use if you are happy with their work, and don’t be afraid to correct them or complain, it is best to do this while they still have a chance to fix things, doing it later doesn’t do anyone any good.

5. Use a traceable payment form, the generally accepted form is paypal, if someone wants you to wire cash or use some other payment type that makes you uncomfortable skip it. Now that said we use freelancers that we wire cash to but that is because we have known them a long time and there are other reasons for it, but for most people you will want to avoid it.