Of course, not all kind of jobs can be outsourced to freelancers – we do need to review this case by case. However, hiring freelancers bring many benefits to small business owners, especially in term of cost effectiveness.
The main benefit is that you don’t need to “maintain” your employees – with freelancers, contracts are tied to the projects they are doing; you can’t normally do this with full-time staffs.
Many freelancers charge on per-hour basis, while some other charge on per-project basis. Depending on your need and your scale of projects, hiring freelancers – despite they often cost more than regular full-time employees – can help you cut costs on your business’ employee salary expenses post.
Whenever you are ready, you need to address the next question: Where to post your freelance jobs?
Where to look for freelancers?
First thing first – you need to decide where to post your freelance jobs. There are few alternatives, along with the pros and cons:
1. Forums
Post your freelance jobs as a thread in niche forums. For example, if you are outsourcing design jobs, you may want to post on design forums.
Pros: Most forums allow you to post a thread for free.
Cons: “Free” in forums means you are exposed to scams and spams, as well as low-quality “applicants.”
2. Big freelance networks
Big freelance sites, such as Freelancer.com, can help you post your freelance jobs in exchange for a certain amount of listing fee. Typically, such sites use project bidding system, in which freelancers bid for your projects.
Pros: Tons of quality freelancers, rated by a certain rating method – also reviews – to help you assess project bidders.
Cons: Many freelancers bid the lowest just to get your attention and business – it’s rather trivial to decide, whether the low bids constitute quality or not.
3. Job marketplaces
Job marketplaces, such as Indeed.com can help you tap into strong job seeker traffic.
Pros: The ability to tap huge market
Cons: Not generally focused to freelance market, thus limiting your exposure
4. Sites offering job boards
Sites, such as Darren Rowse’s blog, Problogger.net, offer a job board to list your freelance jobs, targeting a certain niche market. In Problogger.net’s case, the targeted freelancers are mainly bloggers and freelance writers.
Pros: Laser-target freelancers.
Cons: Often costly to post a freelance job, and most of the case, the job won’t be listed forever.
5. Small freelance sites
Smaller freelance sites, such as GoFreelanceJobs.com, offer a unique proposition: It targets to small market with different characteristics to freelancers looking for work in bigger sites.
Pros: Target a certain group of freelancers and typically offer an option to make your freelance jobs listed for a lifetime, often for free.
Cons: Somewhat lack of exposure.
The best way is probably to mix-and-match: Post your freelance jobs to a multiple type of sites, and measure the effectiveness to see what works in your case.
Ivan Widjaya
Freelance jobs poster