Have you ever hired freelancers? I have and continue to. The current economic mess forced many people including myself to find qualified help but at a lower cost.

I had previously hired third party services but on relatively larger projects requiring formal documentation, signing of agreements, lawyers and acccountants involved and the works. But I had not ventured the way of freelance work for small projects requiring competent help but only for a few hours to a few days.

In early 2009, I started looking for highly skilled help for a very small project. I wasn't sure if anyone with that kind of skill level would be willing to work on such a small project. But then I thought, what do I have to loose so  I finally placed my requirements at an online marketplace for freelance work. To my surprise, quite a few people bid on the project and the job got done at a lower than anticapated cost.

Emboldened, I started farming out more work, even stuff that I normally do myself. This frees me time that I use to focus on other more productive tasks. Now I tell everybody that for small projects, use free lancers.

So who are these freelancers?

Freelancers are professionals who work for themselves rather than in a corporate setup. Many have been in corporate setups but have chosen to be independent contractors while others are still in a corporate setup but do freelance work on the side.

What kind of work they are good for?

While you can find freelance professionals for pretty much everything, local and remote, here are some examples:

• Virtual assistants
• Flash developers
• SEO – Search Engine Optimization work
• Article writers
• Blog creators
• Craigslist posters
• Copywriters
• Ghost book writers
• Programming help for small projects
• Joomla designers
• PHP programmers
• Drupal experts
• Wordpress developers
• Software development
• Web designers

I even found a local auto mechanic who makes house calls.

You want something done for $50? Go for it. No project is too small for freelance work.

The key advantages of hiring freelancers are:

Cost:

Freelance professionals are spread all over the world and if your work can be done remotely, you can get a really good deal. Previously only large companies could move factories overseas and take advantage of lower labor costs. Now you and I can also dip into this vast pool of skilled professionals.

No direct and indirect employment costs:

You don't have to go through the hassle of advertising, interviewing, traning and all else that entails with regular employees. If you are not satisfied with one freelancer's work, next time use a different one. Their ratings are online for everyone to see and it is in the interest of both parties to work through issues and get speedy resolutions.

Availability of a broad skill set:

If you are living in a large city, then this is usually not such a challenge but for small businesses located in remote areas or smaller cities, it is not always easy to find workers with a skill set that you desire. These global freelance sites come to the rescue.

Are there any challenges? Yes. Here are the major ones:

• Language – When you are dealing with professionals for whom English is a second or third language, communication becomes a bit tricky. Things that you may take for granted as 'understood or implied' are not. You have to explain in a bit more detailed manner.
• Time zones: You may find an able professional in a country that is 12 to 14 hours ahead of you and that means when he is up and about, you are sleeping. So you have to make adjustments in your schedule to accomodate the time conflicts.
• Speed: In my opinion, it generally takes a little bit longer to get things done compared to an in-house employee. The key culprit here is the different time zones. Also, at times, the freelancer is being pressured by another client who has a more pressing need so he may delay your work but a day or so.

I am going to place links below of online services that help you find freelancers so bookmark this page. As I get familiar with other similar services, I will add them to this page. Good luck!
 

Freelance Platforms

FreeLance service	Provider's Website
ScriptLance Advantage You

You would think it should be pretty simple but those who have ever dabbled in writing code know that it is never that simple. Something always misbehaves. Hoping and praying these issues get resolved so I can get on with other things.

Have you ever outsourced some work? I have and I can't tell you how cost effective it is. You may think you are a small company or self employed and outsourcing is for large companies. Not true.

Say you want a new website built but are too busy with other projects. For $100 to $500,  you can get a pretty sophisticated website or blog built in a matter of days.

Need some graphics work done like a company logo or animated banner Ads. How about a specific software built for you or modified. Sub-contract it.

Sub-contracting through a service like oDesk has it's advantages. You can search all over the internet or locally and waste a lot of time. Or you can find a bunch of them in one place and let them bid on your project. When multiple parties compete, you get a better price. You can also read reviews about the provider from other people who have used their services.

I use sub-contractors frequently – look into it. You'll be glad you did.

The Dallas Arboretum's website is also very colorful.

If you are too busy to visit or too far, watching pictures can provide some joy.

Let's look at the methodology first:

1. We created a Twitter Account fourthandinches.

2. For filtered following, we opened an account with TweetSpinner . 
   
   
3. We keyed in the names of all NFL teams, key players, coaches, positions, events and terms in TweetSpinner.Then set TweetSpinner to follow anyone who tweeted about those keywords. We chose TweetSpinner as it gives you valuable statistics about what percentage of people follow you back if you follow them based on the selected keywords.

4. We sub-divided people by NFL teams. If you tweeted about the Dallas Cowboys, we considered you a Cowboys fan. If your tweets were about the Colts, then you were a Colts fan.

5. On Twitter, when you follow someone, many people will follow you back. Some out of courtesy, while others see you having similar interests as them and think it's a good idea to follow you back. The possibilities of an interesting conversation exist due to the commonality of interest – in this case football, favorite team or players and so on.

6. To retain our followers, we decided to keep them entertained by tweeting them current news and information about their favorite team and players. To do this, we created a micro news agency as explained in the book Long John Twitter. The football related information was collected and then tweeted through the Twitter Account fourthandinches to the followers. 

For seven months, we followed people as above and kept feeding them football related information. We started just before training camp and ended at the Super Bowl. The results were unexpected. None of the team fans broke a 10% follow back. The Jacksonville Jaguars came out tops at 9.9%, the Indianapolis Colts were the worst at 4.7%.

Result: Football fans don't make good followers on Twitter.

Some of the resources already available are:

• Tutorials about various sections and functions of DirectMatches

• Video Tutorials about specific uses

• Webinars

• Write up on How DirectMatches makes you money
  

If for some reason you have not joined DirectMatches, it would make sense to join first. Click Here to join.

So feel free to ask questions. I will try my best to help you out.

Well Twitter didn't like that and seems to have succeeded in blocking these two popular services from bulk unfollowing. So what do you do now. Our preference is using services like TweetSpinner. While not free, they do allow you to unfollow in an automated fashion on a regularly scheduled basis. They don't mass unfollow in one stroke but do so a few at a time all day long. This keeps Twitter at bay and also helps you grow your account. In addition to the bulk unfollow function, TweetSpinner also provides filtered following, smart tweets, scheduled tweets, rotating profiles and automated DirectMessages. Well worth the nominal monthly fee.

If you want to start with the least out of pocket expense, then the GoDaddy package is great as you pay only three months in advance. But 1&1 Hosting is running a special offering Six months at half price and you pay only six months at a time. Your out of pocket expense is $4.99 set up + $20.94 = $25.93 for six months on the Home plan.  That is an incredible deal. Besides, that includes two Free domains which generally run from $10 to $15. If for some reason you don't like it, you can cancel within 90 days and get your prorated money back. Simply put, an incredible deal with no risk. They are also offering $75 in advertising vouchers from Google, Yahoo and CitySearch. Better sign up today before it's gone.

Notes: comparison of web hosting companies:

1. IXWebhosting provides dedicated IP addresses. That is important to some people. They provide 2 dedicated IPs for the Expert, 3 for Business Plus and 15 for Unlimited Pro plan.
2. Why is money back guarantee important? Because if for whatever reason you are not satisfied, you can recover your investment and start afresh with a new hosting company. For example, if you sign up and after setting up your website, you find your website is running very slow. That means that the host is serving too many websites on too little resources. Time to get your money back and move on. Most provide money back within the first 30 days.
3. Set up is Free on all the above plans.
4. They all offer email services so we have not included that in the comparison table.
5. They all provide web site statistics, 24/7 telephone, chat and email support.
6. They all provide some kind of site building software for those that are not too technical.
7. Disclaimer: Our company is affiliated with all the above hosting companies and no matter which of the above links you use to sign up, our company will be paid a commission. The reason we did this comparison of web hosting companies was to make it easier for you to compare the various plans from various hosting companies. We hope we have been of help.
8. We intend to keep this comparison updated at least once a month as more and more people are setting up web sites and it is always helpful to compare the latest web hosting deals.

As the book ‘Long John Twitter’ explains, Twitter is a great tool for initiating and maintaining relationships, generating leads and traffic but at the end of the day, many people would like to see it generate some good old hard cash. The webinar will show you how to.

Sign up at http://bit.ly/ayjEp