5 ways to channel freelance force for your startup A lot of the times, the difficulty lies not in finding freelancers but in delegation of the work.
By Alok Arora
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When you are working on the execution of tasks for your new business, you will realise that you don't possess a lot of the skills required to carry things out or maybe to even get started. Moreover, you already are buried in a lot of work.
In fact, a founder does not even need to possess all the skills. Even if you do, it's not recommended that you carry out all the initial tasks yourselves. There are so many things; some of them pretty specific too. You can neither do all these things yourself nor hire someone because it may get expensive or you may not be able to keep them busy all the time.
This is when freelancers come in the picture. In my experience, it's the most efficient way to get things done in the early stages. Not only does it help to keep costs down, if you are able to find good freelancers, the work quality improves manifold.
In the early days, freelancers did everything at LingosMio. Now we have grown to more than 300,000 users and still use freelancers to get a lot of our work done. So, how do you go about the whole process?
Here are a few pointers:
Where to find the freelancers?
There are a number of places. My favorite is freelancer.com. Even Elance is pretty good. You can find freelancers for almost everything in these places from data entry to design to help you with customer support and whatever else you can think of. The talent pool is huge and pretty much from all countries in the world. So if you are targeting the audience in a specific country, you can find the right talent to help you address that audience.
At LingosMio, we have worked with more than 40 freelancers with tasks ranging from translations, designs, apps, and voice recordings. You just have to name it!
Try to establish a relationship and work with the same freelancers
Not only is this quick because it spares you having to go through the whole cycle of negotiation, trust building, NDA signing and others. It significantly lowers costs too. If freelancers know, they will receive more work from you in the future then will definitely quote lower costs. It also means you have someone to call upon if you need something urgent to be attended to.
Some of the freelancers associated with LingosMio are almost like a part of the team now who get work delivered to us in no time.
Divide your work into small projects
A lot of the times, the difficulty lies not in finding freelancers but in delegation of the work. Look at what you want to achieve and divide it into small tasks or projects. It will become way easier to find freelancers who can get this work done for you. Most of the times, the freelancers are extremely quick in understanding the task. Why wouldn't they? After all, they are the experts!
Communicate the task well
Sometimes, you will find that the freelancer is in too much of a hurry to get the project without understanding the task very well. Always take time out to communicate the task properly. You need to avoid people who are in a hurry to take on the project without having had a clear discussion. This is where it usually leads to conflicts.
Work with individuals rather than a group
In my experience, working with individuals has been beneficial. For example with translation tasks, it is much more convenient to work individuals than a group offering translations. You know exactly who will be delivering your work and there is much more of a comfort, particularly when you know you will be getting more work done.
