The Online Opportunity for Businesses
Elance and the virtual work world function equally well for clients. Creating and running your own business is at the core of the entrepreneurial spirit. For many, their dream doesn’t lie in the freelancer realm, but rather with building their business as quickly and efficiently as possible. Hiring contract workers to help them do this has proved priceless.
Starting a traditional brick-and-mortar business can entail hiring full-time staff, leasing property and equipment, and/or accruing various other overhead expenses. This alone prevents many from even attempting to start a new venture.
By utilizing online contractors, however, many of these issues simply don’t exist. The ability to lower costs, and therefore have the ability and flexibility to start a new business, has meant that many goods and services are being produced that wouldn’t be otherwise.
What’s the Fuss About?
The advantages of hiring online are numerous. For just a start, look at these:
• The ability to scale up or down rapidly. You can choose to hire contractors on a project-by-project or hourly basis. If you need to pull back, hire fewer, if you want to expand, hire more.
• Experts are available for each job. You now have the entire world to choose from. If you are limited to only working with your in-house staff, you won’t have the same wide range of talent.
• Faster project completion times. Contractors work project to project and usually won’t have more than a few going at any one time. You get more of their time and attention. And if they can’t get the project completed by the time you need it, you can hire someone else for that job.
• Robust information on contractors’ prior work experience. With the feedback and ratings system, the online profile and portfolio, and the ability to communicate with your potential contractor, you have in-depth tools from which to hire.
• 24/7, 365-day-a-week access to talent.
• Often, contractors are less expensive to hire than full-time or onsite contractors, and extra benefits like health insurance and worker’s compensation are eliminated. However, the key is to focus on the quality of the hire, not the expense.
 |
BEST PRACTICES |
Remember that despite the advantages of online hiring, it still takes time to make sensible choices when it comes down to awarding the job. Not all contractors on Elance will be the best choice for you. It’s up to you to review the data available and make sound decisions.
The Story of Matthew Stibbe
To give you an idea of the kind of potential the online work world has for entrepreneurs, read the story of Matthew Stibbe, founder of London-based TurbineHQ.com.
In his own words:
“I started TurbineHQ.com to simplify business paperwork. The idea is that companies sign up and their employees can do routine admin expenses claims, purchase requests, appraisals and time-off requests online. Nobody loves bureaucracy, but every business has to deal with this stuff and we’re making it easier and faster.
The whole thing, including the advertising, graphic design, marketing site and application, was done using Elance.com talent. It has let me build a very slick, professional application quickly and for a lot less money than I would have had to spend to do it the old-fashioned way. (I know because I used to run a 70+-person software company!) It’s not just about saving money. Elance has helped me tap a much larger talent pool than I could reach in my local area. I’ve got people working for me in Ukraine, Vietnam, Argentina, and Romania.
Another more subtle benefit is that keeping overhead low has allowed me to build and launch the application while continuing to build my other business. Elance turns starting a new business into an ‘and’ situation rather than an ‘either/or’ situation. That’s really quite magical. To put it another way, no Elance, no Turbine.”
Matthew has gone on to hire out over 90 projects on Elance, has spent in excess of $50,000 on Elance freelancers, and has an ongoing project count of about a dozen.