Online Outsourcing

If you haven’t already, register a username for yourself so you can discuss this topic in our Outsourcing Forum.

From one artist to another, I know how satisfying it can be to perfectly justify margins in the most trickiest sidebar. I also know how exciting it is to finally get that perfect shade of color and how inventive it can be to squeeze the world’s most difficult font into the funkiest space. Having spent some time experimenting with these aspects of design and more, I additionally know how time-consuming and downright maddening it can be to do these things without enough know-how.

A task that should take no more than half an hour to complete, for example, could end up taking days or weeks – especially when you’re chasing down a solution on forums submerged in spam, flame wars, re-directing scripts and everything else but the answer you’re looking for.

Fortunately, there’s an easier way to solve design issues, and it’s a way I wish I discovered much earlier.

Outsourcing, Subcontracting, and Hiring It Out

Have you ever wondered how that fruity little friend of yours, who couldn’t code a plain text CSS webpage if his life depended on it, managed to pull off one of the freshest web designs you’ve ever seen? How about your main competitor? Has she got you wondering how the heck she pumps out 10 – 15 ‘fly’ websites a week?

Outsourcing, subcontracting, hiring it out, whatever you want to call it… It’s a designer’s best friend and dirty little secret at the same time. That fruity friend of yours and Ms. Wonder Web outsourced their web design. They outsourced it like there was no tomorrow, in fact, and they’re not going to tell you that they did it.

If you struggle with finding solutions to your design problems, then it’s high time you and outsourcing get acquainted as well. Outsourcing not only solves problems, it solves them cheaply while you go on to do the things that you really want to do.

Scratch the Monster

Outsourcing is hiring someone else to do a job that you’d typically have to do yourself. Outsourcing online is hiring someone to do a job at a fraction of the cost and effort it would take to do the same offline.

With offline outsourcing, you’d have to scour classified ads for prospects, set appointments, travel to meetings, play long-distance phone tag, hire a lawyer, juggle overhead costs, buy equipment, photograph the Loch Ness Monster… (okay, scratch the monster).

With online outsourcing, you only have to deal with three things: an electronic contract, escrow protection and a telecommuting service provider. That’s it! Well, that is if you outsource online the smart way.

The Internet doesn’t free outsourcing from potential problems, and a lot of people make the mistake of trying it without taking into account associated risks. Only you can minimize problems with smart decisions. The smart way of outsourcing integrates accuracy and convenience with industry standards and ethics. And the best part about it all is that you don’t have to find, build, or enforce any of this stuff on your own.

It’s all been prepared for you in some of the most popular online outsourcing services…