FreelancerPro Interview: A Career in Freelance Outsourcing
There are hoards of freelancers that swear against websites that outsource freelance work, but there are just as many contractors that say these sites can yield a successful career.
At 24, Luis Lazo drew upon his experiences completing projects for RentACoder.com and leveraged that into a second career running RACSuccess.com, a mentoring service for coders and other freelancers. Luis has an interesting background and a unique take on freelancing—let’s hear what he has to say about using outsourcing sites.
Tell us about yourself, what you do, and a little on your background. Where did you go to school and for what?
I started using computers about eight years ago reading textbook after textbook of computer programming. Thanks to this knowledge I started working as a freelancer on RentACoder.com having completed more than 150 projects so far. I attended Baker College in Michigan and obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.
You’ve mentioned having some success working on RentACoder.com. How does that work?
Well, RentACoder.com is a freelance marketplace which basically connects freelancers that have technical skills with employers or buyers who need projects done. Whether buyers need a website or a desktop application they have plenty of freelancers to choose from. Everything happens online: the process of hiring, awarding the projects, providing the deliverables, and finalizing project.
Many freelancers are leery about sites like oDesk and elance. What do you have to say to them?
Well, the truth of the matter is that working as a freelancer doesn’t impose any limits. You can work on more than one freelance website at the same time if you want and you will not get in any trouble. Everyone has their own preferences when it comes to what freelance websites they like working on. Frankly speaking, oDesk.com and elance.com are actually very good freelance websites and are good places to find projects simply because they have very nice options such as escrow services, quantity of projects available and various tools. I have heard many good comments about both freelance websites.
In addition to the technical work, you also run RACsuccess.com. How did that get started?
Well, RACsuccess.com started initially with the authorization of Ian Ippolito who is the owner of RentACoder.com as an idea I proposed to him about selling videos on our site with the purpose of teaching people how to take the most of RentACoder.com both as a freelancer and as a buyer. This product appears in the tools page inside RentACoder.com.
After that, I decided to start with a mentoring service on our site and our site became more global expanding to other freelance websites as well not just to Rent A Coder. For instance, before the letters RAC in RACsuccess meant “RentACoder” but now the letters RAC in RACsuccess mean “Running Against Competition” which clearly indicates that we dedicate to help freelancers beat their competition and to help employers successfully hire freelance workers.
You work with mentors a lot—do you have a team that you rely on to provide services for RACSuccess? Why should someone hire RAC instead of finding their own mentor?
We do work with mentors a lot but mentors are not really our representatives or employees. What we do is to hire real successful freelancers and employers to assist our members on our site. We hire these people as independent contractors and they assist our members through the mentor’s area.
It can be easy to get confused when you hear the word mentor but the truth of the matter is that things are simpler than they seem. When you hire a freelancer on a freelance website, you are actually looking for a technical job to be done. When you hire a mentor on our site, what you get is a friend that can help you start a career in freelancing or help you improve your existing freelance business. A mentor doesn’t do any technical job for you, it’s basically a guider that helps you find success as a freelancer on any freelance website or as an independent freelancer.
On our site, mentors can give you advice on any concern or situation you may have and can give you tips on how to be a successful freelancer. Mentors will even write effective proposals for you for the projects that you wish to get on any freelance website.
So, what’s your typical day like?
Wake up, grab a snack, go to my computer, check my email, and look for freelance jobs to apply for. I also like to stay in touch with my online contacts. I know so many people; especially freelancers and I like to communicate with them. Most of my day is basically spent in front of my computer but I also take some breaks in order to do some other things as well.
Finally, what’s your ultimate career goal?
I would like to continue with my education and obtain my Masters Degree and then a Ph.D. in Computer Science. I also want to continue running RACsuccess.com.
some people might have a go for it but still the free lance sites are the last beat fgor myself, any given day… The best deal is to have your own clients
Interesting interview about an interesting career. I have to say that after signing up for GetAFreelancer and Joomlance that the web designer/developer as commodity part of these listings seems counter-productive to raising the standards of quality.
What I’m saying is that clients seem to think that an entire website can be bought for about $250 and the sad thing is, because these bidding-time marketplaces are international, there are people who will win the jobs by bidding down the work. I’m not sure what the client actually gets for $250, but I can’t live on that kind of rate and the time it takes to construct, say a full Joomla! site or even update an existing site is at least 10 times what $250 will buy.
So, I shy away from such sites because my fees are way higher and my sense of client relations and production do not meet the commodity model. This is why outsourcing is upsetting to me.
Well, when it comes to biding on freelance projects on freelance sites, on RACsuccess.com, we help people on different skills needed in order to help people win bids without necessarily making the lowest bid.
By the way, our site is also for independent freelancers which means people that work on their own. We also continually hire more mentors that also work as independent freelancers and wish to share their know-how expertise on how to succeed as a freelancer working on their own outside a freelance website.
I think nobody have to fear the outsourcing websites and I can give 4 reasons:
1. Low Price = Poor quality – Buyers are not dumb enough to take the lowest fee in a bid and expect to find the greatest quality.
2. Low Price buyers are that kind of client you don’t want to have, because they would bargain even if it was not an auction.
3. Good jobs and Poor Jobs – You don’t want to make a clone from myspace or myspace pages, do you? Or a clone from youtube. Or 1000 twitter leads. If you apply to the good jobs and be realistic about you rates I think you will land a job pretty soon.
4. Location independent – India, USA, Bangladesh are all the same, because it will always depends on the buyer and again they are not dumb. So be honest and ethic and all will be fine.
If I want a good site and I don’t have the money I probably bet in the lowest price, but it will not come cheap and this type of client no one wants.
Remember when you place a bid, you a choosing who you want to work with too.
As a buyer I have worked with some outsourcers and the experience tells me the cheap is the worst you can have.
And these sites should be one more source of work, not the only one.
Great comment.
My worry about the low-balling, auction model where clients have no concept of what a website, blog, web application, etc. should cost and should look like is that it brings down the price for all of us.
I already get “laid off” mid job sometimes because somebody’s brother in law took a class in web design and now can finish a site. Or better yet, hire an intern to do a full analysis and design from scratch of a content management system. Contractors are now hiring folks with limited experience because they are cheaper to do sophistocated jobs and leaving the more senior folks scratching their heads — just happened to me twice.
I worked at a firm who had a writer prepare a marketing essay in MS Word, and sent that Word file to India for uploading to their CMS. The task took 2 weeks, which is appalling for a website who wants to retain visitors, but the management saw it as fine because it saved money. The difference in philosophy here is what scares me and the loss of income for me scares me even more.
So, I fight harder at marketing and networking and hope for the best and avoid those commodity sites like the plague.
Finding your own clients is definitely ideal. You don’t have to go through the bidding war process and you have full control over everything. I have found though that sites like elance, odesk, and so on are great for people starting out. They allowed me to build a client base out of nothing, which is helping me to slowly obtain clients on my own now that I have a backing to show potential clients. Nice post!
Very good point, Steve. Sometimes it’s easier to hit the interwebs rather than the pavement when building your portfolio and your client base.
I’ve checked out a few of the crowd sourcing sites and some seemed potentially OK but just not for me. I prefer any work I do to be with someone I can see face to face every once in a while and fortunately there are plenty of clients who like this as well. Then again I work a full time job so I can afford to be picky.
When I occasionally take a peek at one of those “freelance” sites, the words that come to mind are “digital sweatshop”.
I’ve done work through Scriptlance before, but for the most part what I’ve been involved with has been repairing websites that have been developed poorly by others who bid a couple hundred bucks for a project management software, or a user management profile system. I’ve been hired by people who have ended up paying me more to fix the problems with something they bought there, than they paid the person to build it to begin with.
I don’t mind using services like that, but the fact that they get hit with people on both sides of the fence who haven’t got any idea about the cost of something is quite annoying. I’ve seen bidders who bid what something is worth, but at the same time I’ve seen people bid $20 for a MySpace clone or a full CMS. Having to fix sites like this, I’ve found that in one instance the coder pulled entire pages of code from PHPBB, included them in a page and then never used any of the functions or classes in it. WHY?!
But then there are the customers of the site who expect you to create a custom coded Facebook clone, complete with video uploading and conversion, plus Twitter features, top ranked in Google in a week, and generating tons of revenue by tomorrow afternoon with a budget of $11.
For the most part, I’ve moved away from it. I use it once and a while, but we focus more on looking for people to work with, or having them find us directly. That was further pushed after their recent database hack that left everyone’s unencrypted passwords exposed to the world.
I think finding your own clients is the best way to go, but sometimes it sounds easier as it is. Maybe the freelance work sites are a opportunity to fill free time.
I agree. They are digital sweatshops and they exploit talented people for low wages. I tried to use them once and the rate was so low it was shocking. I stay away from sites like that where clamoring for design work is $1 an hour.
The good ones are what you make of them. I did very well on Elance, and I know at least two people who do very well there still.
Is there low-paying work? Yes. There’s also good work, if you look for it and present yourself right for it.
That said, there is one freelance site that is nothing short of a scam factory. A writer there claimed to have written articles I wrote for an Elance client, and offered to sell those articles for $1 each. The client threatened to sue me, until I convinced him the other party was simply lying. The site declined to even respond to inquiries. I finally contacted the other “provider” with a cease and desist notice.
Can you do really well on Elance and similar sites? Absolutely. I have, and have taught other people my techniques. WILL you? It’s possible, but not guaranteed. And it can sometimes be a lot of work.
I stopped working on Elance to pursue my own projects. I’m considering freelancing again, but the niche I want to pursue is probably too narrow for Elance to work well.
That said, an old Elance client contacted me today & wondered if I could do a little work for him. Depending on what he needs, I probably will.
Nothing is all good or all bad. There are some despicable “job boards” out there, but job boards as a whole can be good places to get started, and even good places to build a career. It’s an individual choice, really. And it depends on what you want at a given time. Elance worked great for me previously, but I’m probably moving on to more direct methods now.
I am glad the option is out there to work through job boards. It was very helpful to me when I needed it.
“Well, the truth of the matter is that working as a freelancer doesn’t impose any limits.”
I cannot agree more.
I think Angie covered everything else I was going to say.
What I like about freelance work is that I can work at home so I save a lot like money, time and energy for transportation and at the same time I can still see by baby everyday.