Rentacoder works wonders (or how I outsourced a bit of blog design to India)
I had a simple bit of php/css coding that needed doing on the blog. Usually I just try to stumble through that stuff on my own, but I just didn’t have the time or inclination on this one. Plus, I’d been curious about using sites like Rentacoder, so this seemed like a good excuse. I set up an account, had my PayPal account verfied and submitted a project for bid.
I began getting project bids within about an hour and eventually racked up about a dozen or so bids, ranging from $8 to $50 (I know!). The first coder that responded was the one that I ended up using–devdive (RAC profile here) was super responsive and easy to work with. I ended up paying $25 via PayPal for a few modifications to a stylesheet and a php file. Easily worth the time savings for me.
I understand that the professionals on Rentacoder aren’t limited to coding, either. They’ll write whitepapers, ebooks, etc. Seems like if you need a digital bit of whatever, you can contract it out on Rentacoder (among other sites). I also understand that some folks who are bootstrapping businesses are actually outsourcing all of their software development to sites like this in order to cut down on initial overhead. Excellent idea.
check out Daniel Pink book A Whole New Mind and his take on automation, Asia, and abundancy. You are the first person I know who has explored the option Bren. I’m still muddling my way through a basic understanding of translating thoughts into some semblance of blogspace.
Stay cool!
This is just what I’m looking for so I’m going over there to post a bid now. Thanks for the heads up and the recommendation!
Yeah. Thanks a million for selling out your countrymen for cheap overseas labor. In ten years when software innovation is down the toilet, remember who pulled the handle.
@Bob (not BobG): For starters, $25 for 15 minutes of work is a $100/hour rate–you think that’s cheap?. Also, there are plenty of US-based coders on Rentacoder and similar sites, and I’d be happy to contract with them if they were as responsive and thorough as Devdive. In fact, I believe some of the bids I received were from domestic coders, but I was already underway with Devdive. A fact I have no regrets about.
BTW, who pulled the handle on the toilet, anyway? Me? The people who built Rentacoder? Coders like Devdive who do good work for a resonable price (note that I didn’t go lowball with the $8 coder)? Domestic coders who need to keep up the standard of living in the US?
I’ve used RentACoder in the past, and for certain tasks I can also highly recommend XHTMLized for high-quality HTML/CSS work.
Yes, those domestic coders. You see, when you take away their income, or force them to compete with third world pricing or your average college student looking for beer money, the people that have the potential to be your customers no longer have the funds to spend. So you need to seek a global customer base.
As coders here get paid less, less coders seek to be coders and soon all your innovation happens overseas. Those people will support their own economy first as well, so your trend will lean toward more billionaires named Ackbar than Bill.
So, is Ackbar more likely to buy a product or service from his own countrymen, or you?
It’s amazing how far Bob will go to defend the “free market”–even so far as to make it totally NOT free. Invoking “Bill” is even more incredible to me.
Bob that is a crazy generalisation, you won’t be winning Nobel prizes with your argument any time soon. There is a whole dynamic in offshoring that is very complex, you have taken a very simple argument that isn’t correct. Offshore labor increases the pool of skills that are accessible by businesses. More skills means more businesses and being offshore means that more businesses can get started with lower investment providing better services at a better price for you and me. Do you have any idea what it takes to hire a developer in San Francisco? I doubt there will ever be a day where a programmer in the USA is hungry (they can start their own business using offshore labor if they wish)
I would say that Ackbar is likely to buy a product or service from whom ever provides the best value, just as Duncan did. Best value does not necessarily mean the lowest bidder. It means which offered the best benefits for the money. If that happens to be someone in your country then fair enough. If it happens to be someone in his own country then fair’s fair.
However, this free market is great. As more work gets spread to places like india their software developers get more money and their cost of living rises which means they want more money to maintain their quality of life. Soon the cost benefits will evaporate and they have to compete on quality – I’m assuming people in your country are providing quality services or products with which to compete.
I would say that Rent-a-Blogger also did a great job: … nobody noticed the difference and this post generated a jolly good conversation!
;^)
Oppsie! I wrongly assumed that no organisation called Rent-a-Blogger existed, but I was very wrong! Please replace “rent-a-blogger” by “dial-a-blogger”!
How far do you want to go with that argument, Bob? Do you only shop at local, independently owned stores? If not, why not? Wal*Mart probably isn’t even headquartered in your town.
This is one large planet filled with people, all much alike. If you want to nit-pick at not buying from your own local collective, how far do you want to cut it?
If he’s saving time and money by paying someone overseas to do something, that’s more money to spend in his local economy and into the pockets of his own countrymen.. simple economics.
Try living anywhere apart from North America and see how difficult it is to find local and indigenous produce! Here in Ireland we’re drowning in American companies, products, culture etc…It works both ways you know!
I say you’re looking at short-sighted goals. Offshoring immediately turns around a better value for the business owner, but sells out our technological superiority and eventually our business advantage, in the long run.
Yes, Peter. I shop locally. But if put on the line, I’d rather see my money go to Arkansas where the income tax actually benefits my country instead of overseas, which just drains our funds.
Colin, I’d disagree. People who still understand community don’t sell out their own. Do you think the tiny Chinese markets, or the barrio groceries in NYC compete on price? They do so to support their own. It’s only when you get to the point that money’s all that matters that you are willing to sell out your community to elevate yourself above it.
Oil rich states in the Middle East protect the oil business voraciously, because they’re smart enough to understand that if they no longer dominated the oil market, they’d be up shit creek. It’s too bad America doesn’t see it’s own advantages.
The world makes America what it is because it’s the world’s marketplace. Everone wants to make it here, because it’s where everything happens. This is where the new stuff comes out, this is where the dollars fall. When we’ve sold that out, what will we be? When everyone wants to pimp their wares somewhere else, we’ll be in the position that India’s in now – competing on price trying to grab a foothold in the playmaker states.
Bob, it seems you’ve hit a nerve here. Your arguement is, however, fudamentally flawed.
You see, your claim that the people that don’t agree with your opinion are “looking at short-sighted goals” couldn’t be farther from the truth. To quote another poster, Colin Angus Mackay , “Soon the cost benefits will evaporate and they have to compete on quality “.
Just a couple hundred years ago, your lot in life was determined by the womb you came from; all you had to do is hold on to it. I think we can all agree that alot has change since then. When we all focus on the better product or service, even if it is not from the county that leads the market in consumption or developement, we will eventually have a world where the smart, adaptable human will prosper.
I don’t know about you, but that’s a long-term goal I can live with.
For relatively small, well-defined projects with simple and well-understood specifications, outsourcing and even offshoring can be a smart option.
The dirty little secret of IT, however, is that we don’t do a particularly good job of managing large programming projects when the programmers are right down the hall from us, much less a few hundred or a few thousand miles away.
The jury is very much out on the utility and cost savings of offshoring on a large scale, and if you don’t have bulletproof and highly detailed specifications, forget it.
But for well-defined and/or relatively small tasks, outsourcing/offshoring is often a pretty clear win, and being philosophically opposed to it is a bit like being opposed to the weather or the tides; the ruthless logic of global capitalism dictates that where it’s easy to source equivalent services at a lower cost, that’s where the work will flow to.
Ill have to check this out. I was using ‘getafreelancer’ but was running into too many people low balling beyind belief. I was waisting time going through these proposals and need a more streamlined approach.
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This way i’ll simply stay informed off the latest projects and you’ll have a possibility to trigger email etc by Specific words.
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Dear Sir,
By outsourcing you have effectively took away somebody livelihood at Pacifc Northwest of the United States…
Maybe I can outsource some nuclear missles from North Korea and level on them in India so hard working and talent people in US can earn their livelihood.
By the way I am not an Amercian.
Cheers
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