Feeling swamped by all the things you must do for your website? You are not alone. An eCommerce site requires significant time and effort, and, at some point, you will likely need to get additional help. To do so, obviously you want quality help for the lowest price possible. Here I outline some ways to do so.
Students
A fabulous source of educated, motivated, energetic, and internet-savvy help is available by looking to young folks. They often have great internet and computer skills and are willing to work for relatively low pay.
Start out by looking at your children, nieces and nephews, and neighbor kids who are in middle or high school. There’s a good chance that they would be thrilled to work for you rather than slinging hamburgers. In particular, they can be great for directory submissions. You provide them with your titles and descriptions, get them set up at www.addurl.nu and watch them cut and paste away. I advise offering them an hourly rate plus an incentive of fifty cents per successful directory listing. This incentive will keep them motivated.
Next, do you have a community college or university nearby? If so, college students abound who are willing to work for relatively low wages. Also, there’s probably a good chance that your local college/university has a free listing service for student jobs and internships. In particular, try to find some computer science majors. I once hired a woman to set up an entire site for me. She had a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and was soon to enter graduate school in the same field. I paid her around eight dollars per hour. Later, I hired three college students to set up my LSAT Analysis program. They charged me about a third what I would pay a professional programmer, and, now nearly four years later, I still get e-mails from one of them asking how my program is doing. Granted, for both of these previous examples, at the time I lived in Korea where wages are lower anyhow, but this gets to my next point – outsourcing.
India
There are plenty of brilliant computer programmers in India who will do quality work for a reasonable price. I recently needed my website integrated with Miva Merchant, my shopping cart software. I had no idea how to do this, and when I asked my web host, was quoted $300 plus an extra $40 per month for the service. The $300 was a good price but I didn’t want to pay an extra $40 per month, which is more than I pay for the entire hosting plan itself.
So, I checked out elance.com. I placed an advertisement describing exactly what I wanted and invited a number of providers to place bids. I soon received a bid of $100 from a company in India that employs several computer programmers. I wondered whether the bidder had a clear understanding of what I sought, and thus asked him to send me back a message describing in his own words what it was that I sought. He sent me back a message and he apparently knew exactly what I wanted. Thus, I accepted his bid, and, a few days, later the integration was done to my exact specifications. I paid via the elance’s free escrow service and was thrilled with the experience. (Note: If you want the company’s elance ID, contact me directly.)
Finding quality yet inexpensive help is relatively easy and definitely worth it. Save cash and time by implementing the above suggestions.
by Michael Stone
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