We needed a new website, and the vendor quoted us $35,000 and said it would take six months of work.
Two weeks later, the site was up and running, and we spent a grand total of $500.
How did that happen? How can you do the same thing? How can you get stuff done fast and at a reasonable price?
Of course, getting our site built was slightly more complicated than I just described, but not by much.
In our case, we already had a website. It was on a proprietary platform. We wanted to simplify things by moving to WordPress. We wanted a site we could tweak ourselves. We wanted something that we could control rather than having to call (and pay) the vendor every time we wanted to make a change.
The vendor (and a few others we consulted) saw the move as a big, expensive project. It would designate a project manager and a team. It would develop a project plan. It had milestones, reporting, and wireframes. It was going to be a very big deal.
We were on the verge of signing the contract when we discovered Elance.
How Elance Saved Us Tens of Thousands of Dollars
Elance is a marketplace matching people who need help with experts who can provide help. They have experts in nearly everything. We needed technical help, but the site also offers writers, designers, programmers, and more. There are even lawyers offering document drafting and other legal services right through the site.
I figured we’d try the $500 option before we signed the contract with the website vendor.
Worst-case scenario, we’re out $500, and we go and sign the $35,000 contract.
So what? It’s $500, not the end of the world.
We posted our project on Elance and selected a guy in India. He went to work. He did the job. It worked.
Ka-ching!…$34,500 saved. That’s “like” money in the bank. No, it’s not “like” money in the bank: it’s real money in the bank. I was stunned. I wanted to send the Indian guy another $500 just because I loved him.
The Ways We Use Elance
That was just the beginning for us. We went on to use Elance for dozens of projects.
We’ve used it to:
- Build a child support app for Android,
- Build other apps for iPhone,
- Migrate our sites from one host to another,
- Design graphics for our sites,
- Conduct legal research,
- Edit audio and video,
- Have articles written for our site,
- Tweak our practice management system,
- Build documents in our document assembly system,
- And on and on.
We turn to Elance first now when we need something done that can’t easily be done by an employee of the law firm.
Sometimes we use Elance when we’re too busy to do the work. Sometimes we use it because we don’t know how to do the work ourselves. Mostly we use Elance because it’s cheap and easy, and we get things done.
Right now, we’ve got someone we found on Elance doing a PowerPoint presentation for us. We’ve got someone else from Elance doing a new header for this website.
Learn the Simplest Way to Outsource
You can do it too. You can be up and running immediately. You can run through your to-do list, identify projects you aren’t able to reach, and instantly post them on Elance. Within a few days, you’ll be seeing the fruits of your effort.
Elance isn’t complicated. You can easily master it in a few hours and after a couple of projects.
However, I have made it easier for you. That’ why I put together Outsourcing Projects with Elance. It’s $39, and it’s available now.
Should you buy a copy? Of course you should. Just click here to do it now.
[ While I have you here, I wanted to remind you that you can get the latest articles delivered to your inbox a week before they go up on the web. Just one email per week. Sign up here. ]
I’ll take your $39 and use it for dinner tonight.
I’ll have fish tacos and a craft beer. I’ll bring my wife. If she’s lucky, I’ll bring our 17-year-old daughter.
And I’ll think of you and how you feel that sense of relief knowing that your work is being done by someone else.
I’ll know you’ve got things under control, and you’ll know it too. Buy the book.
