By Robin Macrae
Can a professional website be created by the ultra low cost freelancers sourced in
one of the many freelance marketplace sites?
Why not find out first hand?
That’s the task that Guy Gentil, a WordPress freelancer recently arrived in Toronto, set out for himself. Have a site built with a commercial theme, a custom logo and original content. Use offshore freelancers with whom he would communicate by email, web conference and so on. Limit the budget for the various elements to the rock-bottom prices typically advertised—logos designed, themes implemented and content written—all for budget in the low triple digits.
Ridiculous?
Wouldn’t it be an interesting experiment to find out and to use the occasion of WordCamp Toronto to unveil the site created?
Hmmm, let’s see, what shall the site be about? Ah yes, the site will document it’s own process of creation. Think of a baby keeping a journal in the womb and then publishing it upon its birth.
Next, pick a marketplace. It has to be one of the “micro” service ones—Fiverr.com, Fourerr.com, Geniuzz.com, Gigbucks.com, IMGiGz.com, Mechanical Turk and Microworkers.com—to name a few in alpha order (see a larger list in Top 20+ Micro Freelance Marketplaces and Why You Should Use Them | JobMob.)
Guy has years of experience managing projects in which WordPress has been a central component. His first experience with WordPress was in one with 300K pages and 1M viewers/month. Then he did a stint with a digital agency dedicated to WordPress. No stranger to WordCamps, he has attended ones in Paris, Sophia (Bulgaria) and Nantes. Check out his LinkedIn profile.
He plans on going through the various stages and components of the build and, in the process, the things that are unique to outsourcing work in this way and how he addressed them. He will covering some of the technical questions such as the sufficiency and quality of the site’s security.
In addition to the nuts and bolts in the creation of the site, Guy believes that there are some important issues to canvass that go beyond the project itself. For example, he will discuss the context of outsourcing work of this kind. Is this aspect of globalization a good thing or does it have a darker side of which we should be aware? He intends to touch upon another important aspect—what is the impact on our own market for site design and development services. Is the client of a site built with outsourced services a business or organization that would use local services but for this lower cost option? In other words, is this real competition?
In the presentation’s finale, he’s going to reveal the micro marketplace he used and the actual prices he paid. A bit of suspense to enliven his talk.
This project and Guy’s presentation on it will be an interesting opportunity to explore some important questions and ideas from a novel point of view for the WordPress community as well as test the lower limits of extreme WordPress site building.
Guy’s session is Cheap Outsourced Site Building | WCTO 2017 (speaker profile) on Sunday, 2017-10-01, at 3:30.
Robin is a WordCamp Toronto 2017 speaker, organiser and author.
@Robin_Macrae
Be sure you have your ticket to WordCamp Toronto #WCTO. Join in the fun and discovery of growing your business with WordPress.
Looking forward to your presentation and meeting you. As someone who’s been outsourcing for almost 10 years I’ve found it’s truly a skill. I would never outsource an entire project or get an offshore freelancer to work on a clients websites but for my own personal affiliate websites it’s saved me hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars. IMO, I don’t fear offshore developers as competition at all. They’re are plenty of cons to deal with when outsourcing such as time difference, TRUST, language barriers, work ethic and quality of work.
Hi Dan,
I agree with you : there are pros & cons, and depending on the project it will or will not be worth it.
Unfortunately, I can’t say too much, otherwiseI would spoil my talk 😉
Looking froward to meeting you too.
Guy