So about these Upfront.com freelancers...

Benji49

Benji49

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Feb 6, 2008
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Okay so I am REALLY swamped and my assistant quit to start a coffee shop with her husband and I decided to see if I could offload some work to some freelancers.

Obviously I can't write a job spec worth jack:

I put a bid out to port a website built on wordpress from one theme to another. The theme I want to port to is more mobile-friendly.

Okay, I offer the job to 8 designer, specifying wordpress, wordpress wordpress. I show the website as is and and another website that has the theme load. I spec the content, saying I need some placeholder images here and here, the content ported here and here, etc.

I get ONE answer back from a design firm in India with a response that is sorta professional. They give me a quote for 30 hours work for a 15 page website.

Seems a little high but really I don't care, I'm swamped.

After going back and forth somewhat, they finally tell me that the 30 hours is for PSD mockups only, and they need to more time to actually um... port the site over.

At this point, I have wasted hours of my time dicking around with upfront and they want more information like how to use the layers plugin and stuff like that.

Is this normal? I'm mean, I'm not asking them to build a wordpress site from scratch, just porting over content from theme to another.

I *thought* silly me there would be a TON of designers out there who know wordpress pretty well. WTF am I missing here?
 


do you mean upwork?

do you, maybe, offer not enough money to attract people from parts of the world not named india?
 
I am guessing that you mean upwork. I have found that posting on Tues-Thurs are the best days and if there is a specific country you want the person to be from, you can specify the region. Also, make sure you post it at a time when the people you want to bid are awake. You might want to up your budget amount and then you will get more bids, which you can negotiate on.

Also, not sure how custom you are wanting to go, but there is this: CXWebExperts Profile - Envato Studio
 
Yeah I think he meant Upwork (old Odesk).

I've always had great success finding quality workforce on there. My 3 suggestions:

1) Make sure you write a detailed job descriptions, with links to examples if you can. If it's broad, you're fucked. Offshore guys don't understand broad descriptions but will always act as if they do.

2) Always select the highest price range bracket (EXPERT) when they ask you what type of freelancer you want (I think it goes like this: beginner, intermediate, advanced, expert)

3) In the cover letter part always ask them a very technical question to see if they understand the project. Also ask if they have any suggestions/ideas they'd like to share. This will help you weed out the chronic copy-pasters that didn't really read your whole description and don't really give a fuck about your project and just want to get a maximum amount of jobs.
 
You don't need PSD stuff for web design anymore, especially for projects you just want out quickly. I find it easier to just throw together the site TBH. Farthest I would probably go is quick thumbnail pics with Canva or Balsamiq.

For a website job just list you need a WordPress developer and their first project is creating a website. Then while interviewing just let them know you will need their help on more upcoming projects if they do a good job (not leading them on). I wouldn't bother trying to find a cheap hire who designs well and can code, so if you need design that's going to be a separate hire.

Personally, at the risk of sounding close-minded, I just do not hire any people working in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India through Upwork (or anywhere really). That's the main area where I saw issues, not a racial thing but I think it's the issues of that region (not just me saying this, check how much outsourcing dropped there). That's where I saw people quoting insane hours for simple tasks and other stupid crap. Simply exclude that area and you'll have a much better experience on that site.

If you want to just PM me your budget/pricing or post it in here I can just refer you to someone I know. That's how I really do all my hiring lately, through referral.

Edit: also at cheap prices you're really only going to get a point-and-shoot hire. I wouldn't expect a lot of creative/out of box help here. They're going to be looking for you to tell them what to do. AKA, "I need a site to be designed like this" then to the developer "Build the site to match this design with this theme"
 
You don't need PSD stuff for web design anymore, especially for projects you just want out quickly. I find it easier to just throw together the site TBH. Farthest I would probably go is quick thumbnail pics with Canva or Balsamiq.
Click to expand...

Yea, actually you do need it very much. Just because the trends are going towards minimal looking sites, this doesn't mean that you can code up something, throw some headings, images, text and be done with it. Sure, the days of creating shiny things in Photoshop and then putting it up are gone, but you still need to take UI/UX and content planning into consideration when building your website. Photoshop is slow and actually not good for UI, so recently Sketch came into play. I'm using it and is far better and faster.

I do honestly miss the days of websites looking nice, sites that had time and craft put into, so the user could enjoy it. I'm just sick of the trends today, so boring and dull, lifeless and on top of it all, everyone thinks they can build a website, because there are less graphics to worry about, but they have no fucking idea what whitespace is. Contrast, similarity, repetition, these all already forgotten and sites using templates + ugly fitted in content emerged.

Anyway, OP, you do make a confusion about designer and WP. I'm not sure in which category you posted your job into, but you need an admin or developer, not a designer.
I also stay away from India and Pakistan. East Europe is the way to go, a bit more expensive, but I noticed there is overall better communication and better english speaking folks and the lack of word sir.
 
You would obviously have a more biased opinion here. Also, you're putting a lot of words in my mouth.

edit: for the record too, I actually went to art school for graphic design (dropped out to do web services), so I can fully appreciate design. My whole family is artists actually.
 
Yes sorry I meant Upwork. Another hectic day can't even type straight.

Man I miss my assistant, way too busy since she left.

I don't need it done cheap. I need it done by somebody who can work on their own initiative with a minimum of stupid questions. So I am willing to pay $xxxx for that.

My only stipulation is that it is built with layers pagebuilder for a bunch of technical reasons that I don't want to get into here. That seems what to is screwing up the Indian designer.

What is getting irritating is the difference in time zone. With European guys, I can talk to them in the morning. With India, I find I am waiting a day between responses.

I think I need to take some advice off this thread and repost the job specifying only time zones where I can Skype the designer/admin guy during my office hours.
 
Brandon said:
I am guessing that you mean upwork. I have found that posting on Tues-Thurs are the best days and if there is a specific country you want the person to be from, you can specify the region. Also, make sure you post it at a time when the people you want to bid are awake. You might want to up your budget amount and then you will get more bids, which you can negotiate on.

Also, not sure how custom you are wanting to go, but there is this: CXWebExperts Profile - Envato Studio
Click to expand...


Hummmm, this guy looks good. I will contact him.
 
Thats the nature of freelance sites. You get ridiculously good prices but you get people who cant think for themselves and require micro management. Anyone who doesnt builds a stable of clients and leaves.
 
Brandon said:
I am guessing that you mean upwork. I have found that posting on Tues-Thurs are the best days and if there is a specific country you want the person to be from, you can specify the region. Also, make sure you post it at a time when the people you want to bid are awake. You might want to up your budget amount and then you will get more bids, which you can negotiate on.

Also, not sure how custom you are wanting to go, but there is this: CXWebExperts Profile - Envato Studio
Click to expand...


This. Region matters. I've had terrible luck with even simple tasks for the cheapest handful of people from India and Bangladesh. You can get away with paying $4/hr, but that is pointless when they take 2.5x as long as other workers. Kind of odd, but the best worker I've had yet is from Egypt.
 
You would obviously have a more biased opinion here. Also, you're putting a lot of words in my mouth.

edit: for the record too, I actually went to art school for graphic design (dropped out to do web services), so I can fully appreciate design. My whole family is artists actually.
Click to expand...

I didn't intended that, actually the whole message might have sounded like it's just for you, but I was speaking about it generally + from the clients I got. My usual cases I stumble onto are when clients get back to me with a bought template and filled in content and they wonder why it's not looking good, so I have to explain them that content comes first.

OP, one last advice.
I suppose you bought a theme from Themeforest. They recently introduced Layers category. Here's my thought for page builders - stay away from them, especially if you are changing themes frequently.

Security wise, the code gets bloated a bit and when you switch themes you actually leave features behind, because they are implemented directly into the theme. Wordpress codex says such features should use plugins and not by including important PHP snippets into the theme. Envato does not respect that. In fact, they got banned from attending WordCamp conferences, the entire WP community is against their themes. Sure there are good authors there, but generally all does Visual Composer, Page builder and tons of features are unnecessary code to cover everything and being jack of all trades. Performance and security wise you might have to be careful.

Try to find a decent looking theme and then take a look at code canyon for plugins
Now this all depends on what type of work you have there.
 
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secretagentdad said:
Thats the nature of freelance sites. You get ridiculously good prices but you get people who cant think for themselves and require micro management. Anyone who doesnt builds a stable of clients and leaves.
Click to expand...

This. Save time, look elsewhere - places not oversaturated with ppl looking for work are a good start.
 
I'm agree with @avatar33. While hiring freelancer one must describe job briefly and it is always better to go with prices and person who quotes as project base than hourly base. I know few wordpress developer, PM me if you are still looking to hire one?

Thanks
 
JulianTrueFlynn said:
Personally, at the risk of sounding close-minded, I just do not hire any people working in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India through Upwork (or anywhere really). That's the main area where I saw issues, not a racial thing but I think it's the issues of that region (not just me saying this, check how much outsourcing dropped there). That's where I saw people quoting insane hours for simple tasks and other stupid crap. Simply exclude that area and you'll have a much better experience on that site.
Click to expand...

I use to take this approach. However, lately I've found that if you hire the more experienced guys, there are some decent people in these regions. The key is not hiring beginners that will tell you they can do a job, but actually lack any real skill.
 
music4mic said:
I use to take this approach. However, lately I've found that if you hire the more experienced guys, there are some decent people in these regions. The key is not hiring beginners that will tell you they can do a job, but actually lack any real skill.
Click to expand...

Totally. I talk to a couple people almost daily from the area that are way talented and yea, their price is way higher. Unfortunately even higher price points are saturated with lower quality though. Plus there's not too many areas where outsourcing at that high of a price makes sense.
 
upwork is great for finding people who think theyre looking for data scientists but are looking for a data entry clown like kiopa - but pay like theyre hiring the former.

ez money
 
No red flags went up when they stated they needed to do PSD mockups first? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you just wanted a theme change, had the theme picked out, then for some reason agreed to allow them to do PSD mockups for a new site for you? WTF?

No offence, but sounds like your own fault for not knowing what the hell you're doing.

Of course they're going to try and sell you on a full design package. That's their job. To milk you for as much as they can.
 
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