STOP Getting Ripped Off: Upwork Hiring Secrets! | 5 Tips

Welcome to another edition of Technology Tuesday, and today we're talking about how to avoid getting ripped off on oDesk. So I got a great question from one of my YouTube viewers all the way out of New Zealand, who wrote in to say, "Thanks for the video, mate, very informative. I'd like to commercialize an Android application and I have no idea as to where to start. I live in New Zealand and no one will over here make an app for less than $150 an hour, so oDesk sounds pretty good. Just a question, as a newbie to oDesk, how How do I know that whoever I hire isn't going to take my money and run? Any new entrepreneur who's trying to hire a team starts to worry about whether it's a remote team or somebody physically in your office. And there is a big fear of hiring somebody remote that I can't monitor them, they're not sitting right here in front of me so I can't see what they're doing, and they're going to rip me off and I'm going to pay them and they're going to be gone. So how do you minimize that chance on NoDesk? I have 3 strategies that will help you. Number 1: Look at the track record. So when I first joined oDesk, I thought of it kind of like eBay, where if you're buying something from eBay, you're buying something from a seller, something that you really want. You look at the person's track record on eBay, and the best sellers really care about their track record, right? They want people to give them good ratings. And on oDesk, the same thing happens. After every time a contract is finished, people ask to leave feedback for each other. So the, the contractor leaves feedback for the contractee and vice versa. And so if you really want to reduce your risk, I would look at only hiring contractors who have a really positive track record on oDesk. So they've worked a lot of hours and they have at least 4 out of 5 star feedback from the people that they've worked with in the past. That way you've kind of reduced your risk and you know these people care about their work, they've been here before, it's not their first time here, and they're likely going to give you a good result. Number 2 is start small. I always start projects on oDesk on a small scale and build up, and what it does is It helps you start to work with somebody and see if they can deliver some results for you before investing a huge amount of time and dollars into this person. And it also helps figure out, can you work well with this person or not? Because they may have all the talents and skills in the world, but if you guys are clashing every time and you don't work well together, then it's not going to be a good long-term fit for your company. So what I try to do is, you have this big idea for your app, I try to break it down into chunks and figure out what can you get in 5 hours. So give somebody 5 hours to help you get that first step done, whatever it is, and just hire them for that 5 hours. And I usually end up hiring multiple people to do that 5 hours as a test to see, do they milk me for the full 5 hours, you know, or did they do it sooner? Are they communicating well with me? Do I love the product that they end up creating? Do they go above and beyond and give me something great and not just give me what I asked for? And that's a good little sample test to see if you got the right person before you invest this huge amount of time and money into them. So 2 is start small. Number 3 is no manual hours. You have an option in oDesk when you're hiring somebody on an hourly basis to add manual hours. That means their computer's not being tracked. So whenever somebody logs into oDesk to work for you, they have to log in and say, hey, I'm working for Evan now, and immediately their computer starts being tracked. The oDesk starts taking screenshots of what they're doing, and it tracks their keyboard and mouse movements So if you're really anal and worried that this person's ripping you off, you can go in and see what's happening on their computer, right? Are they actually working for you or are they checking out an episode of Twilight or watching Harry Potter or listening to Kanye, whatever it is. So you can see if they're actually working for you. But then you can turn off manual hours, and what manual hours are is an option for the contractors to put in time for your project without seeing what happened on your computer. So this is usually if they lost connection to the internet or they did work and they forgot to log in, but it's an opportunity potentially for them to rip you off if they're just doing whatever and they say, well, that took me 10 hours to do, but really only took them an hour and you can't see because you haven't tracked what's going on their computer. So as you build trust in a relationship, you can potentially turn that on, but for all new projects, I don't allow manual logging of hours. So in summary, number 1, look at the track record. Number 2, start small. And number 3, no manual hours. If at the end of the day you do all 3 of these things and you still feel like somebody ripped you off, ODesk does have a dispute resolution mechanism where you can report this person to them and they will then try to arbitrate it and try to find a solution. So it's not It's not being completely ripped off. There is this middleman to kind of help you through that process if you do feel like you're being ripped off. But hopefully by following those 3 steps, you won't get ripped off and you'll find the right team to help you build your business. Good luck with the app. When it comes out, let me know. I'd love to see it. Believe. For those of you watching, like the videos? You can support me by clicking on the link in the description. 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