On Demand Platforms for Outsourcing

Have you considered using on demand platforms for outsourcing?

If you’ve been reading the paper at – all any of the business sections – you know that we are now in a gig economy. What that means is that instead of working for someone else more-and-more people are independent workers and they work on their own. Some of those folks want to do that offline and locally. Some folks want to do that online and that’s where on demand platforms come from. There are places for what was traditionally known as freelancers now being called independent workers. I call them teammates who help business owners run their businesses.

On Demand Platforms

Fiverr

In this post, I share tips about Fiverr and Upwork. In the next post, I discuss UpCounsel.

Two of the most popular on demand platforms are Fiverr and Upwork. Fiverr is unique because at the time that it launched in 2009 every single service on that platform cost just $5. It had so much predictability. You could buy something and you knew it was going to be $5, $10 or $15 for services – like getting blog images done or maybe a Facebook cover.

You could have someone help you with your social media. If you have a podcast there’s all kinds of folks on Fiverr who could help you edit that podcast. They could create an intro or an outro and edit it to take out all the ums, buts and mistakes.

You can find all kinds of teammates on Fiverr to help you do all kinds of work and so that’s what’s an on-demand platform is. It’s a place for you to find your teammate or a freelancer to help you in your business.

Fiverr.com is a place where you can go and pay at a minimum $5 to hire somebody to do a whole variety of different tasks. Many of the workers charge more particularly if you want more extensive services or you want a faster turnaround. You can look on Fiverr and identify people who are top rated, look at examples of their work and see comments from people who have used them.

A good example of a project is a new Facebook cover. Changing your Facebook cover by the season, by holiday, by promotion is a good way to keep your audience engaged with you.

You can get that done on Fiverr, but you don’t want to just say, “Hey I need a new cover” because that’s a very popular gig. Everyone will want to do that. You want to sit down on Fiverr and look for a visual graphics. You’re going to search for Facebook and then you’re going to search for Facebook covers. What I like to do is just casually skim the page looking at all the different visuals.

You’re looking for somebody who excites you because either you like the way they look and you like the image they put in their profile picture. Those kinds of informal attractions are really important and so that’s how I start narrowing down the list. When I get to 10 I’m looking for what they are offering, how much they are offering it for and how experienced they are on the platform. When I get a good list of maybe five to 10 that’s when I put up a job posting, but I invite them privately.

Upwork

Upwork is interesting because as of last year Upwork was Elance, which was one of the on demand platforms with a variety of freelances, and oDesk. oDesk had a focus on technology and web development, so they got married and their baby, if you will, is Upwork. It’s an on-demand platform that blends technology and creative work. In fact you can probably find someone on Upwork to do just about anything that you needed. (Pat’s note: I’ve used them to record webinars, do transcripts, assist with a shopping cart, lay out a book, or ghostwrite a book.)

Upwork is a place where you can go to hire somebody to do a project for you or if you want to do projects for others you can place your qualifications on Upwork and then attract people to you.

Dina Eisenberg shared more of her wisdom and outsourcing experience in a podcast available on Legalnursepodcast.com. Check it out on the site – it is episode 12.