oDesk or Other Outsourcing Company Recommendations

**Chasers11** · 03-01-2011 10:18 PM

Hey guys,

I'm considering outsourcing some of my online marketing (SEO, AdWords, etc.). Have any of you used oDesk contractors for online marketing? If so, how was your experience?

If you have used any other online outsourcing companies for online marketing, I'd love to hear your feedback for them as well. Thanks!

**Spliff** · 03-02-2011 12:50 PM

oDesk is a mixed bag. I've had really good experiences, to absolutely horrible. Even if you do your homework, and the contractor has great ratings, you still have the potential to get burned.

I find Elance has higher quality contractors, but they also usually cost more. Depends on what you want. For big projects, I would go with Elance. With tedious work such as managing PPC accounts and SEO, I would probably go with oDesk.

**rogercbryan** · 03-02-2011 03:51 PM

I've worked with over 100 people from oDesk and I've only had about 10 good ones. Three of which work full time for me now. You have to be real careful because many of them are flaky. I would not turn over my PPC Account to someone from oDesk. SEO depending on what you are trying to do you may be able to find people on oDesk. The key is to have very detailed instructions for any outsourcer. If you are expecting to find someone for $2 an hour and just tell them "hey do SEO for me" you'll get what you pay for.

What is your monthly budget for SEO?

**cegurube** · 03-02-2011 04:56 PM

PM sent!

**Spliff** · 03-02-2011 05:27 PM

Originally Posted by rogercbryan

I would not turn over my PPC Account to someone from oDesk.

Lol, good snag...I'm not sure why I even wrote that but I completely agree.

With SEO, you also have to be careful that you don't get some black hatter that gets your domain sandboxed with Google or even Yahoo/Bing.

**Chasers11** · 03-03-2011 04:42 PM

Thanks for the responses! I definitely will not be using oDesk for AdWords. I'm thinking though that I may find someone to write an article for article submission for me and then continue to use their services for that purpose if his or her work is good. I'm planning on interviewing multiple people to see if they really are what they say they are on their profile.

rogercbryan, currently my budget is limited to around $750-1000 for SEO monthly. Do you or anyone else have any recommendations for SEO companies that are within my budget?

**rogercbryan** · 03-04-2011 10:28 AM

Give me a call 1-888-RCBRYAN (888-722-7926) or you can Google Business Consulting and my site will be somewhere on the 1st Page. With your budget you can do a decent amount of SEO. I'd like to talk to you to see if we can work together.

Roger

**Capitalist_Pig** · 03-05-2011 09:54 PM

I'm using oDesk right now for a couple of jobs.

The first is just basic backlinking for traffic and SEO. The guy is in Karachi, Pakistan, and asked $2.50 / hour - I employ him 10 or 20 hours per week, depending on my budget. He does a good job for the price - his comments are rather spammy, but they get the job done. It's obvious they're from a person, just not someone who speaks fluent English. Lately, I've been working on a wallpapers site, and gave him direction to post on whatever language sites he felt comfortable - he's been posting on sites in Arabic and Urdu, which has resulted in lots of traffic from Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. That traffic does very poorly with text Adsense ads, but does decently with image ads - so I installed a script to selectively display image-only ads to visitors from the Mid-East (except Iraq/Afghanistan), and have had great results.

The second task is development for a Wordpress plugin. That one isn't going nearly as well, as communciation has been difficult. The deadline for completion has passed, and no word from the developer - he asked questions well into the project that lead me to believe he not only hadn't yet started work, but didn't bother to read the description of the job posting. He interviewed extremely well, too, but that's how it goes.

My moral: use hourly postings, even if you think it might cost you a little more money. The added visibility of the screenshots in the Work Diary makes it more than worth it.

**pudgeology** · 10-24-2011 05:24 AM

Personally, I prefer Odesk! I have been in odesk for quite some time now and my employers are usually great but I have had my shares of bad luck.
However, if I could just share a small contribution for the employers who are thinking of doing outsourcing that you should make sure that everyone's accountable. All work should be tracked and reviewed for optimization including the team leader or the employer. Make sure you’re just as accountable as everyone else or this will affect company culture. By this, you will definitely gain your staff's respect.

**bluestellar** · 10-26-2011 07:48 PM

You can visit MyGoldenRolodex to see what clients has to say with that particular service. They have their reviews and recommendations on.

**HYVAssistant** · 10-29-2011 04:32 PM

Here is how to pick the best developers on sites like Elance, Odesk et al:

1) Look for completed jobs similar to yours
2) Review the feedback left for providers who did the jobs and choose those whose feedback you love the most
3) Once you have created this first list, look through the portfolios of all the providers to see if that are done other similar jobs and take note of the feedback left as well. (<<<--- This way you are screening to ensure that it was not a one-time thing, that they do have mad skills doing the work you need them to do)
4) Create a more refined list once done with step 3 above
3) Post your job onto Elance as a private job
4) Invite all the providers from step 4 to apply for your job

This way you will have done your screening before hand and you won't be bombarded with so many time wasting requests to do your job. When you select the best person for the job in the first place management becomes a lot easier (<<<--- it never becomes hands off or automatic either)