Let’s talk a bit about newcomers: young, fresh university graduates in India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Russia, all over the world, people who have never had a job or worked for an employer online or offline.

There are a lot of young people, and adults as well, joining freelance websites with no job history or sample work, with graduation photos as profile pictures. If you’re going to work with them and accept their cheap prices, try to drop the role of employer and instead act more like a mentor. If you guide them, both of you will have greater success.

With online outsourcing, unless you only hire people in your country/time zone, you are going to have to work with people in different time zones. To some this might make them uncomfortable but once you get used to it, it is not too bad.

In New Zealand, I know that in the Philippines everyone is going to be starting their day during my lunch time so it gives me time in the morning to prepare work that I can pass it on in the afternoon. While their workday spills over into my evening, I can work with them at home once I get home from the office, if need be.

That’s one example of how conflicting time zones can work. India comes online in the early evening and, is still online in my early morning. I can give them work at night and check it the following morning, this is another example of making the time difference work.

If you hire one or more people on an hourly basis you would be surprised how willing people are to work through their night and sleep through their day if you prefer them to be available during your working hours. This is easily organized and is common practice.

When working on most projects, time difference isn’t much of a problem. All you need do is to work out the best times to communicate and this can be done through the private message board of the freelance website you work on. You might only find that you need to communicate every two or three days depending on how well the project is understood by the freelancer.

I have only mentioned India and the Philippines so far. Countries like Venezuela, Russia, Poland and other European countries are online when I am online during the day so there is no shortage of help when it is needed.

Once, a freelancer misrepresented herself to me for a writing project. She had a US profile, a great cover letter, and our interview went well. Despite this all, what I got back was crap. It appears she had outsourced it to someone who had no real grasp of the English language. I shut down the project in disgust.

Now this was rare for me, but I wasn’t willing to get in a conversation about it, I had waited a week and I was busy at the time, so I made a two-minute video pointing out the errors. After sending this video to the freelancer, I never heard a word back, my money was refunded, and I moved on.

So, what about genuine credentials? On freelance websites, freelancers post their profiles and list their education, specifying whether they have a diploma or a doctorate in a field of work. Ask yourself, what sort of credentials do you need in a freelancer?

If you want to hire someone who has a law degree, for example, then you might start off by looking for someone who says they have a law degree and has done several projects like yours and received 5-star reviews. That is proof that they are qualified.

Online Freelancers are more than just a bunch of qualifications. Have a look at our blog post “7 Things to Help You Understand the Online Freelancer“.

Most freelance websites have a place you can search for freelancers and invite them to your project, so take advantage of this service. In your searches, you will find people who work in the area you seek and have had many satisfied customers. Be careful about hiring outside of your country for certain projects, though.

Let’s say you are hiring a lawyer to write you some contracts and you get a great offer from a man that has studied law in Singapore, but you live in New Zealand.

Like me, you would have to get a local lawyer to look them over before you could use them safely.

We have a book that covers contracts “Using Contracts when Outsourcing to Online Freelancers.”

Freelance websites give you the evidence you seek. Maybe the more experienced people are more expensive, but they often have lots of good reviews. Don’t be intimidated by people that have hourly rates of $120. I have had them bid on $30 jobs that I know will take them at least 3 or 4 hours and they perform just as well as people with hourly rates of $12.

You must realise you have the one thing freelancers need: money. If your budget is $30, all they need to know is the task and they will do it, simply because no one else at that time is offering them an alternative. If freelancers were sitting there while a dozen different employers were placing bids on their time, it would be a different story.

As you sort through the bids you have received there will be one that speaks to you; it will feel right. Once you’ve done your due diligence, checked out the freelancer’s details and made sure they fit, reply in a professional manner.

Once you provide the rest of the guidelines for the job and have some discussion of the expectations, the freelancer can begin the job, it really is as easy as that.

Start looking at your budget and the range of bids you have received. If you have listed a $30 budget, the chances are all the bids will be $30, but at least one will be $300 dollars – insane right? Maybe not. Some copywriters charge huge fees but the results they get are huge in comparison, so you may want to consider that. It’s another learning curve stepping into the world of copywriting but if you have the budget, go for it.

Conversely, a $5 bid may seem weird but then, this person may be willing to work for almost free if they get a good review. The calibre of this applicant may be surprisingly good, or they could be a dud. If you do hire this applicant to do the work and the return is great, you may want to pay the original budget just to say thank you and make it worthwhile to the provider.