Meeting the needs of your business from a distance

Freelance/Consulting Websites

by Mark Shiffer 11/24/2008 9:51:00 AM

 I copied this quick comparison of consulting websites from another blog here. I have used some of this sites in the past, both to obtain work and to distribute work. I copied here for future reference.

  Elance.com Guru.com oDesk.com RentACoder.com
php projects 1831 271 887 425
Technical Writing projects 18 89 42 51
Sales & Marketing projects 302 127 No category 147
Alexa rank (lower is better) 4960 14833 13768 18859
Free option Yes - limited bidding Yes - higher fee on jobs Yes Yes
Fee 6.75% to 8.75% based on volume 10% for free membership level. 5% for premier level. 10% 15% or $3 minimum. Lower rates for direct payments and bonuses.
Premier Membership Fee $9.95/Month. Up to 20 bids (up from 3). Up to 2% fee discount $29.95-$99.95/quarter depending on field for each subject area (profile). 50% off for annual membership None None
Limit on bids 3 for free level/mo. 20 for premier. Fees for additional bids 10 for free level/mo. 100 for premier. Fees for additional bids None None
Dispute Resolution When Escrow service is used When Escrow service is used Hourly jobs only Yes
Escrow service Yes Yes Hourly jobs only Yes
Online tests & certifications Yes No Yes No

 

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Tags:

Graphics | Programming

Amazon's Mechanical Turk

by Mark Shiffer 11/24/2008 8:48:00 AM

I had seen this go up a long time ago and thought it was an interesting concept. I was reading a blog recently that mentioned it again under another context and it reminded me of the service. Amazon's Mechanical Turk is essentially a work-for-hire program for very small units of work, labelled Human Intelligence Tasks or HITS. From the employee side of things it allows for a great deal of flexibility. One can pick up the jobs on the fly that are easy for them do and provide as much variety as one would like to feed their ADD disorder. From an employer side of things, crowd-sourcing mundane tasks that can be split into simple units of work could result in greater throughput. However, my opinion on the matter, having never actually participated in the service, is that the overhead of managing the tasks could outweight any benefit gained via the increased throughput.

 Interesting none-the-less.

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Research | Graphics

Free Stock Photos

by Mark Shiffer 10/10/2008 10:34:00 AM
Ran across this site that may come in handy for filler photos and such when creating web sites. It offers a great number of stock photos. The search engine is a bit slow, but for free stock photos it my be worth it. PicApp is the name.

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Websites | Graphics | Tools

Tutorials for graphic design and programming

by Mark Shiffer 11/30/2007 12:56:00 PM

Found a website that may be helpful: TutsBuzz 

Not sure I will use the programming side much, but the graphics side looks interesting to me. I have yet to dedicate a great deal of time to becoming good at graphics creation/editing, but, in the past, I have found tutorials like this a quick way to get up to speed.

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Programs | Websites | Graphics

For those that are not graphics inclined

by Mark Shiffer 10/26/2007 1:44:00 PM
This site has some good tutorials for Paint Shop to enable you to create decent graphics when you aren't really a graphics person. (i.e., me).

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Programs | Websites | Graphics

About the author

Name of author Mark Shiffer
CEO & CIO of MS Consulting

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