Guide to hire excellent Freelancer from GAF

I have realized that people face difficulty to hire good freelancer
specially from GetAFreelancer.com

So, i have decided to write quick tutorial to find and work with good programmers in professional manner:

Step 1: Make an account on GAF with company’s name and fill all information properly even if you don’t have company, pretend to have one. Good programmers prefer working with company’s rather then ‘Joe’

Step 2: Always select 5 categories for your project to increase number of potential bidders. Try using featured listing as this ensure programmer that you have money to pay

Step 3: Put project title like ‘Replicate a site’ or ‘quick 7 days work’ etc this create curiosity and more programmers will check your project.

Step 4: In your project, mention clearly about your requirement but if you don’t want to disclose the project information then you should write about the ‘language’ in which you want your project to be done like” I want a project to be done in PHP with MYSQL as database. I will PM the details” this way only eligible programmer will bid and noobs won’t waste your time.

Step 5: Always keep higher budget to attract ‘quality’ programming teams for your big project like software/scripts. Remember quality programmers really well understand the present rates for xyz requirement. Best part of GAF is, if you are from english countries you will get value for money due to currency difference.

Step 6: Analyze the bids carefully. Suppose you have a project whose proposed time you have entered as ’7 days’ and some one is bidding 2-3 days, DO NOT accept there bids, from my personal experience this is just there way to grab your project. If you have some 7 days project in mind please note that it may take upto 15 days to complete after trial and error. So be patient, enter the short dead line but accept bids for longer time.

Step 7: Always have scope for $100 + – (depend on project), suppose bidder a with 197 feedbacks bid for $500 (you mentioned $300 as your budget) then go ahead with it, these are the real programmers with good experience in there respective field.

Step 8: Always look for programmers with:
a) 40+ feed backs (in case of bigger projects) and 15+ if it’s some data entry stuff (smaller project).
b) Minimum 9.7/10 is the rating i look for. If you get some programmer with higher bids buy 10/10 ratings and 40+ feedbacks, then accept him, these are the programmers who really cares about there ratings thus provides quality work.

Step 9: Clear your project description word to word and point to point because this is what they have bid for, if you plan to add addon in existing description, clear this in advance to your programmers that you may have to add some finishing to your software/script. Clear communication is the way to success.

Step 10: By now you should be have a ready programmer for your project, ready to work, next thing is payment.

Always, clear in your project that you will pay like this payment plan (that’s what i do):

a) 10% escrow once the project is given to programmer.
b) Next 20% escrow when programmer show you some demo of the script/software
c) Next 20% escrow when you can use the FULL error free script on programmer’s server.
d) Finally, last 50% escrow and RELEASE after programmer hand over the full bugs free script.

From my experience, most of the programmers will accept above conditions.

Step 11: If you have got your complete project and tested it on your server, complete there payment, but EVEN then DO NOT yet leave your feedback. Remember as we have hired reputed programmers, they are really concerned about there feed backs. So, you should test your script/software for at least 25 days and ask BHW members to BETA test it. This way you will get all possible errors in your script, so your programmer will rectify them as you have to leave feedback yet.

Step 12: If you feel you need to have some addon, then contact the same programmer and offer him addon, he will ask to do it as separate project this way you both can gain more feed backs (reviews) for future projects.

Step 13: Be professional in all your PM’s and never be friendly with your programmer, i have realized that if you get friendly with them then they starting loosing seriousness in your project due to your ‘it’s ok’ attitude.
Talk only about your project and DO NOT get over whelmed with just first presenation. Never share your financial success with them like ‘hey you’ll make me this for 500 bucks and i’ll make 1000′s lifetime’ for some reason this thing made them bit jealous about it and they are not able to concentrate on quality of work.

Step 14: Give reasonable time if needed. Sometimes some programmers face genuine problems related to there friends and family. But if you are getting excuses again and again then warn him in CLEAR words, no friendly tones will work here.

Step 15: Reward him if you really liked his work this way you may get better rates next time in your other project.

Again, communication is the key to success, i had many good/bad/worse experience from GAF but there are some very nice tech people who can grasp your needs and lay them out in better way!

Hope this helps.

‘Money is in the scripts/software, make them once, enjoy profit for ever’