Developers = Contractors
August 11th, 2008 by KenricIn the online world, we rely on developers to create and build our websites. They are very similar to contractors in the real estate world. In fact, I’d say that they are exactly the same.
In hiring a developer you go through the same steps as you would with a contractor. You show them your project and invite them to submit a bid. You get all sorts of crazy bids and are promised unrealistic completion dates.
I’m in the middle of creating a new ebiz site using developers from Elance. These developers are located in India (where most of the bids come from).
When I first submitted my site for bid, I put a project range from $1,000 to $5,000 and guess what… I got 40 bids from $2,500 to $5,000. Honestly, $5,000 was an unrealistic price for this type of site. It’s like asking for a complete kitchen remodel and putting the budget at $5,000.
I resubmitted the project (with a different name) with a bid range up to $10,000 and guess what, I got bids from $8,000 to $10,000. Many of them were from the same companies! I think it’s safe to say that you don’t want to hire these companies. One of the bids actually said that if I hired them within 3 days that I would get 30% off their price!
One good thing was that a few companies came in at $12,000 to $16,000 even when my budget was set at $5,000. These companies came in around the same price even when my budget was at $10,000. It was these companies that I ended up interviewing and hiring.
We communicate through IM at night almost daily. When it’s 9pm here, its 9am over there. They work through the night and when I wake up I usually have a few emails and new pages to review. Sometimes the language barrier is really bad, even on IM I can’t understand what they mean. One good thing about developing websites is that you can always show the developer an URL and say, “Make it look like this” or “Do what Google does.” The problem is that they don’t understand American culture or have alot of real web surfing experience. You would think they surf the web alot, but in talking to them I can tell that they don’t.
Like contractors, they promise things and don’t deliver on time. Unlike contractors though, they never charge for change orders or design changes. It remains to be seen whether it would have been better to hire a company in the U.S. Although many U.S. companies just manage the project and outsource the grunt work overseas anyway.
We are about a few days away from the beta testing of this new site. I’m pretty sure that there will be many bugs on the site and we will have alot of fixes. Isn’t this the same as a punch list??
Posted in Making Money Online | 4 Comments »
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Unlike contractors, eLance and Guru.com allow clients to leave feedback about developers. In a way, the playing field is a little more level. I think the last thing any developer from eLance would want is someone to leave a review that said “Programmer left in the middle of a job”. They would be doomed.
By Clifford on Aug 12, 2008
I agree with Clifford, using sites like the ones above or like Odesk you can view a person’s track record. Unless you have someone who has used the contractor before, a lot of the time you have no idea what you are going to get. The sites like Angie’s List and Judy’s Book tried to help offer contractor reviews but no one has done a successful job bringing reviewers together to get enough critical mass that it is meaningful (and a go-to source). If someone could figure out how to generate enough reviews and feedback, it would be a great business idea…..
By Kate Roth on Aug 13, 2008
What was the timeline for your project? That can affect pricing drastically. I work closely with some Indian firms and for “express” timing, they charge 50% more per hour , but things are finished in 2-3 weeks instead of 4-6 weeks.
It depends a lot on the scope of your project, but I’ve had positive experiences so far with Indian firms for simple projects.
By Peter on Aug 15, 2008
Thanks for this post. I was wondering how that was going.
By Cynthia on Aug 16, 2008