Building and Managing a Virtual Freelance Team on oDesk

A Guest Post by Brad Hamels

Have you recently launched a blog or business website? As the economy continues to face serious challenges and uncertainties with the potential for layoffs looming, it is an excellent idea to create new potential income streams. Ideally, these income streams should be passive so that they can generate income for an extended period of time without much need for maintenance. The saying that the best type of income is passive really is true since cash continues to flow into your account like clockwork. You can continue your day job without interruption and generate extra income each and every day. You’d even be making money while sleeping!

Creating successful passive income streams online, however, is no easy task. It requires hard work, dedication and a real time commitment on your part. If you cannot leave your day job, you may want to consider building and managing a virtual freelance team on the oDesk platform. oDesk is an excellent global freelancing portal that connects businesses with qualified remote workers. As a client, you can create a job posting on oDesk that includes a detailed job description, your desired time frame for job completion and your estimated budget. Freelancers can then place bids on your project and submit their cover letters to you. Once you have selected the freelancer you want to do business with, you can determine whether you want to pay by the hour or on a fixed price basis.

oDesk features some very qualified freelancers who have expertise in such areas as technical writing, creative writing, SEO based writing, programming and graphic design. It is very important, though, that you follow some important tips when building and managing a virtual freelance team on oDesk.

Thoroughly Review Qualifications Before Hiring

oDesk is a great freelancing platform for clients to use because of its transparency. As a client, you can review a host of important information that allows you to make a projection of the quality of work you can expect to receive from prospective freelancers. This includes their scores on oDesk tests and feedback from past clients for completed projects. You also have access to freelancers’ portfolios so that you can get a taste of the quality of their work. It is in your best interest to hire freelancers who have consistently received excellent feedback from past clients.

Hire Freelancers on an Hourly Basis

You may initially think that it would be in your best interest to hire freelancers on a fixed price basis. However, if you truly want quality work, you should opt to hire freelancers on an hourly basis. This requires you to download and use the oDesk Team Application. The best freelancers on oDesk prefer to receive hourly pay since the platform guarantees that hourly contracts are automatically billed to clients’ accounts. This means that an hour worked translates to guaranteed payment. Freelancers cannot enjoy the same level of security with fixed price projects. As a client, you also benefit from hiring freelancers on an hourly basis. With the oDesk Team Application, you can monitor freelancers’ productivity levels and observe snapshots that are taken of their computer screens.

Communication is Key

It is possible that you are managing your business website in the United States while the freelancer you have hired is handling your graphic design work all the way in the United Kingdom. As you can understand, effective communication is so vital in such a scenario. The two of you should be emailing each other on a fairly regular basis to ensure that both of you are on the same page. It would also be an excellent idea to communicate through video chat via Skype.

oDesk is an excellent global freelancing platform you can use to build and manage an entire team of highly qualified contractors. You can continue your day job while your oDesk team does its job of helping to build your blog or business website.

Brad Hamels runs his own online business and is an online instructor for The College City. Brad has the ability to work as an online instructor because he has built an effective virtual freelance team on oDesk that maintains his business website.