Process of awarding job in Elance

I hope the readers of my earlier post would have already signed up with Elance.

If not, just sign up now from the banner below. Believe me, it is free and simple.





I had opportunity to work with a buyer once and we had chances to get together in number of projects. It was a beginning to a long term relation and mutually beneficial business growth. He particularly mentioned in my feedback "Santosh just keeps raising the bar as far as what to expect. We love working with him. Building the right team local or remote is always key to project success. Remote management with the wrong team can be a huge hindrance. With Santosh he brings personal commitment that is rare to find and yet this gives an unwavering confidence in knowing we can work remotely and be successful (by working with him). Why trust your projects to chance - we whole heartedly recommend Santosh to you!"

Privacy of buyers in Elance are strictly guarded. Providers need to ask for any contact info to buyers directly in case they need it during contract signing. However Elance encourages providers to upload a "Statement of Work"(SOW) as soon as the work is awarded to them.

This blog post is about job award process based on the best practices suggested by Elance. More details can be found in Elance and it's blogs. However my intention is to give you a general idea at current.

Step 1 : Post the project.

Providers will bid to your post and you can even open up private communication with them to understand more regarding the project execution or answer/discuss queries. The project bidding period can be decided by the buyer though there is an upper cap to it.

Step 2  : Select a provider and award the project

Once you have decided on a provider, you can award the project to him. This is merely agreeing that you have short listed this provider to work with and now we are looking forward for signing a formal job contract and decide the deliverable and bench marks. The provider/buyer at this stage can upload SOW and related documents and clearly lay down the terms of deliverable or key assumptions.

Step 3 - Deliverable and bench marks

The clearer the terms you have with the provider, the more successful the project will be.
Here are some tips:


a) Check for Elance guidelines from it;s help and blogs before you sign/agree a contract.

b) Read some experiences from search engines.

c) Check out some good books.  I recommend that you read and consider the points in "A Detailed Look at Software Contracts and Licenses & How to Change Them to Fit Your Needs (Paperback)" .


 
Happy buying !! will be back for more tips about Escrow funding and benchmark in my forth coming blogs.

Do keep coming back for more and comment on the posts, it will help me improve and encourage my posts. Also subscribe to my feeds.