New paradigm of Business
by Robyn Logan
IT Strategist
ICA
I had an amazing experience that I thought I’d share as it is an example of a “new paradigm” of business.
ICA is redesigning it’s website and as those of you who have been through this process know, it can be incredibly time consuming and expensive - well not any more!
I had heard about this site called rentacoder http://www.rentacoder.com and I decided to give it a try. It is an amazing place - it is basically an ebay style system for web designers, programmers, e-marketers, copy writers, graphic designers, even online games producers.
Anyway, the process is that you post a project (ours was the redesign of our website) then people from all over the world bid on it. You then select a bidder and deposit the funds for the project into an escrow account to be held by Rentacoder until the job is done and you are 100% satisfied with the outcome.
Obviously the attraction is that you can get jobs a **lot** cheaper with the most competitive bids coming from programmers in India and Romania etc. (Actually there are also quite a few 10 - 14yr old boys from the States bidding)
So - I posted my job, finished the brief and finally selected a bidder from Romania last night at 11pm. Less than 30 seconds after advising the bidder (Diana) she had the job, she was Instant Messaging me via Yahoo messenger. We then had an incredibly speedy interaction to nail down the deliverables, agree on the price etc. Diane told me she would start work straight away and have something for me in 2 days. 2 days!!! Normally, the whole brief negotiation can take 1- 2 weeks, then you are looking at another 2 weeks before you see anything. Plus with the time difference it actually makes it less than 2 days. Needless to say we have another 2 jobs posted (one is for some css coding that we were quoted $3000 for, it is going to end up being less than $100)
I’ll let you know what the quality is like…..