Net Working to Connect Projects, People
Myriad Internet “exchanges” now help businesses sell products and services to other businesses. Two leading business-to-business sites, ELance.com and Guru.com, specialize in linking businesses with professionals such as Web designers, accountants and freelance writers.
There are two ways to use Sunnyvale, Calif.-based ELance. In one model, buyers who wish to purchase a service post a request for proposal, or RFP, to let sellers bid on the service.
To post the RFP, you fill out an on-screen form with a job category, a project description, the number of days the bidding is open, the desired delivery date and an optional initial estimated price. You can also attach files that might help explain what you want, and you can even attach a voice recording that you can use to further explain the job.
People or businesses that wish to respond to an RFP fill out a similar on-screen form with their bid amount, the date they can finish the project and comments, and attach files or a voice recording that can help explain their qualifications.
Alternatively, anyone who wishes to sell a service by a fixed price can post a description accompanied by a price by the hour, piece, word, document, page or whatever.
An impressive breadth of services is available on ELance. One company is offering market research to help companies better understand business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets. ELance also is helping to link businesses with tax preparers, as well as accountants, lawyers, translators, marketing experts, computer consultants, illustrators, party planners and just about any other service provider you can imagine.
Just as with online auction sites, there is always a danger when buying a service online because you’re buying something intangible from a person or business you might have never heard of.
To help buyers select a vendor, each seller is encouraged to provide detailed information about what he or she can offer as well as samples, when appropriate.
Roberto Corona, for example, uses ELance to offer his services as a comic artist-illustrator. In addition to giving him space to write about his qualifications, the service also lets him post samples of his work so a potential buyer knows what to expect.
Like EBay and other auction sites, ELance also lets buyers rate each seller on timeliness, responsiveness, professionalism, quality of work and whether the buyer would work with the service provider again. There is also a written evaluation in which buyers can comment on their experience with the vendor.
One big advantage to a service like this is that a start-up can draw on services from professionals around the world. Ed Shull, a Foster City, Calif., entrepreneur is in the process of building an e-commerce Web site (https://www.pyke.com) that will allow people to purchase downloadable media such as music, books and software.
Shull has worked for “dot-coms” and knows how expensive services can be.
“The average price for back-end development [programming] is $135,000,” he said, “but I wound up paying only $3,000.” After posting RFPs on ELance, Shull wound up hiring a Web designer from Kiev, Ukraine, another from Yugoslavia and a programmer from India. Not everyone who worked on his site was from overseas. He hired a multimedia developer from Atlanta and a writer from Virginia.
Price wasn’t Shull’s only factor. His logo, which was designed by an artist in Italy, came from the most expensive bidder. While most artists simply bid on what they would charge for the job, the one who Shull selected submitted a sample that he wound up using.
The service is now free to buyers and sellers, but ELance plans to charge a small transaction fee after concluding its beta test phase.
ELance isn’t the only company linking freelancers with companies that need them. Guru.com claims to have “over 100,000 gurus” and “over 10,000 hiring companies” that it can link. Working in areas such as marketing, finance and legal, information technology and Web development, Guru provides businesses with resources from around the world and would-be consultants with a marketplace of potential jobs.
Guru.com connects independent professionals with contract projects. Would-be “gurus” (consultants, Web designers, information technology experts, lawyers, accountants and more) are invited to post a personal profile that includes an overview of their talents, availability, pay rate and commuting preferences. They also are asked to list previous clients as well as education and other credentials.
Guru.com doesn’t encourage competitive bidding as ELance does with its RFPs. Another difference: Guru.com tends to focus on larger projects using fairly high-level experts, according to company spokesman Greg Terk. He says the average Guru.com project is worth about $15,000.
“This is a savvy database that lets companies do power searches to find just the right guru,” he said.
Guru.com, based in San Francisco and backed by August Capital, is currently free to gurus and companies that hire them, but the service plans to charge a subscription fee to hiring companies.
Technology reports by Lawrence J. Magid can be heard at 2:10 p.m. weekdays on the KNX-AM (1070) Technology Hour. He can be reached at larry.magid@latimes.com. His Web site is at https://www.larrysworld.com.
