Yesterday a small company called ‘Napkee’ launched, that made our process complete.

Here’s how we do it:

STEP 1 – In the ‘idea phase’ we only use a whiteboard and MockupMagnets (www.MockupMagnets.com).

STEP 2 – When ideas stop changing, we move to using Balsamiq Mockups (www.Balsamiq.com).

STEP 3 – We turn our mockups into HTML / CSS / JS / FLEX using Napkee (www.Napkee.com)

STEP 4 – We outsource the development for a small fee, using coders at oDesk (www.oDesk.com).

That’s it!

Now that Napkee has enabled us to turn our Mockups (Balsamiq) into functional prototypes (Napkee), all we need from there is a coder to make it fit our framework (oDesk). It’s a ‘geniously’ simple process. I advise you to look at these websites today!

- Ruven

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However, there’s a difference between off-shoring your entire development to another country, or hiring people online for small jobs.
I am a huge fan of hiring people online. If it wasn’t for websites like oDesk.com, eLance.com and rent-a-coder,  I wouldn’t be hiring anyone in the first place.

When I need something done that either I don’t know how to, or don’t have the any time for; it’s extremely handy to simply post the job online. It’s the smart thing to do. It’s the fast thing to do. It’s the cheap thing to do. And as a side-note, it creates more work opportunities rather than taking them away.

If you’re thinking of off-shoring your development to save cost, I’d urge you to think about online-hiring first. It saves your company money, it’s easier to manage and also gives your own country another shot at it.

- Michal

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• ‘setting up an overseas office’,
• ‘flying back and forth’,
• ‘having long and boring live video calls’ and
• ‘talking with your overseas manager at 4 am’.

Boy was I wrong!

Nowadays, I don’t even bother to write a simple JavaScript script anymore, because it would distract me from doing what I do best: outsourcing!

Here’s 5 myths that kept me in ‘oblivious-land’ for way too long:

MYTH 1: Outsourcing costs a fortune
Nope. It could be ten bucks. Or less. Let me challenge you:

• Think of a small (computer related) task you need to do but you’re not really good at.
• Write down what exactly it is you need to do.
• Go to oDesk.com, start an account and post a fixed-price job.
• Think of the amount of hours it would take you to do this and multiply by 5. Post the outcome as the fee for this job.
• Set the deadline to today.

Within 30 minutes you’ll have at least 3 people bidding. I promise.

MYTH 2: It takes a long time to outsource
Wrong again. It could be done while you’re out to lunch. If you did what I asked you to do at the previous point, you’ll notice how fast it goes. In fact, putting the deadline of a fixed-price job to “the same day” will get you even more people bidding on your job. Because they have time to do it now.

MYTH 3: You have to be a manager to outsource
Allow me to change your thinking. Most people say ‘focus only what you’re good at’. Others say ‘focus on where you need to improvement’. I say ‘take what you’re good at but forbid yourself to do it’. Instead, find others to do it for you. This way, you:

• … still do what you love to do
• … automatically learn the things that used to need improvement
• … become a manager without even noticing it!

MYTH 4: I don’t have an outsourcing budget
Well, that might be true. But think about this. It will take you a minimum of two weeks to make a WordPress template if you’ve never done HTML before. A trained freelancer can do that in two hours. You do the math… See, you don’t need a budget, do you? You just need fifteen bucks.

MYTH 5: I need to be an expert before I can delegate
It helps if you know a little bit about the subject matter, but being an expert may actually slow you down. If you’re in the details, it makes you trust your freelancer less, resulting in too many revisions and particulars, taking more of your time and your freelancer. The key is: don’t worry. You can fix everything with another job. This is about you saving time.

Well, there you have it. Of course, these are only five myths. There is a lot more, I’s sure. Let me know what you think is missing and should be up here!

Yours,

-Efraim

More priceless outsourcing advice?
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Right now, we’re in the process of building a 3d game for Wii, Mac, PC and web. The entire game series is done by freelancers from all over the world. We did not write any line of code, did not do any art pieces. We just manage the process.
The project is a monster.
So far, we have had to create (individual) jobs for:
42 concept art jobs
25 2D art jobs
19 3D modeling jobs
14 programming jobs
8 legal document jobs
That’s a humble 108 jobs for one project. I cannot even tell you how many hours that is in total.

When people hear about this, they think we’re dropping millions on this project. The truth is, our outsourcing budget for this project hasn’t crossed 10k yet. That’s an average of 93 dollars per job! Not impressed? That includes lawyers!

The secret of getting things done well for little, is:
1 – Setting a start-price that is ridiculously low.
2 – Knowing exactly what you want

Our western-minds by default think $30 USD per hour or more, but there’s a whole bunch of people that don’t think that way. Those are the ones you’re trying to reach. On top of that, there’s are millions of professionals that are used to high wages that look for a job well thought through. All of the sudden the price doesn’t matter much anymore.

Alright, let’s get to it. Here’s your start-bid-shopping-list:

A Custom WordPress Template with widgets
Fee: $45
You deliver: A photoshop document with the exact look & feel you’re after
Days to deliver: Two. Revisions can add one more.

An internet research job “Find 100 …”
Fee: $50
You deliver: An exact description of what you’re after and excel file setup
Days to deliver: Two. Ask to send the first 25 in for review before continuing.

A low-poly 3D Character
Fee: $50
You deliver: Exact concept art from 3 angles (model sheet)
Days to deliver: One. Revisions can add one more.

Writing blog posts
Fee: $10 per post
You deliver: Exact description per post and maximum amount of words
Days to deliver: 2 hrs per post

Translation job
Fee: $10 per letter size page
You deliver: The pages
Days to deliver: 1 day for 4 pages

Legal document
Fee: $100 per 4-page document
You deliver: Exact description of what you want. Find someone in the same country or state as the document’s law-base you’re after. Stay in good, constant communication.
Days to deliver: 3 days.

I know these prices are ridiculously low, but they serve to start the bidding. Professional translators usually want to charge you per-word and such, I never go into that. I love having a fixed fee per project, no stings attached. If the professionals ignore you, there will be students that are just as good.

Outsourcing has to be a win-win deal for both you and the freelancer – internet allows the two to meet.

Let me know what else you need in this list and I’ll add it!

Yours,

-Efraim

More priceless outsourcing advice?
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Google Wave, to be released later this year, is an entirely new way to communicate.

You see, email was invented before the Internet even existed. It was designed with snail mail in mind: person A writes a letter, person B opens it. Person B writes back, attaches a document, and sends it back to person A.

Google Wave is different: it reinvents email as if it were invented today.
Instead of sending ‘letters’ to other people, the conversation lives online. You can invite anyone that needs to be in on the conversation.
You could even invite your blog as a ‘person’, and the conversation will be visible as a post.
Now, people simply reply to the wave (read: email), the whole wave or just some parts of it. They can drag photos onto the conversation and share them.
No more ‘attachment is too big’ errors – a genius concept I must say!

The  product isn’t out yet, so I can’t say much about it, but here’s how I think The Unplugged can use it to their advantage.

• Read your waves on your phone instead of your PC – this enables you to move around
• Invite your freelancers to the wave and upload work files (Magnetic Prototyping photos and so on) – saves the cost of project management software.
• Don’t type. Attach job details in an audio format (using your phone’s mic) – this will save you time typing long messages
• Google Wave’s timeline feature can fast-forward and rewind a wave conversation. This saves you from having to write the same emails over and over to different people. Simply invite them to the wave.
• Being able to reply on parts of the message saves you from those people that only reply to one or two topics in your email and ‘forget’ to go into what you are actually writing. Brilliant!

There’s probably a lot more advantages I left out — let me know how you would use it!

Can’t wait to give this product a go! I signed up for developers access, so I’ll keep you updated on the functionality.

- Michal

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