Information Filled Under 'General Outsourcing Trends' Category
Freelancing on the Fly: International Travels Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010
Working and traveling can be both exhausting and rewarding. Whether you’re traveling for pleasure but can’t afford to drop all of your clients, have work that requires you on-site in a location abroad or some combination of the two, you’ll need to balance the rigors of travel with the demands …
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Freelancing on the Fly: International Travels
Maintaining strong working relationships over a distance of thousands of miles can be challenging. Services like oDesk and Skype help ease complications, but there are some hurdles that require special attention when working with international clients. Time Zones Depending on how you manage your international clients, time differences can either help …
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Challenges of International Clients
Finding a remote worker online is fairly easy these days. Finding a great remote contractor online can be a whole different challenge. The interview process becomes extremely important in pinpointing that remote worker who is a perfect fit for you and your business.
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Hiring Remote Workers: 5 Red Flags To Never Ignore
We’ve released a new version of our Email Preferences page, giving you even more control over the communications you receive from oDesk. We know you’re busy. Our emails are designed to give you pertinent information and allow you to take action as efficiently as possible. However, if you manage …
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Giving you more control over email
Here at oDesk we’re always excited to offer special deals and promotions to our hard working community. That’s why we’re super excited to announce that our partner, Startup Weekend, is extending a generous offer of 25% off to attend their upcoming Bay Area event. Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated …
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Startup Weekend – Special Offer for oDesk Users
Being a remote contractor has its benefits–like not having a boss, working in your pajamas, and all the insane things that we say we could do (but never actually do them). However, with this freedom comes great responsibility. Security
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Protecting Your Clients: Online Security for Remote Contractors
We usually offer tips on improving your remote-work techniques, but this time we wanted to step back and just appreciate how cool remote work really is. Consider this your summer break (unless it happens to be winter where you are), and check out our new Future of Work video.
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oDesk Celebrates (and Rewards) Big Ideas
At one point or another it is inevitable that you will experience an unexpected crisis that interferes with your career as an independent contractor. In a less serious scenario, you may lose your cell phone, kill your laptop or just come down with a 24-hour virus. But, in a total disaster, you might …
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A Crisis Plan for Contract Workers: 8 Career-Saving Steps
Whether you’re hiring someone to build a simple informational website or a robust software systems, you’ll want to establish a clear path for your project and have a central location for code and documentation to live throughout its life-cycle. Software Configuration Management, Source Code Management, a Code Repository, Version …
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Code Repository Basics
If you stop and think about it, you might think it a bit odd that everybody is still talking about the Great Recession when the economy has been growing for a full calendar year. Except, of course, that it certainly doesn’t feel like a recovery, does it? That are two reasons for that: job growth and consumer spending, both of which are pretty tepid.
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Research Roundup: Where’s the Recovery?
It doesn’t matter what kind of business you create or what product or service you offer. In some ways all businesses are the same. How we build them, make them stronger and finally reach our business goals involves a set of principles that are the same for every entrepreneur
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Small Business News: Business Building Basics
This week’s list has some excellent opportunities for growing companies to learn and network over the next few months. This list of small business webinars, events and conferences is brought to you every two weeks as a community service by Small Business Trends and Smallbiztechnology.com
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More Conferences for Growing Small Businesses
With the growth in social media, it was inevitable that there would be a corresponding growth in social media books. With a strong Twitter following (over 141,000 and counting), Chris Brogan, New Media president and longtime blogger, would be a fitting author to weigh in with a social media advisory book of his own. Co-founder of the PodCamp “unconference”and co-author of Trust Agents , Brogan has spoken, consulted and blogged on social media. He has condensed tips and tricks from his past experiences into a book called Social Media 101: Tactical Tips to Develop Your Business Online . Hymnal-sized, Social Media 101 checks in at 313 pages thick. It is divided into 87 segments, each a few pages long and consisting of tips on subjects such as blogging, incorporating video, podcasting and developing an online social community
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Start Your Social Media Tactics with Tips from “Social Media 101″
Starting a business need not be scary and you don’t need to be a seasoned entrepreneur to get on the right road to success. In fact, for the most successful entrepreneurs, the key has been simply experimenting to find out what works and then letting the right market find them.
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Small Business News: So You Want To Start A Business
After the vuvuzelas have stopped droning and the instant replay returns to settle football disputes, what lessons can we business owners learn from the world’s greatest competition? Small business and soccer are the world’s most popular ways to work and play.
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Is Your Business World-Cup-Worthy?
Applying and interviewing for jobs just got faster and easier under the new “Job Applications.” No more hunting for interview threads! Your communications with the buyer are now embedded in the new Job Application page. Reply to buyers, ask questions and view the job description all in one place
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A Better Way to Manage your Job Applications
Landing clients may be the most challenging part of freelancing — especially if you are new to contract work. We know the competition for online work is fierce, so the first impression you make with your potential client had better be a good one. When you see a job available, it’s tempting …
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Landing the Job: Present a Complete Application
Yesterday, in reaction to growing criticism from users concerning privacy controls, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded with this blog post, which outlines the new privacy settings that will be rolled out over the next few weeks. This arrives as a follow up to the apology that …
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Facebook Changes: A Brief Primer for Businesses
Buyers, providers and staffing managers now have access to our new suite of reports that make managing your work life easier. We’ve added the most requested reports, made them easier to read, provided both summary and detailed views, and made it possible to select the specific date range you need.
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New and Improved Reports Make Managing Work Easier
You may have noticed that we recently unveiled a new & improved Community site and Help Center, making it easier to interact with the oDesk community and find answers to your questions. Here’s what’s new: All community feedback in one place We have turned off the UserVoice site and are collecting …
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New Community Site and Help Center
Getting what you want out of a technology project starts with knowing what you want. One of the best ways to explore your problem is by building many quick and dirty (even non-functional) prototypes, and using this discovery process to refine and perfect your idea. The Paper Prototype Regardless of what you’re …
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Rundown of Rapid Prototyping Tools
Being an independent contractor comes with a lot of benefits, including the freedom to work when and where you want. Until now, those benefits didn’t usually include affordable health insurance options. But, that all changes today. oDesk is now making health insurance available to all of our U.S.-based users. On behalf …
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Quality Health Insurance for Contractors, Job Seekers and Entrepreneurs
This week we have two enhancements to the oDesk service to tell you about. Both of these changes will create a speedier site - something many of our users have been asking for! Faster, more interactive provider search results We’ve made looking for providers easier and faster, helping buyers find the talent …
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Find providers fast & changes to job application quotas
The definition of a sale is when preparation and opportunity meet on the same day. In business, it helps to understand that customers are working to minimize risk when they enter into contracts with small businesses. Some small business owners often loose opportunities because of bad habits and not recognizing that certain things must be in place before they start marketing their products and services. These issues speak directly to trust and credibility for a business owner
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5 Fatal Mistakes That Hold Back Start-up Business Owners
June offers some excellent small business events and webinars – check out this week’s list. This list of small business webinars, events and conferences is brought to you every two weeks as a community service by Small Business Trends and Smallbiztechnology.com .
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Entrepreneurial and Small Business Events
Last week I was lucky enough to stumble upon Ben Parr’s post over at the AMEX Open Forum about how to become a savvier networker online . In his post, Ben shares some great tips for how to get and keep the attention of influencers. But not all your social networking takes place online
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How To Be A Better Social Networker Offline
As the U.S. government passes legislation it claims will save small business, in the real world grassroots entrepreneurs focus on the tools, techniques and tech necessary to make their bottom line. Small business operation requires a multifaceted skill set.
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Small Business News: Trends, Tech and Tools