Information Filled Under 'General Outsourcing Trends' Category
Is Your Business World-Cup-Worthy? Friday, July 30th, 2010
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
Freelancers and remote workers definitely benefit from Google Docs, a free and convenient way to store and share documents online. However, the subtle manners and etiquette of this resource are still being hammered out — mostly by trial and error. So if you want to avoid a costly Google Docs faux …
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Sharing Google Docs the Professional Way
While some freelancers relish the joys of working remotely, for others the adjustment from bustling corporate office to the quietness of home may be a little rough. To put it simply, freelancing can get a little lonely. After a few months of quiet work days at home you may begin to long for a time when you …
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How to Combat Freelance Loneliness
In our recent Online Employment Situation Summary (a companion to the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly Employment Situation Summary), we took a look at the $8.6M worth of online work performed last month to discover the types of work most requested by hiring employers. While certain technical work still rules …
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Marketing Work Joins Top In-Demand Categories
In the past three years since Google Docs launched, several notable security flaws have emerged. The most recent exploitation of user’s accounts (massive amounts of pharma-related spam — read more here at ARN) may leave you wondering about the safety of your Google account and, furthermore, about the safety of your …
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How Safe Are Your Google Docs?
Like the old song says, the times are changing but small business and entrepreneurship has always thrived on change. Often more agile and imaginative than huge corporations, they scout the shifting landscape for new opportunities often being the first to create new jobs and sometimes whole new markets. To react to change, small business owners need information.
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Small Business News: The Times They Are A-Changin’
Short on cash and long on energy, most new business start-ups struggle through their first few months on the flexibility and stick-to-itiveness of their founder. Like feeling around for the light switch in the dark, you try to find a formula that works. All of that experimentation usually gets you through the first few months but also creates a business highly dependent on your intuition.
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How Your First 100 Days Can Determine The Fate Of Your New Business
President Obama’s recent signing of a $938 billion overhaul of the U.S. health care system is both historic and controversial. Here’s the skinny on how the latest health care legislation affects you: I’m a freelancer/independent contractor/self-employed
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The Health Care Bill for Freelancers and Small Businesses
When you ditched your 9 to 5 job, did you also ditch “office hours”? Join the club. One of the benefits of freelancing is the ability to plan work hours around your day — rather than the other way around
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Freelance Challenge: Does Keeping Office Hours Increase Productivity?
Recently oDesk had the opportunity to talk about writer-targeted scams with marketing expert Marcia Yudkin, author of 11 books inluding Freelance Writing for Magazines and Newspapers, whose work has appeared in the New York Times and Boston Globe. Her insightful article “You Too Can Sniff Out a Scam” got us wondering what freelance writers need to …
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3 Scams Every Freelance Writer Should Know About
We get it. Freelancing can be a tough gig to come by, and sometimes you can do everything right and still come up short of jobs. If you are one of those people, we wish you the best of luck and a world of patience in your continuing search for clients
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10 Reasons You Aren’t Getting Freelance Work
The phrase Dropout Economy (made popular by Reihan Salam in the recent Time Magazine article) tells a tale of community activism and radical thinking — sparked by a rejection of traditional norms that revolve around working for “The Man.” In a time when corporate profits are …
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The Dropout Economy and Remote Workers
oDesk lets hundreds of thousands of talented providers find the work they want to do, but sometimes when we’re looking at the oConomy’s satellite perspective (almost $150 million earned via oDesk!) on our vibrant marketplace, we wonder about the individual stories, not just the numbers. Nearly every month, we run …
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Has oDesk Changed Your Life?
We know that oDesk is changing how the world works, but how is it changing your business? First-time entrepreneurs tell us how they got their dream company launched on a very tight budget, and how they expanded beyond the limits of time zone and local talent, but what’s your story? So …
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Has oDesk Changed Your Business?
oDesk is constantly evolving as a marketplace, community, and tool that changes how the world works. Today, we took steps toward creating a more streamlined site navigation system. The changes are subtle, visible only to users who are signed in, but we’d like to share some of the more noticeable …
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oDesk Site Navigation Update