I might need to have one of my older Wordpress themes modified… the coding task is a little beyond my knowledge. I was thinking about hiring a freelancer off oDesk and it looks like most of them are from India. I was wondering if anyone here has ever hired someone from there and how was the experience? I suppose one concern I have is that they might insert some sort of “backdoor” code to take over my site, but maybe I’m just being paranoid.
I’m also open to hearing quotes from anyone here, although I doubt you can match the India oDesk rates which seem to be about $16 an hour.
(In case you’re wondering the coding change has to do with replacing the Featured Image thumbnails on a home page with Custom Field thumbnails.)
The only experience I have with Indian freelancers is that they always claim to be an expert at everything. They’ll tell you that they can design a word press theme from scratch even if they have never used word press or designed a site. If you need help with artwork or graphic design then they’ll suddenly be experts at that. They’ll do anything to get your project but majority of the time not have the skills to do it.
There are some good coders out there, some from India too, but it just seems there are a lot more fakes, than real ones.
And before you HIRE ANYONE, whether from India, or EVEN HERE, make sure you get references and check those references. There are some really good ones, but also a lot who are just plain scammers, from all parts of the Globe. So do get references, do follow up and check.
Yeah I have to agree with the others. I hired some people from Pakistan and India last year and they didn’t know shit (although they claimed to be SEO experts lol).
To put things into perspective, two “SEO experts” I hired from USA turned out to be not so good either. The latest one turns out to be just a charlatan I’m afraid.
You as the paying customer have the right to investigate their references and to make sure they really have the knowledge to achieve the goal you want. One has to be ruthless about this. Don’t be fooled by their kind manners and (often fake) cheerful attitude, it won’t solve your problems.
Last year one of our partners referred me to an SEO guy on ODesk. I thought coming from a good reference, he would be okay. I gave him a job, and 3 months later there was no improvement in ranking and only excuses from this guy, so I cancelled his contract. He then somehow hacked into my ODesk account and tried to give himself a ‘bonus’ of $3,000. Fortunately, I caught it in time and was able to get ODesk to cancel it before it charged my account.
Later, he hacked into the GoDaddy account of the guy that had referred him to me, changed the DNS on his sites and changed his password, and tried to blackmail him that he would steal his sites if he didn’t wire him money. Fortunately he got it solved through GoDaddy, but he lost a lot of income from sites being down and had to go through a lot of stress.
It’s worth the extra money to go with someone local you can trust, I will never use ODesk again no matter how many good references I get.
You can learn how to do this yourself within a few hours. The WP Codex and forum have all the knowledge you need. You just have to sift through it and find what you’re looking for. It’s time consuming, but won’t cost you any money.
I am able to do as you requite but it’s the kind of thing I don’t think a person should charge someone for. It’s pretty basic stuff. I don’t have the time at the moment, as I just experienced a big mishap on my newest blog due to a 3rd party plugin. I’ll be knee-deep in code and other crap for the next 2 days. At least.
Unless you’re looking for a lot more than you mentioned, again, you should be able to do this yourself. I will look for reference pages for you on my travels if you’d like and post them here. No need to hire a coder. Custom fields and presenting the content therein on your site/blog isn’t a difficult tweak. Even if you have to add another meta box to the admin post page. Just have to register it in your functions.php file.
Good luck tp you. DON’T hire a designer from India, or anywhere else.
And for the record, I just found out the plugin that killed queerreporter.com was coded predominantly by someone from India. Hmmm…what are the odds.
I have yet to see ANY good feedback at all, ever, from anyone who ever hired anyone from India to do anything relating to online business. It’s amazing, but with all those many hundreds of thousands of so-called Indian SEO “experts” not a single person is able to recommend a single one of them. That’s all anyone should need to know.
Look on LinkedIn, look through these forums, look for recommendations from others. The best kind of service is one that someone you trust has used and can vouch for.
And to add, SEO ‘experts’ are all scammers. ALL of them. Yes, even the people at Yoast. I’ve spoken with them several times and after talking with 4 different reps each one of them contradicted the other. SEO consultation is a scam.
In all fairness, there are some things that are genuinely relevant when it comes to SEO. I have found that the majority of services that look at your site and tell you what to change are not that good, you need to give someone the time to actually go in and see what the problems are. Some will only do a quick check, the same things they do whether it’s a pay site, a blog or a retail site. The truth is they are all different animals and you need someone with a track record for that kind of SEO.
I agree that 90% of them are bullshit merchants, they don’t know what Google does any more than you or I do. The problem is that when you see what your competitors are doing, breaking Google rules all over the place and STILL getting first place when your pages upon pages of unique content is on page two, you can’t really do much but give in and start playing the game.
You’re right Conran. I shouldn’t have generalized so broadly. There are perhaps a few SEO consultation companies that can possibly do some good out there. I have yet to come across one, but there must be at least one. LOL.
Pardon my narrow mindedness on the matter. I’ve consulted with several and while it never cost me any money (I don’t part with any funds unless I know exactly what I’m getting into), I usually wasn’t very impressed. Most of the time I knew more than they did. Or they still referred to cliches and knowledge that was relevant 3-5 years ago.
It really is impossible to know exactly what Google wants. OMG, there’s that damn name again. Ha! And yes, watching others who don’t follow the rules get front page SERPs is extremely frustrating. I have to put it out of my mind or I could end up in the funny farm. I just hope they let a person promote porn in the nut house.
I hired a guy through Freelancer to make a gallery script for me, I think that was the project. I think he was from India, but might have been Thailand or Vietnam, I got quotes from a bunch of different Asian countries and can’t remember who eventually got the job. I laid out everything that I wanted in a document and included it in the RFP, I showed the quoter examples of what I wanted from the web. “Oh yes, oh yes. I can do it no problem.” His references seemed okay.
What I got back was a giant mess, nothing close to what I wanted. We nattered back and forth a few times by email, he didn’t seem to get what I was asking for.
Eventually I just said, “Why don’t you keep the deposit?” (it wasn’t a lot) “And we’ll just call it quits. If you walk away from with the deposit, I won’t bother giving you a bad review.”
I disagree with Jeff about it being easy peasy and you can do it yourself. It might be easy if you’re technically inclined in this way, like he seems to be, but I’m not. What Jeff thinks is easy would take me days to figure out. Coding isn’t my core competency, nor do I want it to be, so I generally don’t fuss around with it too much.
Although tempting to save money in the long run it usually ends up costing you a heck of a lot more. Sadly most of them are usually all talk saying they can do it (they seems to be able to do anything right) - BUT - they never get it done OR they do it so wrong you need to start over!
I was looking for some help on a social networking site and I posted a job on Elance. Then I saw this thread.
Seems that everyone agrees not to hire from India. So where do I find tech help when I need it? I’m not a coder and I can barely find my way around HTML. Doing it myself isn’t a possibility.
Where do I find help that’s more local and very reliable?
(Also, I’m looking for someone else to help me with Elevated X design.)
[QUOTE=RobertChandler;145262]I was looking for some help on a social networking site and I posted a job on Elance. Then I saw this thread.
Seems that everyone agrees not to hire from India. So where do I find tech help when I need it? I’m not a coder and I can barely find my way around HTML. Doing it myself isn’t a possibility.
Where do I find help that’s more local and very reliable?
(Also, I’m looking for someone else to help me with Elevated X design.)[/QUOTE]
You might want to try emailing Eddie K. with XIndustry Jobs. I haven’t used him before, but I’ve been told he does pretty extensive background and experience checks and could probably refer you someone with more real experience then what you would find on these scammer filled sites.
This is the best advice I can give you. I have over 17 years experience as a web designer.
The best way to get something quality is to hire a designer in the states or Canada or the UK. A decent designer will have quality work examples and will cost a minimum of $75/hr or more.
Tell them specifically what you are looking for and have them give you a minimum quote. Pay them half upfront and half upon completion. They should allow you at least one set of changes included in the first quote.
If they can’t at least give you the above items then beware.
The best way to get something quality is to hire a designer in the states or Canada or the UK. A decent designer will have quality work examples and will cost a minimum of $75/hr or more.
I’ve never paid anywhere near $75 per hour for Designs, and 100% of our Designers are from Thailand or the Phillipines. Granted you have to go through some bad apples to find good ones, but they do exist and do great work for way less then $75 per hour. Even in the US I know a couple of great Designers who will work for around $20 per hour that have done designs for some of the largest paysites.
[QUOTE=RobertChandler;145262]I was looking for some help on a social networking site and I posted a job on Elance. Then I saw this thread.
Seems that everyone agrees not to hire from India. So where do I find tech help when I need it? I’m not a coder and I can barely find my way around HTML. Doing it myself isn’t a possibility.
Where do I find help that’s more local and very reliable?
(Also, I’m looking for someone else to help me with Elevated X design.)[/QUOTE]
FreeLancer.com is ok to use as long as you only consider people based in Europe or North America. Those are normally more honest and reliable, but they will also be more expensive. There are some very talented people on there but they always get out priced by Asians.
I would pass, but that doesn’t mean that every guy from India is a faker. I always go by the following: If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Wow, excellent advice everyone. Thanks! Just to follow up, I had a few cups of coffee and that jump started my brain enough to figure out what I needed so for now I won’t be hiring anyone.
But I did stumble upon freelancer.com and they seem to have actual reviews from real people so if ever do need a coder I will probably try them, using the advice of sticking with someone from N. America, Canada or Europe.
