Outsourcing is easypeasy (Part 3)

The last time I discussed outsourcing we talked about getting writers for articles etc. Today I want to touch on the topic of coders and programmers, which can be a very touchy subject because I’ve found in my quite long experience working with coders that some of them can have pretty huge ego’s and fragile tempers.

I’ve had some rather unpleasant experiences with coders in the past, but looking back probably some of it was my fault, luckily I’ve learned over the past few years how to handle coders and programmers which makes life a whole lot easier.

A bit of history

A while after we’d launched EMP back in 2007, my partner (who was the tech person in our relationship) decided he wanted to go on to pastures new so we decided to part company and I bought his share of the software from him making me the sole owner. This was pretty cool of course and made me a great deal of money at the time until I realized something quite important, I didn’t have a clue about how to go about sorting out bugs and updates for the script, (my partner had sorted all that out) so I was totally stuck.

I could have carried on quite happily merrily selling a script that we kept finding bugs in and started to need updating quite desperately but and this is a big but, we were charging a great deal of money for it back then (It was the only script of it’s kind at the time), and I’ve always been a big believer in giving value for money. I felt uncomfortable taking money from folks for something I knew was past it’s peak.

So I started to panic because I didn’t have a clue how to go about getting myself a decent coder. I tried a few (got scammed by a very well known marketer over it but that’s a tale for another day) managed to get a few updates out from a couple of the coders we’d used when first building it, but I threw the towel in and sold it to my ex bizzy partner back in 2009 when I went offline.

I bought it back in 2012 and with a new partner (who also happens to be a fab programmer) we’ve spent the last couple of years getting it back up to speed. I’m dead proud of it now.

Tip I know this sounds a tad mean, but don’t ever share a good coder/programmer if you find one because they are like gold dust and if you do, you’ll find they don’t have as much time for you as they did!

Anyway when Mike (my present coder), first started looking at the EMP code, he was in the depths of despair, he’s a code neat freak and apparently a lot of the code was to put it bluntly junk which was why it often threw errors up.

What we’d done originally when we first had the script built was hire coders to write it, and though my ex partner was a coder himself working for some huge companies he was knowledgeable only in ASP, so though at the time he understood the rudiments of PHP, he wasn’t good enough to write it. (That’s changed now BTW and apparently he’s excellent in PHP and is also a code neat freak as well)!!

Unfortunately a lot of coders out there are just sloppy, lazy call it what you will, and as long as it works (to a point), they can’t seem to understand why you wouldn’t be happy with what they serve up, and to be honest there are some marketer’s out there who aren’t particularly bothered if they offer something out to their customer’s that may be buggy as hell as long as they make the big bucks.

I spent a $1000 for the resale rights to a particular script a couple of years ago and we ended up abandoning it because it was so buggy. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat over something and Mike just got sick of finding the million and one bugs a very well known marketer had sold on knowing it was practically unusable. (I wasn’t happy)..

Having said that, I would defy anyone to show me any script that doesn’t have a bug in there somewhere because you just can’t find them all when beta testing , its only when a lot of folks start using a script that problems show up, the secret though is to fix those problems as soon as you can.

It’s took Mike a long time to go through the script and tidy it up, there is still a section (that works fine I hasten to add) but he wants to rebuild completely. Now that’s what I call a damn good coder because I don’t think he will ever stop tweaking at it. EMP his his passion as much as it is mine..

So the point of this rather rambling post!!

If you’re looking for a decent coder then there are plenty of places you can hunt them out, but be careful and do your due diligence and remember you get what you pay for. If you want to pay peanuts for a script you’re hoping to make thousands of dollars from then you’re liable to be in for a disappointment.

Yes you can hire someone for relatively little but think of a few things before you do.

a. Have they pinched the script from somewhere else or plagiarized some of it from another job they have worked on

b. What’s their code like, is it sloppy or worse have they hidden a Trojan in there somewhere (It’s entirely possible they may do)

c. Does it actually do what you specified it do, you’d be surprised at how many times some coders will go off on a tangent with your work and it ends up being something completely different.

d. Is what they are doing actually legal, I remember one job I asked for (it was something to do with articles), and the coder hacked Ezine articles so he could pinch theirs, I nearly died of shock, he was really brazen about it and just couldn’t understand why I was upset cos he’d done it. (Can you imagine selling a script that brazenly admits to hacking sites!!!)

e. I’ll say here again, you get what you pay for, another piece of software I commissioned once was a flagrant rip off from another one on the market, when I complained to Vworker the coder had the cheek to ask what had I expected for the money I was paying!! Needless to say, he didn’t get any of the cash I had in escrow and Vworker banned him.

I mentioned on my last post about the places you can hire writers from, the same applies to coders but with slight differences

Try the warrior forum sometimes decent coders want to get themselves a foot in the door and you may be lucky enough to get them whilst they are still quite cheap.

Vworker (formerly Rentacoder) or Odesk and Freelancer are also pretty good I used to always use Rentacoder for my projects but I know Mike likes to use Odesk if he’s outsourcing anything.

How to post your project

I remember Ant (my ex partner) used to use a really good template to explain exactly what it was he wanted), I’ve just been looking to see if I still have it in my dropbox account, but unfortunately it’s long gone. so I’ll try and explain the process here.

1. Be as concise as you possibly can when posting your requirements, I can’t say for any of the other’s, but if I remember rightly Vworker have a template you can use to help you plan your request, I highly recommend you use it. There is no point in posting a job that encompasses everything yet nothing at all because you’ll just confuse the hell out of the coders who are looking at your request.

2. Make sure you check the feedback of anyone you choose, if they are new, then it’s up to you, you may find someone who is good at a decent price, but there again they could be someone who is not so good.

3. Don’t go for anyone who posts a ridiculously cheap price. its very tempting especially if money is tight, but you might just find yourself selling code that belongs to someone else. Unfortunately when the brown stuff hits the fan, it’s you not that coder who will be covered in it. You may be lucky, but I’ve never been inclined to risk it. Coder’s have to eat the same as the rest of us so I’m always suspicious of a price especially for a big job that is very low and it’s going to take hours if not days or weeks of coding.

4. If you want any additions to the code on top of what you asked for then expect to pay for it. it’s unfair and inherently dishonest to expect someone to work extra for free.

5. At one time you could get a fairly decent script for a relatively decent price from some of the Eastern European countries, I would imagine prices have now gone up. (I’ve not looked lately), but try them you may get a decent job done. I’ve found workers in India are quite pricey now.

5. Try and get someone to check the code for you if possible once it’s completed and before you release your payment from escrow. It will probably cost you more (obviously), but it’s a fail-safe that just may save you a lot of money in the end. I used a coder I’d used previously on EMP  for a script I wanted updating and he told me he’d done the work, I asked Mike to check it and he hadn’t done anything at all to it, he was banking on me not realizing. needless to say I didn’t pay him and I never used him again. (Cheeky sod still Skypes me asking for work)!!

Extremely good coders and programmers are very much in demand and can practically name their own price nowadays. The days when you could get a top of the range script written for pennies on the dollar are long gone which I guess is a bit of a shame for those who commission scripts, but coders demand and expect to be paid what they are worth and who can really blame them.