The internet has been called “the great equalizer” by many.
Work that might cost you $20 an hour in the United States, Europe or Canada could easily cost you just $2 in India. In the past, the geographical gap outweighed the price gap. The internet has changed that.
Today, with the help of the internet, you can find great outsourced work online extremely cheaply. You just need to know where to look.
Here are some of the top places to look for top-class outsourced work at a bargain price.
Amazon Mechanical Turk
The Amazon Mechanical Turk system allows you to outsource easy tasks for extremely low rates.
For example, you can ask any number of people to take a five-minute survey for pennies – literally. Many gigs on Mechanical Turk pay as little as $0.20 cents or less.
You can choose to accept only first world country workers, or global workers.
Craigslist India and The Philippines
Craigslist isn’t as active in India and the Philippines, but it can still be a great way to reach cheap outsourced work.
Just create a posting in either “Jobs” or in “Gigs.” The demand for paid work, even at rates we might consider low, is extremely high in these countries.
Fiverr
You’d be surprised with what you can get for just five dollars on Fiverr. Fiverr is an online outsourcing site where people earn a set price of $5 for their services.
You can get all kinds of work done on Fiverr. You can get drawings, you can get 3D rendering, you can get animations, you can get voiceovers, you can get writing, you can get proofreading, you can get data entry.
If what you’re looking for is something that can be broken up into smaller tasks, chances are you can get it on the cheap on Fiverr.
DigitalPoint
DigitalPoint is an online forum geared towards the internet marketing community. It has an extremely active trade section where you can hire people to do just about anything, from graphic design to web mastering skills.
DigitalPoint has a feedback system called iTrader that works very similarly to eBay’s. You can use it to gauge who’s trustworthy and who’s not.
UpWork
Finally, you have the traditional outsourcing sites. Though these sites might be slightly pricier than what we’ve talked about above, especially since outsourcers have to pay about 15% to the site itself, it still often makes sense to use these sites.
On UpWork, employers are protected by a range of different systems, from payment escrows to public feedback systems. It’s much harder to get ripped off on these systems than through other systems.
These are some different places to look for cheap, quality outsourced work online.