Reference Designer

Many businesses are using freelancers in place of the full time employees to get their work done. Using freelancers have several distinct advantages

1. Hire when you need

You hire freelancer only when you need your job to be done. Many times, especially, in start up, when the funding is tight, it makes a lot of sense. You have an idea and you want to show a working prototype to a potential investor. In such a case you can take the help of a freelancer to get a quick prototype up and running. When the proof of concept is ready or when your get funding or when the product has a ready market, you can hire the full time employees.

2. You do not need to fire

In fact they get automatically fired at the end of the project. In other words, you are only hiring and never firing. Ask a manager manager what is the most difficult task and many of them will agree that firing an employee is one of the most stressful even for them to manage.

3. You can evaluate before Hiring full time

You can work with several freelancers at a time for a project. Some of them may turn out to be very good, while others may not be upto your expectation. You then choose to keep working with those who you find good.

4. You save money

Yes this is the most obvious reason for using freelancers. But you must also consider the time and the value of the time you spend in the right freelancer for you. In some cases, the overhead and time required to find the right freelancer will far exceed the value of the cost, especially for a very small project.

5.Enhance Networking

By exploring the freelancers and experts, you increase you professional networking. Many of these networks can be useful for your business. Many freelancers own small businesses which helps you increase your business to business contact.

eZdia provides a platform for efficently searching for the right expert or the freelancers that is right for you. You just give the keywords for which you need an expert and hit the search button. You can chat with the expert in ezdia, check his credentials and then you can hire him for the specific project. If you have not explored ezdia yet, you may like to check it for your freelancing needs

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Author

Vikas Shukla is currently working as Senior Design Engineer at BL Healthcare. He has degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IT-BHU, Varanasi, India. Mr. Shukla has over 15 years of experience in design of microprocessor-based systems. His expertise includes signal integrity, architecture and design of remote patient monitoring systems. The views expressed are his own.

freelancing freelancing, job, part time

Matthew had a small project in his hand that he wanted to get done. He wanted to embed a left and a right transparent arrow on his picture viewer website. The project involved the knowledge of PHP and javascript. Since his budget was tight, he used one of the freelancing websites and posted the requirement. He spent his time to clearly and carefully define the scope of work. He even included the examples and showed a website that implemented his idea in a similar fashion.

Soon after he posted the project, he was bombarded with 20 different offers. Some of them were dirt cheap and some ridiculously high. Many of those that seemed reasonable in price, included short messages like “We have right knowledge and we will do it for you”.

It took Matthew several hours to go through the proposals posted by the freelancers. When he finally chose one freelancer and started communicating with him, he realized that the freelancer did not have the required capability. Matthew also felt that if he would have chosen that freelancer he will end up taking too much of time to complete the project.

Inefficiency in the System

Consider the waste in the typical freelancing platform system. If 20 freelancers spend 2 hours each to read, understand the problem, then draft their reply, it is equivalent to 20 x 2 = 40 hours of freelancers time. This does not include a large number of time spent by the project poster in sifting through the replies and evaluating the freelancers.

There is no open chat system in the freelancing system which further adds to the efficiency in the system.

A project poster typically spends 4 hours in deciding the freelancer who is suitable for the project. The total collective waste of time is equivalent to 44 hours which is more than what it will take to complete the project itself.

Existing freelancing platforms are therefore inherently inefficient. In many cases, the total time wasted by the freelancers and the project posted  exceeds the actual value of the project itself.

How eZdia will change it

The expert Search in eZdia will change the scenario. A p roject poster is a knowledge explorer in eZdia. The knowledge explorer searches for the expert in eZdia. He checks credentials of the expert that he finds posses the right skill.

The knowledge explorer uses eZdia’s chat option to start talking to the expert right away. He gauges the expertise of the expert  in a matter of minutes. He allots the project to the expert he finds suitable.

The overall waste in the system is less that half an hour as compared to 44 hours in the existing freelancing platforms ( figures exaggerated to enhance understanding).

eZdia is not a perfect system. It can be misutilized the same way, people use SEO techniques to befool google. However, eZdia  promises to counter it using rating system.

Will this new platform succeed ? Will it replace the way freelancing is being executed  on the existing platforms ? Will it stop millions of hours of freelancers’ and knowledge explorer’s time ? I do not know the answer yet. But you can try yourself by checking out ezdia.

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New trends in freelancing”
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Author

Vikas Shukla is currently working as Senior Design Engineer at BL Healthcare. He has degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IT-BHU, Varanasi, India. Mr. Shukla has over 15 years of experience in design of microprocessor-based systems. His expertise includes signal integrity, architecture and design of remote patient monitoring systems. The views expressed are his own.

freelancing ezdia, freelancing, knowledge

Even as the unemployment rate is almost all time high in US, the freelancing and freelancing jobs are on rise. Freelancing provides a good opportunity to many people who are out of job or who want to make extra money by offering expert advice or knowledge.

There are many freelancing websites that can be used to offer your freelancing services. This includes odesk, elance,guru,getafreelancer, ifreelance. All of these platforms have more or less similar common concept. Freelancers create a login and add a profile on these websites. Some of these websites require a membership fee while most of them are free. Those that do not require fee has large member base. But the number of non serious freelancers in high on the websites that are free. Those that require membership fee are better in terms of the quality of the freelancers. If you do not do any work you loose membership fee.

All the freelancing websites work on more or less the similar way. Anyone who wants to get his work done, posts the project. The freelancers bid on the project. There is a private or sometimes open message board area where freelancers can communicate with project posters. Project poster chooses one of the freelancers to get his work done. The project poster chooses freelancer based upon bid amount, the rating and the credentials of freelancer.

Problem with Existing Freelancer Websites

All existing freelancing platforms suffer from common inherent problem. From project poster point of view these inherent problems become serious issue and many of them stop using using them at some point of time. There is no way for the project poster to know if the freelancer bidding for the project has the required expertise in the required area. While the rating of the freelancer give some idea about the credential pf the freelancer, it does not tell about the expertise of the expert in the field in which expertise is needed.

For example, assume that someone needs an expert advice in the area of regular expression in PHP programming. A freelancer having a  good rating will bid on the project even though he may not have the required expertise in that area. The project poster chooses the bidder based upon the bid amount only to discover later, that the freelancer took much more time than anticipated to implemment the regular expression project.

All these freelancing websites make any it difficult for new freelancers to get new projects eben though he may posses better skills and knowledge – as he is devoid of rating.

The freelancing websites strangle the free flow of information by not allowing real time chat messaging between the project poster and the freelancer. This reduces the efficiency og the communication between the project poster and the freelancer.

The freelancer need to keep following the projects and need to keep bidding upon them. In many cases they do not get the project allotted. An average freelancer has to bid on 20 projects before he wins a project. A careful reply to a project poster can take two hours of a freelancer time. A quick reply does not serve the purpose, as, the project poster will assume that the bidder is not serious

enough and will therefore not alott the project to him. This implies that the system is inherently inefficient. It wastes too much of freelancers time. The result is that the system is deterrant to high quality experts, whose time is too valuable to bid on each project with high rejection ratio.

eZdia – A new platform

eZdia promises to change the way the work on freelancing is being executed. A project poster can check the expertise of the expert using expert’s extended resume and expert’s knowledge bucket to check the relevancy of his expertise to his requirement. The expert adds urls of the articles in the areas in which he possess the expertise. This helps project poster to evaluate the credentials of the freelancer before he allotts him project.

eZdia believes is real time free flow of information exchange between project poster and  the freelancer. It provides a chat option where project poster poster and the feelancer can communicate. It even provides a skype plugin – all this even before the project poster decides to allott the project to any particular freelancer. None of the existing platforms has that kind of capability as of today.

eZdia provides ability for expert search. If a project poster needs a freelancer with a particular expertise, he simply searches for the required expert using relevant keywords, checks his credentials, and starts communicating with him. This enhances the efficiency of the process. The high qaulity experts do not have to waste time on bidding on individualt projects. Instead they try to make themselves available to by indicating their expertise by way of the their profile and knowledge bucket.Off course, eZdia also promises to bring traditional project posting as in other freelancing websites. eZdia calls it acctivities.

With all these new features, this new platform shows a promising new way , online freelancing is being done. It is yet not clear if the freelancing community will embrace it. Since the idea and the concept of the knowledge bucket in eZdia is new, it is not easily understood by novice. Anothe unanswered question is whether whether project poster will start using the expert search option of eZdia in a big way to find the right expert for them.

You can make your own guess about the possible answers by joining eZdia and after exploring it.

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online marketing freelancing, job, part time

The economy is is in bad shape. The unemployment rate is hovering near 10% and we are very much close to the worst recession of the decade. Many people have been laid off and many more will get laid off. If you are already laid off you may be checking out one of the freelancing website Elance.com, Guru.com, rentacoder.com, odesk.com, ezdia.com or you may be polishing your resume and connections at LinkedIn and eZdia.com

These websites not only give you technology jobs. There are non technology works available at these websites – including  writing, graphic and art, marketing, online marketing, and other administrative and service jobs.The websites Elance.com, Guru.com, rentacoder.com, odesk.com allow clients to post jobs or projects. Freelancers bid for jobs, usually in an auction style similar to ebay. These websites include tools to manage bid process. They also have payment gateways for money transaction. Elance and oDesk also has a series of tests that providers can take to demonstrate skills. This gives confidence to the clients or projects posters that a freelancer is better positioned to provide a quality service. Elance is the oldest website that I know of. It may not be the most popular one, because of the stricter rules. RentACoder, although, mainly technology focused, supports non-technical and administrative jobs. oDesk differs in that the hourly jobs are allowed in place of fixed bidding for projects.

LinkedIN is not a project posting website. It is your online resume. But it helps you to a great degree in securing freelancing works. You can also make connections in LinkedIn and secure freelancing works from there.

eZdia.com is the newest among them and the most promising. Its rich set of features starts with what LinkedIn has today. And it goes beyond  that. An expert is searcheable in eZdia. You can ask a question from an expert in Ezdia. You can provide answers to your clients through  eZdia’s communication channels that include messaging and chat. The payment gateway of eZdia allows you to get paid for your expertise.

If, for any reason, you want to explore options to get a temporary job or a freelancing work, you should try out eZdia today.

Uncategorized ezdia, freelancing

Many people have been asking about the concept of the Knowledge bucket and the content association in eZdia. The concept is not clear to many people.We need to make people walk through the concept but it is a time consuming exercise to tell the whole story to anyone from the beginning.  So I thought up to put up my thoughts in a article.

eZdia the different from other freelancing websites odesk, dice, guru or elance. In all of the freelancing wesites, except ezdia a project is first posted by someone who needs some work get done. The bidders bid on these projects. The person who posts the project either chooses lowest bidder or uses a combination of rating, bid amount and the credentials to select the right bidder. One issue with these freelancing websites is that there is no way for the person who has posted the project to know the complete background of the person who is bidding. The expertise of the person bidding is not visible.

eZdia has a way to solve this problem. It starts with what LinkedIn has today. An expert creates a profile. This process is similar to LinkedIn. But ezdia goes beyond that. Every day, you read some good online article, that reflects your area of expertise. What you do here is, you associate that article with your profile. By associating yourself with that content of the article you are declaring your expertise in that area.

Practically to do that you click on the Knowledge Bucket on the top right corner after loging-in in eZdia. You then click on the “Add new entry to Knowledge Bucket”. This takes you to a screen where you enter the url of the article that reflects your expertise. When you submit this, the content gets associated with your expertise.

So what is the use of this ? A good question that many novice eZdian keep asking me. I will give you an example – suppose you have an expertise in Action Scripts. You acquired this expertise only recently and is yet not mentioned in your profile. A quick way to make your expertise available to those searching for Action Scripts experts, is, to associate a content corresponding to Action Script.

Now, when someone searches for “Action Scripts” in ezdia, he is able to find you. It increases the chance that you get a freelancing job in the area of your expertise represented by the content you associated.

Next time you log in to ezdia make sure that you learn how to associate a content in your knowledge bucket.

online marketing expert, ezdia, freelancing