Outsourcing: Million-Dollar Freelancer Sanjay Dange, Co-Founder and COO of Smartinfosys.net (Part 4)

SM: Here’s another question for you. You have talked a lot about bidding for projects, and you seem to be bidding for a lot of projects on a daily basis. Can you talk a bit about the bidding process? What do you do internally? Do you have a dedicated team who sit and monitor the projects that come up and bid on them? And how do you manage the process?

SD: The bidding process is very simple. You need to be honest and provide a clear picture of your understanding of projects to customers. Usually, outsourcing portals such as Freelancer.com only allow a single login, meaning only one person can bid using a company’s login details at a time. We have a business development team of four people who work round the clock and participate in the bidding process on various portals. The team in turn reports to me. >>>

Outsourcing: Million-Dollar Freelancer Sanjay Dange, Co-Founder and COO of Smartinfosys.net (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Of course, over time, as you built up more projects on Freelancer.com and you had testimonials, reviews, and so on that also helped you get more visibility.

Sanjay Dange: Yes. On Elance, we have 25 reviews. On Freelancer.com, we have more than 1,400 reviews. We are the leader on that portal in the website design and development category.

SM: How many customers do you have today? >>>

Outsourcing: Million-Dollar Freelancer Sanjay Dange, Co-Founder and COO of Smartinfosys.net (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: In 2006, how did the order volume change? What happened in 2006? What level did it reach?

Sanjay Dange: In mid 2006, we started getting 20 to 25 projects in a month. Plus, in a year and a half, we also acquired more than 50 new customers. We would get a lot of repeat orders from them. It’s very important to keep our clients satisfied. We were lucky that we could get a few serious customers who developed e-commerce websites and serious business portals. >>>

Outsourcing: Million-Dollar Freelancer Sanjay Dange, Co-Founder and COO of Smartinfosys.net (Part 1)

We’ve featured lots of successful outsourcing companies in this series, whether they’ve been companies that successfully outsourced work to third-party vendors or accepted outsourced tasks from other businesses.  None, however, has been quite like Smartinfosys.net. A small Web design and development company founded in Gujarat, India in 1999, Smartinfosys increased its customer base by taking advantage of Freelancer.com — then GetAFreelancer.com –to advertise Smartinfosys’ services and expand its horizons beyond India’s borders. >>>

Outsourcing: Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Well, I think the reputation system, the feedback system, all that helps. Switching gears a bit, I run an initiative called One Million by One Million where we are running a for-profit virtual incubator. Our goal is to help a million entrepreneurs reach $1 million in revenue by 2020, around the world. It sounds as though you have freelancers running million-dollar businesses. If you were to kind of segment your freelancer user base, how many power freelancers do you have?

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Outsourcing: Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The truth is, there are a tremendous number of developing countries, the same countries you mentioned, India, the Philippines, Malaysia. Those are just as present on oDesk and Elance as well.

Matt Barrie: They are. When I checked earlier in the year, the number one demographic of users were Americans.

SM: Because Americans are in a real mess right now. There are so many unemployed people. So, yes, there are people signing up. But if you actually look at how people are hiring, I’m not so sure Americans are getting hired as much. >>>

Outsourcing: Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com (Part 4)

SM: You said India is number three in terms of employers. That’s the one that I find interesting. The fact that India is number one in terms of freelancers is a very obvious one. That’s where outsourcing really took off, especially software outsourcing. That makes total sense to me, but India as number three on the employer side is a bit interesting. Can you give me some more color on that? >>>

Outsourcing: Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What is your business model? Do you charge a percentage?

Matt Barrie: We take a commission from the employer. We take 3% of the payments made or $3, whichever is higher. From the worker, we take 10% or $5, whichever is higher. But we do have a membership subscription package where if you subscribe for $24.95, it’s free for employers completely. For workers, the commission is 3%.

SM: That’s an essential difference from the oDesk business model. The oDesk business model is 10% flat. >>>