Hey oDesk-ers,

We are excited to announce that oDesk now offers the option to post fixed price jobs. This option is in addition to the hourly jobs we currently support.

What is Fixed Price?

Fixed Price lets buyers hire a provider to do a job for specific bid amount. The buyer then pays once the provider successfully completes the job’s requirements.

Why Fixed Price?

We’ve been listening to the oDesk Community, and here are some examples of what we’ve heard. Users told us that while an hourly relationship is great for longer projects with changing requirements, fixed price was often preferable for shorter projects with fixed requirements.

How to use Fixed Price?

• Buyers – go to www.odesk.com and post a job, and you’ll have the fixed price option next to our standard hourly option.
• Providers - go to the jobs page, and select “Fixed Price”

We’d love for you try it and let us know what you think.

Check out the Fixed Price FAQ in Community to see why we’re launching fixed price, how it works, and what it means for you.

Thanks!

Jason

Anyone who has ever tried to name a company knows how difficult it can be to find a name and a matching available URL, let alone one that you and your business partner like.

I got a kick out of this IM thread between oDesk co-founders Odysseas Tsatalos and Stratis Karamanlakis that chronicles the selection of “oDesk.com�.

(August 31, 2002)

OT - …how about nodesk.com? [Ed. note - Odysseas had worked with an outsourcing firm called “nostaff” while with a previous company.]

SK - sure, that sounds like a positive name for a company

OT - I bet people have taken the odesk.com …sh*t its still available

SK - odesk is no good, look for idesk or edesk..

OT - You won’t believe but almost every other letter is taken for *desk unless if you prefer fdesk.com

SK - I still don’t like it..

OT - you would have liked it if it were sdesk

SK - har har..

OT - We can stick a globe instead of the O you know

SK - .

OT - Or we can make it 0desk (zerodesk.)

SK - stop it

OT - I am taking it and when you find a better one we change it….

And we didn’t even need to pay $7.5 million for our URL.

Hi oDeskians - Brian Goler here. In case you didn’t catch Robert Scoble’s profile of oDesk on the ScobleShow, I want to quickly introduce myself to let you know that I’ve joined Team oDesk as VP of Marketing.

I’ve been a huge fan of oDesk since last Fall when my last company hired a sensational java engineer to develop and manage our application. If you’re an oDesk buyer and your experience has been anything like mine, you know the joy of posting a job one night and having a great provider working with you a couple days later. In our case, we interviewed eight candidates, invited three of them to complete a small test project, and hired one java rockstar (a Dutchman living in China) that has been managing the application for several months now. oDesk tools make it possible for the trans-global relationship to be more productive than we ever could have imagined.

We’ve got a lot of exciting stuff in the works that will bring even more great job opportunities and talented providers into the network. Stay tuned.

Gary and Brian talk to Robert Scoble about how oDesk works.

Learn how oDesk can help you get hired:

• Interview - 17 min 48 sec
• Demo - 7 min 49 sec

Interview:

Demo:

Here is the blog post on Robert Scoble’s blog. Many thanks to Dave McClure for introducing us to Robert.

-
Abid