Buying Services on oDesk

oDesk lets you hire, manage, and pay service providers from around the world.

Hire

oDesk has a network of over 40,000 Providers looking for work from Companies like yours. You can find Providers for small, discreet projects, longer-term projects, or augment your team on a full-time, ongoing basis.

oDesk offers two modes of work: fixed-price and hourly. Fixed Price jobs are for discreet, stand-alone projects with clear requirements - you and your Provider agree on a price (and perhaps terms for milestone payments) and you pay upon delivery. Hourly jobs are for ongoing projects, or projects where you do not have clear specifications up front. You pay only for verified hours worked, logged in accordance with oDesk policies.

Hiring on oDesk typically involves three steps: (1) Post a Job, (2) Search for Candidates (or wait for Providers to apply), (3) interview, and then hire the one(s) you like best.

Most buyers get at least ten candidates within a day or do for each job posted, usually more, but we recommend augmenting your candidate list with a targeted search of the Provider network.

Manage

oDesk provides a unique suite of collaboration and management tools for you to manage your remote team as though they were in the same office.

With the Work Diary, you can literally view screenshots, work memos, and activity for every 10 minutes of time worked by one of your providers - it's just like looking over your employee's shoulder in the next cube.

In addition, we offer a host of other tools you can use to make your projects succesful:

• oDesk Screensnap - quickly take a screenshot, host it online, and mark it up with simple drawing tools. Use it for collaborating with your team and communicating requirements, bugs, or other notes to your colleagues.
  
• oDesk Share - use oDesk's client application to share your desktop screen with a colleague in real-time.
  
• Subversion - oDesk hosts a source code repository for every registered buyer account. This is an open-source application is provided for you to use with your providers to exchange files, upload and download code, and keep archived versions of all changes.
  
• Bugzilla - oDesk hosts a bugzilla account for every registered buyer account that you can use to file bugs, tasks, or small projects for any providers on your team. Bugzilla is a powerful tool for assigning, tracking, and measuring the status and completion of tasks for your team.

Please see more about these tools by viewing the Video Tutorials for each of these applications.

Pay

oDesk offers the best possible protection and convenience for your remote work relationships. With your providers' WorkDiary and Timelogs at your disposal, you pay only for verified hours worked. This increases trust, and faciliates productive, long-term remote working relationships between you and your providers.

Or if you prefer, post a fixed-price job opening and pay only upon completion of a project at your discretion. Even on hourly projects, you may still provide a bonus payment to any provider that you've worked with at any time.

Paying multiple remote contractors has never been easier - oDesk tracks your billings each week and charges your credit card automatically. We then take care of getting the money to your Providers, anywhere in the world, via a number of last-mile withdrawal methods. You never have to worry about billing. Of course, you can always review detailed Account Activity statements and timelogs in your Billing & Payment tab.