Every WordPress project is a puzzle. It is like a set of legos: small pieces fit together to create a successful outlook. However, there’s a catch. You have to determine the right building blocks to put together effectively because not every piece fits in every place.
When you’re looking for a WordPress developer, you should know there are several ways for you to find the right one, one of which is scouting for freelance developers on outsourcing platforms.
The world of freelance developers is an enormous beast featuring unknown people working for you from all over the world. In many cases, there are little to none regulations and uncertainty is (unfortunately) the standard currency. I see why all of this might scare someone off.
Yet, tapping into this new gig-based/freelancing economy is a massive opportunity for your business, as well as for many others. And that’s why I’d like to provide you with some first-hand tips that will make your search for the right WordPress developer less painful within this ineffable world that freelancers live in.
So here it goes…
Tip 1: Be aware of the old saying “Price buyer, twice buyer”
If you can’t count on personal referrals and need a WordPress developer, there’s a good chance you’ll be starting with a Google search. I get it, and that’s totally understandable. In the past, I did it too because I had no idea what to look for in a developer and had no experience yet working with remote developers.
But then I gave it a try, more than once actually, to understand whether it was just me or the developer who wasn’t a good fit. Then, I realized the point of failure had nothing to do with the two of us strictly speaking, it was the platforms themselves who were allowing us to fail.
When you’re looking for a freelance WordPress developer without guidance, the price might lead your choice and will lead you to pick a candidate just because they’re cheaper. Especially, searching for the perfect WordPress developer might take you onto websites and platforms where literally anyone can sign up as a WordPress developer and the range of developers here are completely unknown.
Just look at this: it took me less than 1 minute to set up a developer gig on Fiverr to create WordPress websites as a non-developer!
WordPress Developer and Codeable Expert Nathan Reimnitz explains this phenomenon with a clear example:
Just because someone is willing to provide a similar service for (slightly) less money doesn’t mean that they’re going to provide the same level of quality. I mean, imagine, a dentist or a doctor. Would you trust a dentist you found on Fiverr to put braces on your teeth for five dollars?
Well, I guess we both know the answer here: nobody would do that. Similarly, you shouldn’t be exclusively price-driven when it comes to working with freelance developers on your project. Lower costs often mean lower quality. Why would they charge you so little, if they were able to provide you with high-quality development work? Currency exchange rates and lower costs of labor can’t justify developing an entire WordPress website for just $5 or hourly rates that look about the same.
As Nathan continues:
With Codeable, you’ve got hand-picked expert WordPress developers who are all committed to quality. Through our tests to be accepted as experts to the Codeable platform we have to prove this. We must also continue to prove it on an ongoing basis for every project we work on.
High-quality is not just about the actual code, it’s also linked to getting a premium working relationship with a professional developer. This means getting timely updates, the possibility to always have an open line of communication if anything unexpected pops up, and many other benefits that working with a developer whose business goal is to go for quantity rather than quality can’t just provide you.
Tip 2: Be proactive after you’ve posted your problem/project
The majority of freelance marketplace websites have one thing in common: usually, the user who is looking for a developer publishes a title and description of what they need help with, add more specific info and links to examples/files to use as references, and then they wait for the bids to eventually come in.
They share their issues, then they wait.
With this approach, you’re lowering your chances of finding the best candidate for your needs because you’re no longer in control and you’re relying on the developers’ quickest responses to decide.
Even though this is a common approach on such platforms, it’s also the average: it’s what almost everyone looking for the best freelance developer is doing.
And do you know how quickly you could take advantage of this stalled scenario and shoot for the really good developers? Just be proactive and go the extra mile by trying to collect more info around a single developer (previous experience, average ratings, etc.) and really understand whether they’re a good fit for your project.
As Nathan suggests:
When you go to buy something from Amazon, what do you do? Do you look at the ratings? Do you look at the written reviews to see if other people have been satisfied with their purchase? Probably… And so it’s very similar here, in the client-developer relationship. Ask yourself — Can this service provider provide me with the service that I need? How have they provided similar services it to people in the past? How many people have they provided these services to in the past? What’s their average rating? Make your decision based on this data rather than just the brief conversation you had with them.
For example, after you post your project here on Codeable and start receiving questions and comments from some of our experts, you should check out the profile pages for those developers. This way you’re spending some time getting to know them a little more and have a better understanding of their professional experience. You might want to check the tags they chose to highlight on their page, read through their descriptions to have a clearer picture of their core skills, and of course, read some of their reviews, check their average rating.
There’s more you could do here, even if you’re not a technical business owner, but just with that, you’ll have a leg up in your quest to find the perfect WordPress developer.
Tip 3: Be choosy about websites and platforms that let you hire freelancers
Price, that damned price. It drives many of our decisions, sometimes by blinding us when it comes to picking a decision on a solution A vs B because nobody wants to squander money.
But is price the ultimate factor to a great choice at the end of the day? Well, no it isn’t. A business choice is more of an equation, where price is just one of the many factors.
If you look at it this way, you’d start to notice how poor of a business decision is for you to settle for any outsourcing developer websites. Is your project or your business something you’d settle for?
As Nathan comments:
Codeable has assembled a team of the world’s top talent. And they’ve done this in a way that no one else has, specifically for WordPress developers. Now you’ve got this network of the best 2% of WordPress developers who have applied to participate in their platform from all around the world. When it comes to Codeable, you can rest assured that when you’re hiring an expert, the quality of their work is top notch. Codeable is so committed to maintaining the quality of their developers that if we (developers) start slacking or deliver a poor quality project, we’re not going to be a part of their platform anymore.
And if budget is still your main concern, there are ways for you to still take advantage of higher-quality WordPress developers, for example by working on an MVP and then allocate your resources based on data from your first users, rather than just spreadsheets.
Wrapping up
I have nothing against Fiverr, and honestly, I use them from time to time. That’s one marketplace for freelancers where I know I can find help for small tasks, such as curating a list of Twitter accounts I’m interested in, or finding their email addresses and the like. Still, before hiring someone over there, I’m aware that I could be dragged into a long research (or higher costs) to find a freelancer who’s able to deliver what’s a good-enough-for-me type of work.
Surely, I’d never start looking for a WordPress developer for my new website there. Why? Because even if theoretically there could be some good ones working on that platform, it’d be almost impossible for me to find them. It’d be a massive drainage of my resources and time.
That’s the main point here: given how much time you’ll be required to invest in finding a good candidate – read again, I said “good” not “great” – and trust them right off the bat, you’d find it to be a more effective and efficient solution to delegate that process entirely to a third-party.
That’s the bare-bones reason of why Codeable was created in the first place: to take care of the trust-building factor for both clients and developers. With the Codeable platform several elements, such as the quality assurance system, the vetting process, etc., all comes by design. Or as Nathan puts it:
When it comes to assessing the quality of a developer’s work, if you’ve hired them from Codeable initially, you really don’t have anything to asses. There are all kinds of developers in Codeable, some have been with them for many years and have completed over 1000 projects, others are a bit greener. Maybe you want to work with them, maybe you’d like to work with one of the more seasoned vets. Whatever you decide, everyone’s a great choice here because we’ve all passed the test. The commitment to quality is one thing we all have in common and that’s the beauty of hiring a WordPress developer from Codeable.
This blog post features Nathan Reimnitz who is a top performing WordPress expert with an amazing reputation amongst his clients and colleagues on Codeable. Apart from being a rockstar freelancer, Nathan also gives back to the freelance community at large through his writings on his blog, and many other well-regarded online publications.
