My first experience with cloud sourcing proves to be quite positive. Within minutes of uploading my technical specifications of one particular Joomla 1.5 module to the net, I got multiple bids placed on this project. Bids can mainly be placed into a few groups of people.
- American!!! (surprisingly)
- Indians
- Chinese
- Eastern Europeans of Slavic origins
One thing I notice across the board within each group is this
Americans try to hard sell their service attempting to by pass the use of the system in the process. The main thing that worries me is the fact I don’t really feel confident they actually read my technical specifications before they tried hard selling their service. Their rates are generally higher than group 3 and 4.
Indians try their method of selling their services too. Interestingly their prices are generally the most expensive of the lot. These are mainly Indian companies and not individuals. They mainly talk about how great their companies are. In the process they bombard me with tons of information which I do not find relevant at all to my technical requirements. (why are they talking to me about asp.net, when Joomla is the only thing I am interested in at the moment?) Being somewhat impatient as I am when I cannot find anything pertaining to my technical specifications in their responses, I skipped through the whole lot of them and proceeded to the next bidders in line.
The Chinese are very emotional and enthusiastic, their prices are comparable to group 4. One thing that worried me is how them expressed themselves in English. They didn’t really sound very fluent in them. Nothing was addressed with regards to the details of my technical specifications.
Finally there are the Eastern Europeans. One important thing to note is the fact they don’t hard sell at all. In fact, one of them a Russian jumped the gun, by offering the lowest bid and started working on the problem anywayz. He did a very good job and I am very satisfied with his work.