Lazy Man and Money got me thinking when he wrote a post about hiring a virtual assistant and although I already outsource a great deal, I still have quite a few projects on my to do list that I really wanted to move forward on this year.   So I began my journey to complete a personal project that’s been on my ‘to do’ list for quite a long time and I hired a person on E-lance to do the work.

I wasn’t sure how much the project would cost and when I posted the job I got bids ranging from $50 to $300 for the project.  At first I thought it would be harder to actually find the person to do the work than doing the actual work since I got so many bids but I quickly settled on a median price for the project (around $100).

What did I learn from the experience?   Trust is a very difficult thing to do over anonymous online outsourcing job portals.   I quickly realized during the project that there were so many possible legal issues that could come up that I wasn’t sure if the work would ever get completed.     The key problem with e-lance is not knowing what ulterior motives any of the workers on the job board might have when conducting business online.

For example, let’s say I hire someone to write some code for my website.  How do I know that it is their unique code and didn’t steal….err… borrow from someone else?   How do I protect myself, legally, if it turns out the person I hired grabbed some code online and then sold it as his own?   Elance doesn’t seem to offer any indemnification or legal forms  to address this issue.   How do I know that the person who sold me the code won’t come back and threaten to sue me if I hit on a multi-million dollar idea with the code he/she wrote?  What if the code works fine for a while then breaks with an upgrade?  Can I still find the original coder?   What if it means losing tens of thousands in sales while the code is broken?

I quickly learned a lesson that if you plan on using anything that is developed/created on e-lance, you need to make sure you have the appropriate legal protections in place to avoid headaches down the line.

I’ll probably continue to use e-lance but only on a very limited basis and that’s too bad because I was ultimately very happy with the work and results but the risk is too great.   Hey, E-lance, can you add some risk management perspective to your business model?  Do that and I’ll be doing a whole lot more business with you!