Small businesses involve a lot of small tasks. Probably more small tasks than any one person can reasonably handle. But building a team in increments of fulltime positions is very tough. What do you do when you need 20% of a mechanical designer or 5% of an editor ?
One option is raising money to hire people and pay their wages, before their work is generating revenue. This is risky and expensive. As they say, once bitten twice shy !
Another option is to use consultants or contractors in your local market. I’m living in a town of about 5000 people so my local market is limited. Consultants need to bill considerable hours to keep their overheads manageable and rates competitive. Contractors need to bill even more because their work has to pay for themselves and their management.
My favorite option is oDesk. This is a community of freelancers who bid to work on small or large tasks via the oDesk.com website. When you need a couple of hours of help this can be be very useful. A lot of the freelancers on oDesk have day jobs. So they are happy to take on a small well defined task. This is a real win-win and has allowed me to get help much earlier on than would have otherwise been possible. Do More with Less on oDesk
For some surprising statistics visit the oconomy page. In October 2011, more than 2 million hours were worked through oDesk. I’ll post more about how we are using oDesk in the future.