Find Most Skilled Freelancer for Your Task
This is a hard task. Ask your friends and relatives for recommendations. Check freelancer’s sites and their blogs. Write to their sites and check response times. You’ll want a fast response and a full-time Skype / email communication possibility.
There are several big sites to hire freelancers, like freelancer.com, upwork.com, European Twago, Israeli Freelancerim and there are probably some others, that I just didn’t noticed yet (please add your favourites in comments).
A perfect freelancer is hard to find and once somebody have found one, they won’t let such person go easily.
Don’t gamble on cheap freelancers, they are never good. Experience costs whole lot.
Be sure they do understand your needs. They should ask a lot of questions and you should provide clear answers. If you don’t know such answers you always could consult with them to set objectives together.
Set Clear Tasks
Tasks should be set clear and easily understandable. If you are ordering a website, make sure you also create a site plan with main sections and functionality description. It’s a good idea to create site pages even in MS Word, with the needed content and functionality description. For a multilingual website specify languages. Also specify if you’ll need your logo in different languages.
Also be sure to describe site’s target audience, the purpose of your website and its functionality. Show few similar websites you like, describe what you do like about them.
Setting a color scheme and fonts from the beginning would save a lot of time for both of you, as these choices are most time-consuming during mock-up creation to many designers.
Your Requirements
It’s important to build a list of your requirements. For HTML/CSS tasks they could be: a list of compatible browsers and versions, use of retina optimized images, responsive layout etc.
Listen Carefully to Your Freelancer
Your freelancers might have a lot of experience in his field. Their suggestions could be priceless. Still follow your objectives, because some task may look too complicated for your freelancers, so they’ll try to find some arguments to avoid committing on it. This is likely to happen when you are negotiating a fixed price. If you are paying by hours, take such arguments more seriously.
Pay in Time
Some fast down payment is a good way to start a relationship. It shows you are obliged to pay all fees in time and without a delay.
Freelancers love their work, but they are totally depending on you regarding the money. You may be a bad client, but your only real objective as a client, when working with a freelancer is to pay in time and without problems.
If you can’t set clear tasks, can’t communicate the way your freelancer would understand what’s needed, can’t provide a clear brief or workflow decisions, it’s OK. You may even hire a project manager if you really can’t provide such objectives. But if you don’t pay in time, no freelancer will work for you.
Thumbs up for a clear text!
If you are thinking to start your career as a freelancer building a website is the first step. I totally agree with you that you should be paid on time. This is also a sign of a good freelancer. Upwork, fiverr and some other sites provide you the facility of payment. But I suggest you sign contracts using facilities provided by Approveme whereever you think that a payment issue may arise in future.