Day 10 - Design Spec Done! Job Posted
OK, the design spec is done. You can see it here. The next step is to get prospective designers to look at it and make proposals to do the work. In the past, I might have contacted web designers I know and have worked with in the past. But for Online Primary I decided to try a couple of the internet-based work exchanges that have cropped up recently. (About a dozen years ago I tried to interest people in working with me on a website concept I called Freelance Exchange, or fex.com. But I got no takers. The time may not have been right then, but it appears the time has now arrived.)
The first service I decided to try is oDesk. So I created an account on oDesk and filled in the forms to create a job posting for “Website Design.” The posting covered general details of the job, but linked to the design spec for all the details.
The job post went up in the middle of the day. I checked in on oDesk again after dinner tonight and there were already six expressions of interest. I made a preliminary survey of the proposals and found they were all from people or organizations in India. Most were from companies rather than individual designers. (This latter fact wasn’t a problem, but was a bit of a surprise.) I decided not to look into the proposals further until tomorrow, allowing time for more to come in.