How can we sell custom software solutions

[gungupta]

Hi All,

I wanted to know that through websites like Ebay, is there any way to promote my capabilites of developing tailor made software/internet solution.

I have a team of programmers, graphic artist and illustrators. I wanted to promote my services, and i am ready to pay the advertiser for each of the project finalised.

Regards,
Gunjan

[walterweeks]

Hi,

If you are looking for an eBay-like way of selling your services, try out RentaCoder.com. This is a place where you bid for projects online.

What do you mean my promotion? I would think that eBay, RentaCoder, etc. wouldn't make a difference in terms of promotion. You are competing directly with other sellers; what edge would you get? I suppose you could try to get banner ads on some popular sites.

Besides, selling your service wares on eBay might not be the best place to do so. If you want to do some serious advertising, I would think that you'd have to spend some serious money depending on where you promote. I would imagine the U.S. would be really expensive compared to other countries.

I noticed that you are located in India...If you are interested in the popular low-cost, offshored IT services model, the advertising costs might be greater than the revenue (esp. if you are price competing).

I would talk to a few local ad agencies in your country to go over the options.

[gungupta]

Hi Walter,

Thanks for your reply. I really appreciate your feedback.
Are there any more good sites like RentaCoder.com. If so, please let me know.

Thanking you,
Gunjan

[walterweeks]

Hi Gunjan,

I'm sure there are a slew of these sorts of sites on the Web. RentaCoder is the best known one. I would simply Google for some. I bet that some of them are even advertising via Google Adwords.

I'm not sure what sort of work you are looking for, but the bad thing about getting work this way is that it is extremely price competitive. From my experience, most of the work is good, but it is all about the "quick and dirty" and little goes into design, testing, and architecture. Of course, companies really serious about their software projects won't take this avenue anyway so it's not usually an issue. If the company is actually serious, they usually have no clue about the software business in the first place.

You won't be getting great money from there since many, if not most, of the people there are out of the United States competing for bids (e.g., Russians, Indians, etc.). But, of course, the money thing is relative. A $200USD project means much more, and goes a much longer way, than it does in the United States compared to most of the world. $200 is like grocies in the US for a few weeks.

Another thing to note is that many companies/businesses on there are sometimes really cheap. For example, I saw a business advertise a max bid of $20USD or $30USD for a company logo. I can't imagine good quality coming out from that unless the person used some sort of template. And if the person that won the bid used a template program, then what's the point of the logo?

The firm that I work for is taking the quality approach and is slowly progressing to achieve SEI CMM Level 5.

[JeffreyHamby]

www.itmoonlighter.com and www.guru.com are a couple I've had success with. Most of the gigs there tended to be in the 10-20 hours of work range.

Regards,
Jeff