Where and what do you outsource if at all?

I once read a terrible book called (iirc) the four hour work week. Basically the book drones on about how awesome your life is when you outsource everything in it to cheap overseas labor. The book has some truth to it though, and it's a theme in a lot of "how to" business start up guides.

I don't have the hugest budget in the world, so I've been getting the majority of things from the scirra store, steam, and fiverr.

What types of places do you outsource work to, or do you go a step further and just hire contractors?

I would very much like to hire an intern (social media manager and/or web coder) to do the jobs I am normally capable of but can't get to because of my focus on the actual game development. I'd like to hear anyone's experiences with interns as well

Smart people outsource lot of things and focus on the important, but i don't believe that fiverr will help much most of the service there are not professional.

Deviantart is one of the best places to get professional people.

I'm not familiar with deviant art beyond looking at photos, I don't see anything on the homepage for hiring (I don't seem to see a forum either?). How does that work?

skelooth Jobs/commission on deviant art

DuckfaceNinja

Thanks so much! Bookmarked! Looks really active too.

DuckfaceNinja

Thanks so much! Bookmarked! Looks really active too.

I once posted jobs there too, 5-6 years back when I was really active at making arts. It is a very competitive place, so it is very easy to secure some low-cost artist. Noteworthy countries in terms of generally low-cost but HQ, not in particular order: India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Taiwan. I give credit to India, Indonesia and Malaysia as normally, these people have the better English communication than the other mentioned.

Just some advice:

• Be careful of middle jerks. These people pretend to be an artist, but all they did is leveraging the job to other artist who are unaware of job offer. So they make money just from leveraging. You should be able to cut the cost if you work directly to the actual artist.
• Only work with somebody who has a public gallery, do not be tempted with offers from emails with arts attached, the arts probably isn't theirs. This is done mostly by middle jerks.
• Ensure that you're buying copyright, not the right to use. There are artist who exploited this by recycling the same arts to a few buyers/users, and caused the users to fight among themselves for the right of exclusive art display/use. This is very applicable for game, because stories like this happens to game and flash movies 90% of the time. There are even a story of an artist who went further to take legal action towards press companies, just because the press companies should get the right from them instead of developers who used his/her art. Price for copyright generally costlier than the right to use, can be easily become 5 fold the right to use price.
• The top post to the right of the screen doesn't mean they are the best, it means they are desperate, you might want to exploit that.
• High cost per hour doesn't mean it is expensive, there is 2 notable guys from Swirtzerland and France, they charge ridiculously expensive but they get the job done faster, means you're paying about the same amount of money, same quality but faster delivery. Sorry I don't remember their names.
• Tips if you're dealing with a pro or a student: Offer them an immortalized webpage of endorsement in your game's website as their portfolio. A lot of them are very encouraged with this kind of offer, you might get discount though. A pro might not be shaken to this kind of offer but this is always effective with students.

Thanks for the advice DuckfaceNinja !

I've honesty found outsourcing work to India in general is fantastic. Not always the best quality, but when outsourcing I don't really expect AAA quality or I'd be doing it myself/contracting local.

skelooth

DuckfaceNinja

I use Odesk.com and it has been great. Very reasonable prices and you don't have to pay until the job is finished if you don't want. It's all about finding the right person anywhere. I hired 3 different people for similar jobs and have just stuck to one person because he was way better and easier to work with.

The difficulty I have had is making sure they are English speaking as first language preferably. So you can weed out who you don't want. There are a lot of talented people on that website who do it for fun as well as a living. I found someone in the UK who does incredible work for 1/4th the price of someone else I could find doing the same caliber of work.

He has been doing all my art and animation for great prices and is willing to make any changes quickly.