If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or get your blog updates by email. Thanks for visiting!

This is a guest post from Brian Link who blogs at i am jack’s design

As someone interested in Internet Marketing and making money online, you’ll probably wake up one morning with a brilliant idea for a site or a product. If you have the design or programming talents to bring that idea to fruition than you’re farther ahead of the game than most people. If not, you’ll have to look into outsourcing the development of your brainchild and hopefully some of the following tips on hiring freelance web designers will come in handy for you.

Cheaper Isn’t Always Better
The old cliche that you get what you pay for is particularly true in the world of web design. With freelance sites like Rent-A-Coder and Elance gaining in popularity, the market for web developers is becoming more cutthroat every single day. Many freelancers offering cheap pricing are either just getting started and want to build up their portfolio quickly or are trying to earn an easy dollar doing low quality work. Don’t risk the foundation of your new idea on someone inexperienced or not committed to doing the highest quality work they can do.

Ask For Referrals
The best way to get inundated with low quality designers is to post a variety of “Help Wanted” ads on forums and job boards. Some of the best freelancers in the business work solely on referrals from previous clients. If you’re in the market for designers or programmers for your project, find other sites you really like and contact the site owner to see who did the work and if they’re available. When you post a listing on a freelancing site or a job board you’ll slow down getting your idea off the ground by having to wade through the huge amount of low quality bids you’ll receive.

Find Designers That Know Markup
A growing trend with freelance web designers is to design a page in a graphics program then pass that design off to another party to actually handle the coding of the site. When your design goes live and it has any kind of problems your designer will have to relay those problems to his own coder, wait for his coder to respond to him and then pass the changes on to you. There’s no reason to add an extra layer of headaches for your project. Find a designer who writes his own markup and save yourself a lot of trouble.

Never, Ever Pay Up Front
The easiest way to get burned is to pay your freelancers the entire agreed upon amount for the project up front. Most experienced freelancers will ask for 50% of the final price at the start of the project and then remaining 50% when the project is complete. If your chosen web developer wants all of the money before he starts working, and he doesn’t come very, very highly recommended from someone you trust, you should dump them and look for someone else. The key to the 50/50 split is to agree upon what constitutes a “finished” project so that everyone is clear when the job is done and when the money should be paid.

Hopefully these four simple tips prove to be useful for you if you decide to embark into the world of hiring freelance web developers. If you use your head and take the time to find the right person your project has a much better chance at success.

If you would like to submit your own guest post on this blog, please visit the Guest Post Page.