Find a freelancer - this is the first source that arises from the hands
This logic is so
In Digital Marketing and Web Development
If you are thinking about the topic right now, how find a freelancer for your project, offer this plan for 10 minutes. Let's dissect this
Hidden Cost #1: Time as a Chief Executive (Management Cost)
When you hire an agency, you
When do you decide find a freelancer , you automatically assign yourself to the position of project manager. But you are the director
Instead you start:
- Write TK (Technical Specifications), because a freelancer without TK will do the wrong thing.
- Explain what “user-friendly” is because freelancing
- Moderate deadlines every day on Telegram.
- Resolve conflicts when the layout designer argues with the copywriter.
Mathematics: The freelancer took 50,000 rubles for the site. You're back to micromanaging 20 hours of your workday.
Hidden expense #2: Technical debt and a hodgepodge of plugins
This is the worst problem for business. Freelancers (especially low and medium price segment)
- hot
- red night
- Need an application form? Plugin.
- Need SEO? Buy.
What happens after six months: WordPress update is coming. One plugin is incompatible with another. The site is crashing. Or a critical vulnerability pops up in one of the abandoned plugins, and hackers break into your site, inserting viruses or links to casinos. Search engines (Yandex and Google) support this and send your site to a ban.
you try again find a freelancer to fix it. But a new freelancer works in this code and says: “This is all garbage, you need to redo it from scratch.” You pay twice. Agencies create cleanly and use a minimum number of dependents, providing high-quality site support so that such a situation would not be formal at all.
Hidden cost No. 3: Lack of marketing logic (Website for the sake of the website)
A freelancer is a performer. You say: “Make me 5 blocks: home, about us, services, reviews, contacts.” He does. The result is a beautiful digital business card that is absolutely not for sale.
Before drawing a layout, a professional agency asks questions:
- Who is your target audience?
- What hurts her?
- What is your unique selling proposition (USP)?
- What will be the sentiment among conversion analysts?
When you just find a freelancer for layout, you start using a tool that is not designed for marketing. The texts on the site are written “for reading”, and not for searching by robots (SEO). Buttons that call to action will be lost in the background of a bright design. As a result, you invest money in Yandex.Direct, drive traffic to this beautiful site, and the conversion is 0.2%. Money goes down the drain because of usability. This can be avoided if you initially approach the project comprehensively, as we do when clients order from us turnkey development of a store or landing page .
Hidden expense No. 4: Legal irresponsibility and missed deadlines
How does a freelancer work? He doesn't have an office. He has no salary. Today he is in a good mood - he is doing his project. Tomorrow he was offered urgent work for a little more money - your project is put on the shelf. The day after tomorrow his computer broke down or the power went out.
You do not have an employment contract with him. You most likely do not have a normal civil law agreement (CLA) with penalties for late payments. You have a correspondence on Telegram, where he writes: “I’ll do it tomorrow.” This “tomorrow” can last for months.
And yours lights up on time. Launching an advertising campaign is changing. Competitors are taking over the market. Lost profits from missed product launch deadlines often increase the price difference between an agency and a freelancer tenfold.
Hidden Cost #5: Data Loss and Security
When the project is completed, where should I store the project sources? Where to leave access from hosting, domain, databases, CRM systems?
A common situation: a freelancer registers a domain in his name or his Yandex.Direct. If you break up badly, you increase your brand, your traffic, your customer base. You will have to sue or buy your own assets for crazy money.
In addition, freelancers often leave themselves “back doors” (backdoors) in the site’s code in case you tell them to pay for minor changes. Or they simply forget passwords from your servers after a year, and it becomes impossible for the network to regain access.
Hidden cost #6: Inability to scale
Business is growing. Yesterday you had 10 products, today you need 10,000. Yesterday there was a simple application form, tomorrow you need integration with 1C, a loyalty system, a client’s personal account.
A freelancer who put together a website on the theme of “snot and tape” will physically not be able to implement complex business logic. He simply lacks competence. You need to look for a new team (agency), and they tell you that very terrible phrase: “Everything needs to be thrown out and rewritten from scratch.”
Collaboration with a professional team means scalability. If you do agency corporate website , you know that in 3 years you can come to this occasion and say: “We need to improve the B2B portal module.” And they do this on the opposite, built architecture, and not next to the foundation.
Case: How “savings of 200 thousand” cost the company 1.5 million
True story (names have been changed). A workwear manufacturing company decided find a freelancer to create an online store. The agency asked for 600,000 rubles. A freelancer offered to do “the same thing” for 150,000 rubles.
What happened:
- The site took 4 months to complete instead of the promised 3 weeks.
- The owner of the company personally returned approximately 40 hours to manage the project.
- The site was built on curved terrain. When placing more than 5 items in the cart, the server gives an error 500 (Internal server error). People couldn't buy!
- No support from 1C. Managers manually entered orders.
- After 2 months the site was hacked and it started showing up on Google
Result: The company lost 4 months of the sales season (lost profit ~ 1,000,000 rubles). Spent 150,000 on a freelancer. I spent another 50,000 to urgently “patch the hole” from another programmer.Final “savings”: minus 1,850,000 rubles.
You can explore examples of what projects should look like from the very beginning in our portfolio with cases .
When is a freelancer OK?
To be objective, let's say: freelancers are needed. But only for highly specialized, one-time, non-critical tasks.
- Draw an icon for the application.
- Write one article on the site.
- Retouch 10 photographer
- Upload 100 products from Excel into a ready-made, well-configured database (under strict control).
If the problem affects profits, data security or company image - find a freelancer - it's Russian roulette.
Summary: You always get what you pay for
Web development and digital marketing have stopped
When choosing an agency, you are not just buying “the hands of a programmer.” You are buying:
- Quality control system
- Management expertise (the project manager will not let the deadline be missed).
- Legal security (everything is under contract, everything is available to you, NDA is signed).
- A guarantee that the site will solve your business problem and not just hang on the Internet.
Stop playing the lottery with strangers
In **DOM-marketingDOM-Marketing We do not compete with freelancers on price. We compete on quality, reliability and return on investment (ROI) for your business. We are pregnant and responsible for the result. We have a staff of 15+ specialists who are ready to solve any design problem before starting work with ERP systems.
Stop looking for cheaper places. Start looking for who is more reliable.
📞 Discuss your project with an expert: 89617842290 🌐 Leave a request for development: dom-marketing.ru ✈️ Write to Telegram: @Dkrasilnikov
Your business is too important to trust to random people on the Internet. Leave it to the professionals.
Have you ever hired freelancers and regretted it? Share your “horror” stories in the comments, it’s very useful for other entrepreneurs to read! And don't forget to subscribe to the channel.
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