Contacting a supplier directly
Seen a cool app? Want something similar? Then why not get in touch with the developer directly. If the name of the developer is not featured anywhere within the app itself then – depending on how the app is listed in the App Store – either a quick browse of the store or a Google search on the app name should tell you the name of the app developer you admire. You are then free to contact the developer directly and start from there (and you are still free to explore other options – see below).
Recommended suppliers
If you are interested in getting in touch with some suppliers directly, keep an eye on the companion website app-outsourcing-guide.com where any particular suppliers that are creating good work will be featured in the blog.
Tendering
A whole world of suppliers are out there and waiting to help you with your app and fortunately many of them are friendly, helpful and reasonably priced too. Find the right partner and there is no limit to what you can do.
There are many websites now springing up offering these kinds of services, but a great starting point are elance.com and guru.com Register for both as an employer (you may have to make a one-time small payment of a few dollars) and you are up and running.
From here you can either search for suppliers and approach them directly or – and this is probably your best option – post a description of what you require, your approximate budget and let the quotes come to you.
If you wish you can also browse the site and take a look through their registered Mobile App/Smartphone App providers or use the site search for whatever you are looking for. Here’s a couple of starting points for you:
- Elance > A search for ‘iPhone’ against all programmers
- Guru > All Mobile App developers
Elance and Guru, two of the leading outsourcing websites
You will see that all suppliers can be sorted by ‘Earnings’ and ‘Ratings’ (amongst other options) giving an initial idea at least of how others on the Elance and Guru communities rate them. Many will also have an online portfolio and website you can view previous work on.
For those who prefer to post their job on the site and receive quotes from potential suppliers though (my recommended approach for most people), my step-by-step guide for each follows. First though, some general tips on good titles, descriptions and attachments you might want to include:
Title
The suppliers might be coming to you but you still need to help them to help you. That’s why posting an effective title and description (as well as including relevant attachments) is important. The better information you provide now, the better quality responses you are likely to get and (possibly save you answering the same question 20 different times from 20 different suppliers later!)
The limit for the title is 50 characters on Elance and 40 characters on Guru, but that still gives you plenty to work with and hopefully create something better than:
- iPhone App required
- Urgently need iPhone App!
- iPhone App
Instead try to go for something that gives more of an insight into your requirements:
- News App for iPhone urgently required
- Designer/developers for iPad puzzle game
- News App for iPhone/Android/Blackberry
Description
Try to keep your description is concise as possible, while still giving your potential supplier enough information to give you a meaningful quote. Use the documents you have created so far as your starting point. As ever, take a browse and see what other companies are writing, it might give you some ideas (or just some things not to do!) The following areas of each site will probably be good starting points:
Elance.com > Work > Jobs > Web & Programming > Mobile Apps
Guru.com > Freelancers > Programming & Databases > Mobile
