I did freelancing till 2010. And I will say its 100% your mistake. But I believe now you know how it works. Someone said its the Elance model problem and blah blah. When you assign the project to any developer, the payment, the model doesn't matter. You both agreed to money, deadline, product, etc. What you need to do is make real short milestones and precise task list. Which includes bug fixing, meeting schedules, and of-course delivery of source-code (I prefer a private Git repo with bitbucket or something similar) and hosting to app store. Both should exactly know what needed to be developed and on what date & time. It should go like this:
Milestone 1 ($50 / 2hours / 4th Nov 2013 - 10AM delivery):
- Git init
- splash screen
# Your task (1 hr) -> test - release $50 as a go ahead
Milestone 2 ($50 / 2hours / 4th Nov 2013 - 10AM delivery)
- Screen 1 - form submit
- Backend - process form
# Your task (1 hr) -> test - release $50 as a go ahead
.........
You should also include closing of project, giving reviews and source code details in the milestones.
You are not hiring an agency whom you know and who won't mess up (btw, even big agencies mess up). You are hiring a guy whom you have never seen/met. And you just paying $800 for an iPhone app! What you need to do is just tighten up the milestones! If he have good reviews - he definitely have the capability to do the job.
Its good to learn app development (also helps to check developer's source) - but there's nothing to be afraid of elance or freenalcer.com. You just need to use the right strategy. The app idea is already in your mind. Spend 2-3 days to plan the project management and make a list of tasks. Then you are all set!
So basically you have to micro-manage the project in extreme detail, which:
a) takes up a lot of your time; and
b) requires in-depth knowledge of programming tasks.
That doesn't strike me as a very useful arrangement. If the guy had that kind of time and knowledge in the first place, why wouldn't he just build it himself?
I occasionally do freelance mobile app & data analysis work, and also subcontract some of the work to other freelancers. The ability to write great specs and milestones (micro-managing) is the biggest cost differentiator in commissioning work.
• If you know precisely what you want (to pixel-perfect photoshop mockups of every screen and interaction), you can hire anyone on Elance for $10/hour and get a good result.
• If you know mostly what you want - a written spec with some gaps - you need to hire a skilled, local developer for 50-100$/hour who will sit down with you to describe the relative complexity of features, make technical decisions, and offer suggestions on what to cut out to reduce cost.
• If you only have a vague vision, you need a huge budget, because you are hiring an UX designer, graphical designer, developer and a business advisor, and paying for their time spent on changes after seeing prototype demos.
The more you "micro-manage", the cheaper developers you can hire (and still get an acceptable result), and the less time you need to budget for changes. For a $800 project, there is no other way to make it work.
Milestone 1 ($50 / 2hours / 4th Nov 2013 - 10AM delivery): - Git init - splash screen # Your task (1 hr) -> test - release $50 as a go ahead
Milestone 2 ($50 / 2hours / 4th Nov 2013 - 10AM delivery) - Screen 1 - form submit - Backend - process form # Your task (1 hr) -> test - release $50 as a go ahead ......... You should also include closing of project, giving reviews and source code details in the milestones.
You are not hiring an agency whom you know and who won't mess up (btw, even big agencies mess up). You are hiring a guy whom you have never seen/met. And you just paying $800 for an iPhone app! What you need to do is just tighten up the milestones! If he have good reviews - he definitely have the capability to do the job.
Its good to learn app development (also helps to check developer's source) - but there's nothing to be afraid of elance or freenalcer.com. You just need to use the right strategy. The app idea is already in your mind. Spend 2-3 days to plan the project management and make a list of tasks. Then you are all set!
And congratulations for your app!