oDesk has been around for a few years now, and I’ve used it a few times, hired a few people, but since moving to Thailand a couple of years ago, my staff costs here are so low I never need to outsource, I was in an outsourced country!

But, today with our current major project we need a pretty good flash developer, and we only need someone for about a week, so there’s no point recruiting someone, or even bothering trying to find someone in Thailand, I’ve just posted a new job on oDesk in about 10 minutes.

So easy to do I love it. And the really good thing about oDesk from a buyers point of view is that we have full insight into what they are doing and if they are really doing work – the oDesk system takes screenshots like every 15 seconds so we know if they are actually there doing work or are slacking off doing other stuff…

All round oDesk is a great place to outsource to, it’s just so easy, fast and worry free.

On top of my server moves, I’ve also gone through the motions of upgrading legacy apps, as well as this blogs wordress and phpbb3 forum.

I don’t know what version of WP I was running before, but this new version is pretty cool, better design and interface, nice and clean, and I’ve upgraded phpbb from 3RC3 to the latest version, 3.0

This re-iterates what I was talking about in my last post, the more apps and sites you have floating around the more sites and systems you have to mange, update and maintain on a monthly basis.

All of my sites are run on some kind of underlying application, be it 3rd party or custom written, and all of them require upgrades and maintenance to keep them running efficiently, and to make sure they aren’t venerable to attacks or hacks.

Spending this time is fine, as long as there’s a benefit, if you have all these sites out there that don’t have any traffic and you’re spending time upgrading them then you’re only taking time away that’s better spent serving other sites – you could be spending an extra hour a day promoting your more profitable sites while your screwing around with un-required maintenance.

Really look at all the sites your running and have a good think about what’s up there of value to you, and what’s just a waste of time and resources, kill them and maximize the time you spend to make your main sites more profitable.