My partner in the Ben's Friends patient support networks, Ben Munoz, was interviewed by Business Week as part of an article on Odesk. We use Odesk a bunch for administrative and SEO tasks and are big fans (along with Elance, a similar service). The only problem was that they didn't credit BensFriends.org or give us a link. :(
Here is Ben's quote, which is 100% true. If we didn't use a service like Odesk, we'd never be able to scale Ben's Friends like we have.
Oh well, we'll get them next time.
"Benjamin Munoz, an Austin-based entrepreneur, has used several international outsourcers whose lower costs have benefitted both his two startup companies and his nonprofit website. "If we had to pay for U.S. or Western talent, it would be pretty difficult to do what we're doing," he says.
Recently he created a 90-second video for his nonprofit site—a networking organization for people with rare diseases—that cost him a little over $300 working with an artist and a musician in the Philippines. That's about one-tenth of what he expected to pay using domestic talent."