I look at it like this: There are 4 directions that a software project can be constrained: Time, price, scope, and quality.
1. Elance or ODesk can offer you fixed time, price, and scope, but highly erratic quality.
2. An expensive contracting agency can offer you fixed time, scope, and quality, but with high costs.
3. This site promises fixed cost, and quality, but makes no promises on scope or completion timeline.
All that's left is for someone to make a site that has fixed timing, like "Software Prototypes in One Week". I'll wait for that one to hit the front page of HN. As a developer I'd actually prefer that because I know when it's going to be over.
More realistic though; you really cannot do anything for $3500 (E2500). Well you can do something but it won't be very nice I don't think. E10k is good for a proto.
Honestly, it might sound silly, but it would be useful. Give a client an idea of what can be done in a week, lets them know what can be off the shelf and what has the be built, etc. Something like $85 an hour @ 3500 a week. Better than spending a week in meetings arguing about scope.
Hmm, so as a software consultant I'm impressed with your business model because it seems like a scheduling nightmare. How do you manage to have available resources when people contact you? Do you sometimes have to say no if your team is busy with something else?
Since we're focusing on prototypes/MVPs the process is very iterative and feedback oriented, so scheduling just consists of fitting well-defined blocks together. We've also got a balanced team which helps us parallelize. There haven't been any scaling problems yet, but when there are we're ready to bring on extra talent.
I have used elance for graphics work 4 times. The 3 was fine, acceptable result, nothing outstanding. That one time it was an awful poor choice. But for a long-term project, expensive project I'm not sure if eLance is the way to go.
1. Elance or ODesk can offer you fixed time, price, and scope, but highly erratic quality.
2. An expensive contracting agency can offer you fixed time, scope, and quality, but with high costs.
3. This site promises fixed cost, and quality, but makes no promises on scope or completion timeline.
All that's left is for someone to make a site that has fixed timing, like "Software Prototypes in One Week". I'll wait for that one to hit the front page of HN. As a developer I'd actually prefer that because I know when it's going to be over.