jrockfl - 11:17 am on Apr 3, 2012 (gmt 0)

I have had great results with using elance. I have been a member there for around 10 years.
You can work with companies or individuals. Read their reviews, the number of projects they have completed, and discusss things with them before you hire them.

Recently, I hired an overseas company on elance to create a mobile version of my e-commerce web site. They are creating all of the html and css and I'm using that and adding the code.
Now, they dont have access to my entire server they just send me the completed markup once it is completed. If I did decided to start outsourcing more of my work to them, I would feel comfortable
and setup access for them.

Programmers might the ability to write the code and create the application, but that does not mean they have the entrepreneurial skills needed to make everything successful.

Yes, I would start them off on a simple project to see how they do. For example on my category pages, there are no pagination of products. For example, 1- 10, 11 - 20, etc..
All of the products are displayed. At first this was ok, because I did not have many products, but now as it has increased I might want to have pagination or some filters at the top
of the page to limit the number of product to be displayed at one time.

But anyways, I would work on my requirements for the developer, setup the development environment for he/she and see how they do.