who has the best automated softwear. joe crump , freedom soft ,or marko  please can anyone recommend an automated softwear  

Softwear? How about sweatpants?

Software? I develop my own with help from hired independent contractors. IMO, if you know exactly what you are looking for, spec it out and go the IC route. Long term, you have more control and if you get deals it is cost effective.

Originally posted by @Chris Martin :

Softwear? How about sweatpants?

Software? I develop my own with help from hired independent contractors. IMO, if you know exactly what you are looking for, spec it out and go the IC route. Long term, you have more control and if you get deals it is cost effective.

Sweatpants are a very soft wear, but I prefer aged cotton shirts.

How do you source your independent contractors? I've had this idea as well, and would like to build some systems during the slower months of winter.

@Austin Hughes I use, primarily, labor pools like elance or rentAcoder. The key is to spec out exactly what you want. Literally, I write a specification document that goes into enough detail so there is no (or very little) ambiguity and the scope of work is clear. Over the years, I have found that if you have a clear data model (ideally 'implemented' in MySQL for instance) your success rate(s) for all other functions (UI, processing functions, interfaces, etc.) goes up dramatically.

Originally posted by @Chris Martin :

@Austin Hughes 

Ive used elance and fiverr before. I can tell you know way more about the nuts and bolts than I do. Do you think freelancers can follow instructions such as "create a funnel that automatically follows up with leads marked 'call back'?"

Not likely. What is the deliverable? Funnel for what software? What is the interface?

In my world, that one line would need to be broken down into exactly what the developer needs to produce. The "premise" section on my specs identifies what software platforms they need to know and understand in order to integrate with my project. Most of the time, I'm doing custom stuff on MySQL/PHP at certain build levels on apache systems, with minimal UI (95% web-based anymore). If they implement using specific build modules/packages (e.g. curl, session support, etc.) they need to identify the dependence as part of the total 'deliverable' along with the source code, schema, etc.