WEB search/research

We plan to outsource a wide range of internet search/research tasks at low cost – low competence model.

In a typical task a research objective will be given, we pay for X amount of hours for a particular task and expect a freelancer to do their best in a given amount of hours.

Example task – search for companies in a specific country that can export wooden homes in standard shipping container for future assembly in EU countries. Buying 12 hours of research. Next task can be completely different and ask for list of least known physicists with Phd degree preferably not even working in the field right now. The point is, it can be anything and sometimes the task might be actually impossible to do, but we pay for trying.

Freelancer is expected to conduct internet research on a given topic with an attempt to find relevant information, freelancer is expected to structure this information in a google document that is no longer than 10 pages and includes links to relevant web pages with description of what is there to check.

As a control measure, browsing history with time worked on the task must be provided.

What we are trying to do is to save time on googling things. The issues that may arise are:
1) Sometimes we will outsource research tasks that require competences that freelancer may lack, in such case it is expected that freelancer will conduct a quick wiki check on the topic to get a bit familiar and this is included in paid research time but must not exceed 25% of the bought time.
2) Sometimes we will assign to much or not enough time to conduct a specific research, in such case freelancer is expected: a) to spend remaining time on making google document more appealing and more informative with less to read b) Inform us that there is more information to mine on a given task.

Right now we are just trying to see if there are people who are willing to conduct general purpose WEB research and what hourly rates for such tasks can be.

Please note, that this particular inquiry doesn’t provide an actual paid job and main purpose of the inquiry is to evaluate the prospects of outsourcing such tasks. Thank you for your attention.