Companies looking to outsource key parts of their business often have the choice between hiring a freelancer or an affiliate company. Typical affiliates are offshore IT firms with a staff of 5 - 100 employees who partner up with sites such as oDesk (an online marketplace), while freelancers usually work solo. Selecting one or the other depends on your project needs and work preferences.

If youre deciding between an affiliate company or a freelancer, ask yourself the following questions to arrive at the best decision for your company:

What is my budget?

Affiliate companies may have overhead costs and must pay managers on staff, translating into potentially higher costs. Freelancers are typically working by themselves and you may be able to negotiate a lower rate through the interview. Hourly rates tend to be 20 - 30% higher for affiliate contractors.

From a risk standpoint, however, hiring an affiliate can protect your company against turnover or the unexpected termination of a contract with a freelancer (if she or he gets another time-consuming project, for instance). The affiliate company may be able to set you up with another provider should this occur.

Do I need team scalability? Do I need dedicated resources?

Have you thought about the needs of your project in 3-6 months? If you think you might need additional programmers or QA engineers, it will be easier to scale your team up and down when working with an affiliate. When you scale up your team, will you need them to be co-located? Affiliates can easily dedicate resources to your project and have more available programmers. On the other hand, affiliates need to manage the utilization of their employees and therefore more frequently demand a full-time workload on jobs. Do you have full-time needs?

Do I know exactly what skills my project will require?

Affiliates often offer a broad spectrum of skills, making it more difficult to gauge their specific area of expertise. Freelancers, on the other hand, typically specialize in select skills and their experience is based on these capabilities. On oDesk, many have taken skill tests, allowing you to assess their proficiencies independent of what they put on their resume. If youre not exactly sure which skills your project will require, an affiliate company can offer the services of multiple programmers.

Does it really matter?

At the end of day, it may not matter to you -- as long as the quality is there. Your preferences to go either the freelancer route or with an affiliate firm may be eclipsed by the discovery of great talent. The opportunity to work with someone who you feel has a good particular cultural or skill fit with you may trump your preferences to go one way or the other.