As for actually getting your ideas executed without learning programming, this is certainly possible. I have heard of the Digg site example before too. Why not? Like easyeboy wrote, programming does not suit everybody at all times, otherwise computer programmers would be out of work and most don't work for themselves.

I agree with robbrown and easyeboy and would emphasize the rentacoder.com outsource coder market site. I think the coders there are a little more serious and cheaper because they are less likely to come from a Western country than the other sites. I've set up 10-12 projects with them. Their motto is "How Software Gets Done -- Home of the worlds' largest number of completed software projects". You still will end up with a lot of your contracts going incomplete. Also you will find, just as rentacoder is totally upfront about, any project will take 2-5 times longer than you expect or the coder promises, and cost 2-5 times as much.

The way the sites like RentaCoder and I think Elance, oDesk and Guru work is that all the finished and terminated jobs are rated by the buyers and the the buyers are rated by the coders. When you put out a bid and a coder bids on your project you can immediately see his overall rating from past projects and can look at the feedback given by buyers from his previous projects. You can also look up coders with specialties and invite them to bid on your project. Additionally you can invite star programmers that are featured on the site. Finally you can invite a previous programmer with whom you have a good relationship, to bid privately as a lone bidder on a project.

With rentacoder, if a coder does not complete a project within the timeframe he promised, or you are convinced the coder did not fulfill his agreement in the way of quality or quantity, then you have the right to go to arbitration where a rentacoder agent decides if you should get all your money back, and who owns the deliverables produced thus far. You can also select to not go to arbitration but extend the deadline, and give a bonus for work thus far to encourage the coder. You'll probably end up doing those two things a lot for your different parts of the project.

As for the secret nature of your idea, you can request bids without revealing the content of your ideas, and also get help with legal aspects of non-disclosure agreements with rentacoder and I'm sure the other sites too. Note however, it's probably better to get American coders to work on secret ideas under binding legal agreements, as other countries might not enforce non-disclosure agreements. It is certainly in the interest of the biggest outsourcing countries, India, Pakistan, China and Brazil's to enforce these legal promises, so the countries can continue the flow of off-shore work to themselves. They may be getting much better about this out of economic necessity. I don't know the details.

Expect to pay at least twice as much for American programmers, and maybe much more. American programmers have the edge in terms of imagination, so in some respect you get what you pay for and real original work is done more often or much more often today in the West. However if you yourself have done this imagination part well enough, international programmers may be able to execute it on the cheap. A mixture of on-shore and offshore programming probably occurs in any big project. I would also test all four sites mentioned to get a feel of how they work. I have a preference for rentacoder, because of my limited budget and some success. One out of 12 coders I used was a master and a real bargain. He happened to be from Bangladesh.

On your great ideas, I have them too, but they are academically oriented and in academics the idea is often to give away your ideas for free and broadcast them to as many people as possible. Intellectual property and secrecy often works differently than it does in the business word. (Not always though. The first person gets the most credit.)

I think when we are young we have the feeling that are ideas are original and people will steal them if revealed. Maybe so, and certainly that has a kind of truth to it. So follow your dream and let it motivate to all efforts.

As Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 11:9 in the Bible:

9 "Be happy, young man, while you are young,
and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth.
Follow the ways of your heart
and whatever your eyes see..."

Also earlier in the same chapter verse 6:
6 "Sow your seed in the morning,
and at evening let not your hands be idle,
for you do not know which will succeed,
whether this or that,
or whether both will do equally well."

Also note what he said earlier in the same book of the Bible Chapter 1, verses 9-10 :

9 "What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

10 Is there anything of which one can say,
"Look! This is something new"?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time." New International Version
Source(s):
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=25&chapter=11&version=... - Bible, book of Ecclesiastes Chapter 11, New International Translation.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=25&chapter=1&version=3... - Bible, book of Ecclesiastes Chapter 11, New International Translation.
http://www.rentacoder.com
http://www.elance.com/
http://www.odesk.com/
http://www.guru.com/
http://www.starreviews.com/Freelance-Website-Reviews.aspx - review of freelance sites. Rates Guru highest. No rentacoder.
http://www.freelancedaddy.com/freelance-sites/ - interesting review of freelance sites from the point of view of benefits and drawbacks to the freelancer/programmer. Does include a frank discussion of rentacoder, with good info.
http://pimteam.net/2007/08/24/freelance-site-reviews/ - reviewed from the point of view of the freelancer, not you the buyer, but that still gives the buyer info.


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