what is your overall Outsourcing (VA)Strat....

13 years ago

NEVER go for the lowest price and see if they can do it well enough. More often than not, you will be disappointed.

Always choose someone who has over 100 Reviews at the least. I prefer to have over 200 reviews for bigger projects.

The rating must be atleast 9.8 on freelancer and 4.5 on odesk. Anything under it and I will almost never award the job to the freelancer.

Even if the bidder has more than 3000 Reviews, NEVER give the job without exchanging atleast 5-6 messages. Try and message at different times of the day and also give a 1 day or 3 day gap in between the messages. This is to verify that the freelancer is actually going to reply to the messages after you give him/her the job. The different time and days ensures that he consistently checks his PMs and replies. NEVER GIVE THE JOB WITHOUT ATLEAST 5-6 MESSAGES AND SPACE THEM OUT. Not everyone lives on the same side of the globe ;-)

Take the time out to read the reviews, see if there are any WORK INCOMPLETE REVIEWS. You want to be sure first and then go ahead.

Where To Hire From:
Odesk.com
Freelancer.com
Elance.com
Peopleperhour.com

How much to Pay?

It is a subjective question but I am still going to try and answer it in the best way possible. If there are 5 bidders that have an average bid of $200 for my project, WHICH IN THIS CASE IS A LITTLE COMPLEX AND TIME CONSUMING JOB, and there is a freelancer who bid $300 for the same thing but has over 300 reviews, a rating of 9.8+ and a 90% completion rate, I would choose him over the others. WHY??? For the simple reason that he will deliver a higher quality and will need less guidance and supervision. If you award him the job, he will GET IT DONE. You don't have to worry about it at all. Although there are cases where he might not be able to correct it but it surely is a safer bet.

Another reason would be that he could also see the bids that were on an average around the $200 mark. Why did he bid $300 then??? Because he knew that he has that extra edge over the other freelancers because of his work experience, work committment and reviews.

So in my experience (and I've had very experiences going with the cheaper bids) its better to choose someone who has a reliable history rather than going for the price.

WHEN AND WHAT TO OUTSOURCE???

This is simple yet powerful. It has worked wonders for me and I think it will help you too. So here it is :

Take your mothly income and divide it by the number of hours you work in a month.

Lets say you earn $2000 and you spend 20 X 8 Hrs. Day = 160 Hours

$2000/160 = $12.5/hours

Anything that does not give you atleast $12.5 out of the 1 hour you invest in it IS NOT WORTH YOUR TIME. Outsource it to someone whose value per hour is less than yours and you spend you time DOING THE THINGS THAT MAKE YOU ATLEAST $12.5 PER HOUR.

DON'T DO ANYTHING THAT DOES NOT RETURN YOUR VALUE PER HOUR. OUTSOURCE IT AND YOU WILL STILL MAXIMISE YOUR PROFITS.

As far as what to outsource is concerned, it really depends on you. If you think that the job will make you atleast $12.5 per hour then go ahead and do it, if not OUTSOURCE.

[ 2 ] Thanks
1 reply

Signature

[STAY TUNED] Get My Next WSO Soon!

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3757415].message }}

derh

13 years ago

Wow...

A lot of good stuff here!!!

How do you structure your team???

I mean I'm thinking about using a corporate structure....

I want to divide out into "departments":

Example:

VA 1(depart 1): will do Keyword Research===> I must approve of keyword choice, and buy domain

then...
VA 2(depart 2): will set up WP sites (plugins, theme)===> I must approve

then...
VA 3 (depart 3): will write SEO optimized content for SEO and place it in the wordpress site===> I must approve

then...
VA 4 (depart 4): VA does manual linkbuilding until on position one====>I will recieve a DAILY report

Is the above right or wrong???

Originally Posted by CPApromoter

NEVER go for the lowest price and see if they can do it well enough. More often than not, you will be disappointed.

Always choose someone who has over 100 Reviews at the least. I prefer to have over 200 reviews for bigger projects.

The rating must be atleast 9.8 on freelancer and 4.5 on odesk. Anything under it and I will almost never award the job to the freelancer.

Even if the bidder has more than 3000 Reviews, NEVER give the job without exchanging atleast 5-6 messages. Try and message at different times of the day and also give a 1 day or 3 day gap in between the messages. This is to verify that the freelancer is actually going to reply to the messages after you give him/her the job. The different time and days ensures that he consistently checks his PMs and replies. NEVER GIVE THE JOB WITHOUT ATLEAST 5-6 MESSAGES AND SPACE THEM OUT. Not everyone lives on the same side of the globe ;-)

Take the time out to read the reviews, see if there are any WORK INCOMPLETE REVIEWS. You want to be sure first and then go ahead.

Where To Hire From:
Odesk.com
Freelancer.com
Elance.com
Peopleperhour.com

How much to Pay?

It is a subjective question but I am still going to try and answer it in the best way possible. If there are 5 bidders that have an average bid of $200 for my project, WHICH IN THIS CASE IS A LITTLE COMPLEX AND TIME CONSUMING JOB, and there is a freelancer who bid $300 for the same thing but has over 300 reviews, a rating of 9.8+ and a 90% completion rate, I would choose him over the others. WHY??? For the simple reason that he will deliver a higher quality and will need less guidance and supervision. If you award him the job, he will GET IT DONE. You don't have to worry about it at all. Although there are cases where he might not be able to correct it but it surely is a safer bet.

Another reason would be that he could also see the bids that were on an average around the $200 mark. Why did he bid $300 then??? Because he knew that he has that extra edge over the other freelancers because of his work experience, work committment and reviews.

So in my experience (and I've had very experiences going with the cheaper bids) its better to choose someone who has a reliable history rather than going for the price.

WHEN AND WHAT TO OUTSOURCE???

This is simple yet powerful. It has worked wonders for me and I think it will help you too. So here it is :

Take your mothly income and divide it by the number of hours you work in a month.

Lets say you earn $2000 and you spend 20 X 8 Hrs. Day = 160 Hours

$2000/160 = $12.5/hours

Anything that does not give you atleast $12.5 out of the 1 hour you invest in it IS NOT WORTH YOUR TIME. Outsource it to someone whose value per hour is less than yours and you spend you time DOING THE THINGS THAT MAKE YOU ATLEAST $12.5 PER HOUR.

DON'T DO ANYTHING THAT DOES NOT RETURN YOUR VALUE PER HOUR. OUTSOURCE IT AND YOU WILL STILL MAXIMISE YOUR PROFITS.

As far as what to outsource is concerned, it really depends on you. If you think that the job will make you atleast $12.5 per hour then go ahead and do it, if not OUTSOURCE.

Thanks
1 reply

Signature

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3760201].message }}

davechan

13 years ago

Great question. We started outsourcing our services a few years ago and hired directly from the Philippines. Our first hire was "simply" a VA who has turned out to be the best hire ever. She now manages the whole SEO team in the Philippines, including training them and managing / monitoring their quality links. In addition, we use tools to automate the process and manage all of the projects we have. Here's a quick summary of our organization:

1) Philippines Manager - also does back linking and content writing, as well as social media
2) Philippines SEO back linkers - lower level - very segmented tasks - using SENuke and UAW and a few other tools
3) Content writers - we have 6 interns from our local college - they do almost all of our content writing - and, yes, for free!
4) Sales and landing pages - my partner and I do ourselves - important to do it right
5) Website development - we outsource to a team in India

[ 1 ] Thanks
1 reply

Signature

A successful virtual company starts with the best phone service.

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3765481].message }}

derh

13 years ago

Originally Posted by davechan

Great question. We started outsourcing our services a few years ago and hired directly from the Philippines. Our first hire was "simply" a VA who has turned out to be the best hire ever. She now manages the whole SEO team in the Philippines, including training them and managing / monitoring their quality links. In addition, we use tools to automate the process and manage all of the projects we have. Here's a quick summary of our organization:

1) Philippines Manager - also does back linking and content writing, as well as social media
2) Philippines SEO back linkers - lower level - very segmented tasks - using SENuke and UAW and a few other tools
3) Content writers - we have 6 interns from our local college - they do almost all of our content writing - and, yes, for free!
4) Sales and landing pages - my partner and I do ourselves - important to do it right
5) Website development - we outsource to a team in India

Thanks for this...I too have a VA I'm looking to have as a Manager..he does great work and seems to be very loyal and trustworthy.

I'm trying to build a team to were everybody works together in a systematic matter...

the KW guy passes keywords to content guy...the content guy writes website content then passes it to the WP guy...the wp guys builds the site...then the wp guys passes site on to the linkbuilder guy...

This type of motion....

Thanks

Signature

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3765685].message }}

thebillionairegirl

13 years ago

Check out Remote Staff They have a high quality selection of workers

[ 1 ] Thanks
1 reply

Signature

Click here to access a list of 20 TESTED virtual assistants who work for $1 per hour | Find cheap Outsourced Workers in minutes |"the Girl who Gets it Done"

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3765427].message }}

michaelpotter 12 years ago

Link says "coming soon"
- Thanks
{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5093974].message }}

ben from uk

Banned 13 years ago

[DELETED]

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3788234].message }}

doomain

13 years ago

Originally Posted by ben from uk

You might want to keep in mind that VA's or freelancers are not the only option you have when outsourcing. VA's/Freelancers are more suitable for project based work. For example if you want to create a one off website, hiring a VA/Freelancer would be a good idea. But if you were a website development company let say for example, that needed a offshore employee to work remotely for lets say a year, then a freelancer might not be so great. This is because freelancers work from home, so their infrastructure/hardware is limited, freelancers work for multiple clients so will not be dedicated to just your requirement and freelancers work alone so are not supervised. This can often lead to VA's/freelancers working unprofessionally which may impact your business if you have long term outsourcing needs and need real professional conduct and accountability from your offshore employee.

Instead I therefore decided to hire a Virtual Employee from VirtualEmployee.com because my VE works only for me and works from VE's office where they are supervised by their managers. If i have any problems or want anything implemented I call the managers at VE. Otherwise I continue to work with my VE via Skype and so far everything has been going really great.

Hope it helps

wow !! great !!
so if I need employee that work for a year , VE is the best? or do you have another option?

Thanks

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[3788312].message }}

jasono

12 years ago

VAs from Philippines are actually great. There may be lots of them who are not quite familiar with SEO but still they are willing to learn. You just have to give them detailed explanations of instructions and they can do the job well.

I have actually wrote an ebook about tips and secrets in outsourcing such as where and how to hire VAs at cheap rates.

Thanks

Signature

Learn how to make more money using outsourcing and virtual assistants while freeing up your valuable time. Visit http://outsourcingautopilot.com

Facebook - Twitter

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5093584].message }}

Kenster

12 years ago

The most important part is knowing your internet processes and optimizing them. After you have a systematic approach to doing something and know it converts (makes you money)...then outsource pieces of the puzzle like you are doing.

It's just EXTREMELY hard to optimize and work out the kinks to a system when it's being done by outsources. Outsourcing itself doesn't make money...outsourcing a strategy that works makes money.

But you probably know that already, just sayin!

Thanks

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5093943].message }}

michaelpotter

12 years ago

Great thread, I was wondering about this myself so thanks for putting the question

Thanks

{{ DiscussionBoard.errors[5093950].message }}

what is your overall Outsourcing (VA)Strat....

Trending Topics

Any thoughts on golf's latest phenom...Scottie Scheffler??

The Twilight Zone

Should i Index Author pages?

best high quality crypto traffic.

What's the Best IM-Related Skill to Learn Today That Can Help in the Future?