Outsourcing...Does anyone here do it

Odesk.com
Elance.com
Guru.com
Our own Warriors-For-Hire section

Many more on the net!

When you do outsourcing, think of yourself as a manager...
you need to manage them and get them to produce the
work you require. Also, you're going to have to be ready
for work that's not up to your standards - simply because
people make mistakes.

Outsourcing is really just another word online for hiring
temps or freelancers to get work done.

All the best!

Asher

Hey there,

First try FREE methods of generating traffic. ONce you have started your blog, in order to keep visitors coming to your blog you must see to it it's not turned into a ghost town. You should post on your blog regularly. Then, you try the tagging and pinging method to optimize your blog. Also, don't forget social networking and social bookmarking of your blog. While all of these services can be outsourced, including getting your blog posts written but you can do these yourself too.
I am sure if you hire a virtual assistant, he or she will be able to handle all these activities for you.
Just make sure you clearly state your requirements.

Hope this helps,

Sincerely,
Poppy

Hey Futuremills,

If you have been trying to get into IM but not being able to because you have "so much to do"- then outsourcing is absolutely the best option for you.
However, keep in mind that outsourcing can make or break your business. So you have to be very diligent in choosing the service providers you choose to work on your project(s) and also, you, yourself should have a clear idea in mind of what you want your service providers to do and how to do.

Outsourcing can definitely be a very successful process when done in the right manner.

Hope this helps,

Sincerely,
Poppy

thanks for the advice. im see myself delgating the technical tasks and some of the research until i can figure out how to get some decent quality stuff. I only have a 3to4 hour timeframe and i cant afford to mess with designing banners and messing with wordpress

The technical aspects can drain the life force out of you.

One of the problems I find is the need for perfection. I have now decided once I start seeing an income I will leave the perfection for people who are paid for it.

Honestly so may people burn out and lose faith in IM - it cant humanly be done all the various tasks that go into creating a huge income.

Also 2 people means twice the productivity = more profits

Outsourcing is the BEST choice I made to free up my time. I got 3 full time and 1 on contract right now.

I would suggest to outsource tasks you do not fund doing, but before you outsource know what you are having someone do for you very well or can be taken for a ride.

Example, I will have someone who wants to SEO and IM for my business. To them linkbuilding in SEO/IM. If I dont know better, then they can talk all over me.

Learn it, build the systems/formula then outsource it.

FutureMills,

A lot of great replies to your question here.

I wanted to add my 2 cents worth.

1.) you mentioned you've got a lot of ideas on the go and trying to put site(s) up. My suggestion to you is try to only do one thing at a time. In the IM world we all want things to happen fast and we want results. So it's easy to get overwhelmed that we're taking to long to do part A when we just want to get everything done and start collecting some form of pay check.

Trust me when I tell you to take your time, and get one idea setup at a time. To many will kill your biz before it gets going.

2.) What Mukul Verma said above is true. I outsource my design work, PSD creation, slicing of that PSD to HTML and some link building activities. THe graphics stuff is something I don't know how to do but I do know what i want it to look like so I often draw a sketch and scan it in and send it to my designer to get an idea of what I'm looking for.

My point if there is something you can do yourself I suggest you slug it out in the trenches for your first try so you know what to expect and what you expect someone else to do for you otherwise it's to easy to have the wool pulled over your eyes.

3.) When hiring outsources spend time writing your project descriptions and instructions. You don't want any chance that your job ends up not being done correctly b/c there was some ambiguous info given by you.

You must give ample instruction and expectations to outsourced workers.

A few ideas on what you could outsource to help you out.

-Layout/Design/HTML for a site
-Anything tech you're not sure about (i.e. setting up hosting accounts, domains etc.)
-Article creation
-Directory submission or article syndication for traffic & back links
-contacting sites & blogs for links, ads etc for promotion and traffic

I wish you luck on the journey!

-Spikey

One more note. I make my training into video now, so they can go back and forth and if I need them again, I can use them

Yep, outsourcing is awesome. I struggle to put up even a simple web page these days. I have a superstar webmaster from Romania who handles all my tech stuff, so I feel kinda spoiled.

Outsource the stuff that you don't like or that takes up too much time and spend your time on the stuff that's going to make you the most money. If I had to handle all my tech stuff/writing/customer service/web design I'd go crazy and I'd make no money because I just can't do most of that stuff very well.

Definitely get into it.

Sean

I've put together over 10 projects throu7gh elance over the past years and have had some excellent results - i've also had some very average results (and paid a lot of money for stuff that was not up to par.....) - the lesson I took away from this experience is as follows;

be very clear about what you require from people - investing time upfront creating a "scope" document or at least detailed paragrph describing your ideal outcome will save hours later

Also check the intended outsources credentials - their return work rate and average feedback are excellent measures to safe guard against non delivery - if their figures don't stack up - move on as there are plenty of providers out there....

Once you find someone that does good work - at a reasonable rate - hang on to them keep using them as often as you can.

Lastly, it does help to know a bit more about what you need to achieve in terms of describing it - so whilst I agree with others here that outsourcing can indeed be wonderful, I think it's very useful to be able to do most things yourself at least once or twice so you gedt a feel for how hard or simple something really is - it's then easier to measure vales and rates!

If you want some guidance on the technical stuff feel free to PM me - I've been doing the IT piece for over 25 years so those things come easy to me -as does usually my ability to describe it to others....

Cheers

Darren

I have started to outsource anything that I hate doing or takes me too long. I like Get A Freelancer or Rentacoder.

Hi - I have used outsourced help (Elance mainly) for a few years now. I have learned that I need to manage (including train) these people until I am comfortable with their output. I set very high standards so I often remind myself that I need to be patient - however, one thing I NEVER accept is poor or tardy communication.

There will often be tasks that I like doing but it may be more cost effective to outsource.

For tasks/projects that take more than 2 hours, I prepare a mini terms of reference which states objectives; deliverables; budget; priority and deadlines. I also sometimes ask them to stop after 2 hours so that I can see what they have done. In the past some people have spent a whole day on the wrong project!

Basically it comes down to using your time cost effectively. You will (or should) know the value of your time. Compare this to your outsource options and you'll be better able to make informed decisions on what to to outsource.

Good luck. Mark

Outsourcing is great so long as what you pay per hour earns you more than the opportunity cost of doing the task/s yourself.

Cheers

I have started outsourcing full time with a VA as from today and it feels really odd getting someone else to do the main tasks for me.

Im hoping it will work out really well but it still worries me handing over my work to finish by someone else. The good thing about outsourcing though is all those boring jobs are no longer your own!

Kind regards


sam
X

so much about managing staffs...

We MANAGE things.

We LEAD People.