Outsourcing

the five are not fulltime--these are all doing small 2-3 hour projects a few times a week.

Check out John Jonas and his site replacemyself.com. He has a lot of good advice and resources. He focuses on PI based folks.

Make a list of functions that need to be done each day, and current projects that have a start and an end. Hire a project manager, and then 2 people under them.

Most all outsourced employees need to be micromanaged which is a huge task itself. In my experience, things that should take 1 hour might take 8, because you get 7 hours of excuses. Also, 5 employees who only offer something like 4 hours of employees each week is more expensive in terms of the return on your investment if you hired 1 manager and 1 part time employee.

I work in eCommerce as well, and my main warehouse and office is located in China. In the beginning, much like you, I thought I could function by having a couple small part time employees and I could manage them myself and save money. So I might have been paying for 40 hours of labor between 4 employees and was getting fustrated because it always seemed like I was the only one working... it was because I was the only one working. I was essentially just self employed, and it sucked. Even though I didn't see myself being able to afford it, and it seemed silly, I took the advice of other business owners and hired 1 employee to offer 36 hours a week, and 1 employee to manage the tasks and delegate between myself and that employee, whom only made about 10% more than the employee below them. Work started getting done and there were times in the beginning that they got bored. My business picked up because I was able to dedicate more of my own time into product sourcing and CRM. 1 year later I can inbound, house, and outbound 2000 packages a day (which includes taking photos, editing, and storing them in a database).

People on here think you can throw $70 USD a month to someone in the Philippines and all of their work related problems will be gone. It's a myth, and as far as paying for assistance, you really get what you pay for more so than any other investment you can make.

Hi hampton,

Basically when you outsource you get a project manager to talked with about the specific of your project. and that person will implement it accordingly

For the pricing of your project, you need to give it at a fix rate so that you know your following your budget.

More likely the person will ask for a downpayment, try to deal it base on the progress your seeing on your project.for example you have 100 of uploads per month, after 25 upload your going to give the 25% of the rate and so on and so forth..

hope my small insight helps

Thanks for the advice---I am still in revamp mode--so alot of the tasks right now are just set up tasks. But I like the project manager and one assistant idea. This is what I can see in 2 months--just need to push through this next month.

I am probably moving too slow--but when you are outsourcing are you using ODesk etc? What is the average pay for Project Manager?

I am also reaching the point where outsourcing is unavoidable. In fact, I outsource so many of my projects, that I need an on-site manager for the sole purpose of coordinating all of them. Whilst all contractors are overseas (not only in low-pay countries!), I find that the manager must come to my office in order for the job to be efficient.

I found that when I offered to pay by the hour, I saw people taking longer than they should have. Once I was taken advantage of a couple of times, I started to pay per project or per bulk projects. For instance, if you know it takes 5 minutes to crop a photo then they should crop 20 an hour. So now you will pay them $3 to crop 20 photos instead of paying them $3 an hour to crop 5 photos.

Once you show them you know how long it will take, then they will quickly start cropping 40 photos an hour to make $6.

Yes--I prefer to pay by the project instead of by the hour. But not everyone prefers to be paid this way. Actually--once I am through with this week's of work, I won't have too much to outsource with my data entry people and will need to switch to writers. I think I am going to work with all the people who I am outsourcing to---and in about 2 months I will see where I am at. I am still a teeny tiny player in this game. But hopefully not for long. But this is all information to keep in the back of my head.

Thanks for the help and I am sure I will be back!

I think you first have to ask yourself what your goal is with outsourcing. Do you want to outsource everything or do you want to keep a portion of your operations yourself? Because if you really want outsourcing to work for you, you have to be in the right mindset for it.

If you want to continue micromanaging your business, that's fine. A lot of business owners prefer it that way. But you have to be ready to work long hours because that's the price you have to pay for all that control.

But if you want to outsource your business to the point that you have more time for yourself, then you'll need to change your mindset. It's not just about getting a project manager. It's about getting a person that you trust, a person that you know and you've trained to do everything that needs to be done in your business. It's about getting a person who knows your business as well as you do and has the same standards as you do. Someone who is just as invested in helping your business grow and thrive.

This is possible when you hire a VA, but you do have to invest a lot of time and effort. But once you do find the right person, the work will all be worth it. And it's actually good that you're starting now because once your business grows you may not have the time or patience to train anyone in the future.

To give you a better idea of what I'm talking about, I suggest you watch this video. John explains it better here:Introductory video on outsourcing to the Philippines

Outsourcing is my best tip for everyone. I outsource everything I can. Minimizing time, maximizing profits. Check out fiverr, pretty cheap possibilities to outsource.

Thanks John for the advice--I believe my personality and the way I interact with my customers via social media, online chat etc really sets me apart from the competition. Visually--my graphics etc have a very unique twist. I need to figure out how to give the personal touch of "me" with "me" being there. I prefer to be hands on, but then again working 10 hour a day is not how I plan on spending the entire next year--at least not running one ecommerce site. As soon as I am ready, I will look at this.

Hampton, I am a project manager that outsources work. I am located in Toronto, Ontario.
Add me on skype and I can take care of your issues. My company also has a professional web developer to look over the work being done by our partners overseas.
i-Liaison.com WebDesign SEO Logos

I can help with product uploading, all possible data entry activities, order processing, social media branding.

Can add me to skype anytime..

Hi Hampton,

Here is what I do when I outsource. I'm creating a very large content management software and I have one main programmer that works for $10 an hour and documents all his time.

I only give him one project at a time to do. When I need other things done, I contact other programmers who have done things for me.

1. I create a pdf explaining exactly what I want the other programmers to do.

2. I know just about how long it takes to do a project because like you I use to do all the work myself. So in the pdf I state exactly what the job will pay. They have to complete the job including any revisions that do not follow my outline before I pay them.

3. I send the pdf out to the a programmer asking if he will accept the job. If not I send the same pdf to another programmer.

4. I also give a deadline that the programmer has to adhire to. If the deadline is not met, I can pay less or not pay at all and give the job to another programmer. There are just a few times the deadline is not met and if the reason is a good techical hard to solve problem I will pay the original agreed amout.

The important part is that you have done all the work your self, so you know how long the task should take. This gives you the ability to demand a completion time frame.

After someone has worked for you under these conditions, they know just what you expect. If they stay around to work more jobs then you propably have a good VA to hold on to.

I hope this helps,
Steve Yakim

I just wanted to butt in here and say I am proud of you, and I dont even know you. By the way,I did get your email ( TODAY!!) I am so so sorry for that. I didnt realize people could message under here lol. But anyways, I feel your pain, I really do. I have been saying to my husband that I needed help. He knows not the first thing about ecommerce, so he isnt the person to go to AND I havent even launched, so I havent made any money yet. But the adding products, changing descriptions, making sure SKU and Prices are right, adding THOSE to my database I keep in excel, making sure the opt ins are working, the ordering system is working, etc etc etc is just driving me crazy. I havent slept for weeks now and when I do, I am dreaming about uploading CSV or product images or fighting again with a code. ICK! I know eventually, that I will have to hire help as well considering I have three niche stores in mind. I have been working for two solid months and dont even have the first store done yet and haven't even STARTED on the other two. Even with uploading a CSV, I had to go into 110 individual products on Saturday, change the descriptions, add keywords, change the price, add the proper SKU. It took me 9 straight hours and I am STILL not done. I feel your pain. I really do!

Hi there,

While I'm primarily a content writer, I also act as a VA for one of my clients, who actually is launching an e-commerce company right now, so I thought I'd offer you my point-of-view from the other side of the table.

First question: are they specialized? Even if they are all VAs, I have found from experience, as a member of a VA team, that things move along faster if each VA has an area of specialization. On my primary team, I am the writing VA. There's also a programming VA, a transcription VA, a graphics VA, etc. That way, everyone does what they are best at.

Second question: are they in different time zones? I have found that it can be better for productivity to have people in different time zones. For example, if a project requires cooperation between Worker A and Worker B, you can give a project to faraway Worker A just before going to bed, then check it when you get up in the morning and pass it to Worker B, who is in your timezone, for completion. That way, you can have people building your business basically 24/7.

It's possible to outsource everything--your goals are going to be different from those of other people on the forum, so I would focus on what you personally feel comfortable outsourcing.

Have you tried each of these projects yourself at least once? If not, it's hard to know how long they "should" take. I recommend trying each task yourself before outsourcing it, like yakim1 said.

Absolutely.

I also want to point out that, if your VAs are specialized, having one who isn't at the level of the others can really gum up the works. For example, my primary team's old transcription VA came at a great price, but they sucked. The transcripts they wrote were full of errors and barely looked like English.

This slowed me down when it came time for me to process those transcripts into content because I had to basically translate them into English. When my client dropped them and got a new VA who did a better job, I was able to take care of content creation better, since I was now working with decent transcripts.

A great VA is generally not going to work for less than their local minimum wage. After all, why should they? At that point, they could just work as a secretary locally and make more money.

Most of my main client's team has been built and managed through oDesk. As for the pay for Project Manager, I've seen it vary by a lot.

This could very well be true. However, to present the other side of the argument, it could be that the people you pay by the hour are more motivated to provide their best-quality work, so they take longer and produce a higher-quality result.


In short, what I am trying to encourage is looking at your team and operations holistically. That is, consider how each member of the team, including the potential team manager, contributes to your operations as a whole

I had the same dilemma. But fortunately enough I have 2 VAs that been working with me for the past 2 years already. We started with per project/rate. But now, I offered them a monthly salary (40 hours work). Been so happy with their efficiency I must say.

I wouldn't deal with part time people. I find that they are so busy trying to make sure they have a consistent income that your work is not a priority and they may pad their hours to meet their income goals.

I vote for getting full time VA, however, you may burn through a few before you find good competent assistants. Right now I have 4:

1- customer service general admin
1- full time graphics
1- social media
1- video editor

I found that it was easier to track them by accountability. With the graphics, you set expectations for what you expect to get done daily, though I have never had a problem with the graphics designer. With social media, they should be able to track their activity in a spreadsheet. Video editor- expected weekly output.

I know if I have to micromanage, I don't have a good person-- for me.

Outsourcing can be a pain in the ass (Especially if there is that language barrier).

I would say just hire a local part-time student or intern for similar prices.

Who knows, they may do such a good job, that it will bring you more business and then you can offer them a real full time position.

Have you tried outsourcing to Israel?

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Thanks.

Hi Hampton44. Though this thread is almost a year older now but I still love to leave few advices for the benefit of future visitors of this thread.

Working in a company that offers staff leasing service and I'm also handling clients. Based on my experience some clients do have their paid time and tasks management tools like timecamp, basecamp, asana, etc. You can invest on softwares. Or you can require them to submit everyday their reports.

Yes, agree to Silas Hart. Hire a Project manager to ensure tasks deadlines are meet. As Ryan Kahn said, "Master your strengths. Outsouce your weaknesses."

If you're managing more than two outsourced workers then I would use a PM for sure as they micro managing (particularly at the start) just eats up so much time. That said, be prepared to put in some work in the beginning to help your workers get up to speed and comfortable with work levels and expectations.

i sent you a PM