Has anyone done outsourcing or have a VA

Outsourcing is a great way to relieve yourself of a tedious workload, but I think that it is important to get personal experience first. It's hard to be a coach when you don't know how to play the game.

I created my first info product from scratch. When I finished I told myself I would never do it again. lol

I now outsource everything except niche/keyword selection.

The benefits are that you have more time to do the things that you like within your business and your personal like but outsourcing can be tricky. I've had success and failure with it but it's definitely something that you should do within your business but it should wait until you have a sustainable workload and income. I've outsource prematurely and it was a disaster.

I can't be an expert at everything, but outsourcing can help fill the gaps. I also believe in "home sourcing", or finding people that live nearby or in the same country as me.

Outsource those that you think you wont like to do. For me, I outsource all the writing to someone else. It takes awhile to find the best person to outsource to, but once you found them, stick with them...

I outsource to shore up any areas of my business that I'm not particularly good at. I can't do graphic design to save my life so I always outsource website graphics and boxshots. I also don't like handling support tickets so I've hired that out as well.

I don't think you need to wait until you're at a certain point to outsource... I think that once you start outsourcing, you'll be able to reach your goals much quicker.

I prefer to focus my time on the things that grow my business. Things like networking with affiliates and strategizing future business ventures.

If I had waited until I was making a good income to start outsourcing, I don't think I would have gotten to where I am and I probably would have never felt that I could afford to start outsourcing... It's kind of one of those catch 22 things.

Matt

I have a VA in the Philippines. She's awesome. One thing that I have her do that really helps me out a lot is manage my business email accounts. I got this idea from a blog post on outsourcing email by Tim Ferris. Check it out here if you want some ideas.

I run a writing and outsourcing services business, and I do a lot of stuff like backlinking, submitting articles, and other boring work I hate doing. All of it gets passed over to her. Then, I also have her going out and bidding new work--I give her bid templates to customize for each job and at the moment she sends them for my approval before submitting--but it still saves me a lot of time that I would spend analyzing each job, doing the numbers, sending emails, and attaching documents.

She also helps me do research and come up with new ideas--I keep a sheet in Google Docs titled the CANI (constant and never-ending improvement) sheet, and I ask her to spend a couple hours every week just brainstorming things that she thinks would help my business or make her job easier, better, whatever. Even if it means paying for her to get training for new skills--haven't gone there yet but I would be all for it if it brought more value to my business.

One great tip that I've done to back myself up with my VA in case I ever lose her or hire on a few more is that everytime I make her a new task she doesn't know, I make a video for her, walking her through step by step, or I make a step by step manual. I keep a folder called manuals, and then I keep another spreadsheet with all the links to my videos and descriptions.

What this means is that if I ever hire someone new, I can just direct them to the folder or the videos, and my current VA always has a reference resource if they haven't done something in a while.

The management factor can be a hassle if you're busy, so I really suggest trying to train them to understand your business and what is important so you can give them freedom to do what they see fit rather than constantly getting in touch with you for guidance. Allow mistakes and don't make them a huge deal--offer praise with your criticisms.

Oh, and one more thing. Make sure that you have certain tasks that you designate as "busy work." It should be something that adds value rather than just fills time. Tell your assistant that whenever they run out of things to do, they should be doing their busy work--whether it be backlinking, building new adsense sits, sending out bids for new work, researching keywords, hunting down niches, whatever...

This will really come in handy when you don't have time to create work out of thin air just to keep them busy.

And last of all, bonuses and unexpected holidays are extremely appreciated by people in Phils, in my experience. Then again, aren't they to everyone?

Finding the right guy or girl can take a lot of time and would definitely cost you quite a few $$$ no matter how careful you are. Most of the freelancer sites have a rating/feedback system, which cannot be trusted at all!

Hi gmoney,

Im new to internet marketing but have been looking into the outsourcing thing....seems like a really good way to maximise your time if you have some spare money around...outsourcing to the phillipines seems quite popular so it might be a good idea to do your own research on it.! by the way how were you able to post a question up does warrior forum have rules as to when you can post a question?

The biggest challenge is finding a decent, good quality outsourcer. You need to do some work testing them out, since there are many deceptive outsourcers out there (especially for article writing/content generation services). Many of them hire somoene to write perferct showcase articles while in reality they are not capable of writing such articles themselves. You hire them and end up with terrible, unreadable spun articles -nothing like what they show on their portfolio. Same goes for Wordpress types too. After running into so many bottom of the barrel quality providers, I pretty much gave up on finding someone who can set up a decent looking wordpress blog and ended up learning wordpress, css, theme editing and plugin configuration myself.


I wrote a long how-to article on my blog about hiring VA's a while ago. I am planning on writing an update for that since some things have changed in the outsourcing scene.

It's crucial to try them out with small test projects before hiring them for anything important. Investing a few hours of your time and a few bucks to do this will save you a load of headche and monetary loss down the road.

Best VA I have ever found to this date is an individual from Hungaria (I found them on elance) and I pay $5/hour.

I haven't had any good experience with Philippino providers (including a professional VA company ran by a top notch guy) so I stick to craigslist/elance/fiverr for small jobs and VA stuff for now.

In the beginning I outsourced small projects, mostly stuff I didn't know how to do like coding and design. Then as I began to get into my groove on daily routine of creating content, driving traffic, and SEO work, I would find out what is working and what I can easily outsource and started with that. Once that was done, I moved to more complex tasks. I personally did it step by step, starting small and building on that.

As far as having a part-time or full-time person, this became easier for me once I had experience outsourcing on a per project basis, and had more experience getting a feel for who is going to work out and who probably isn't.

I'm going to go against the grain a bit here. I get the thought process behind "wait until you have eveything in place before you outsource" but in my experience, that's advice that could really hold you back.

It's like a couple waiting for the perfect time to have a baby...there IS no perfect time.

Starting to outsource sooner rather than later has some very important benefits...

- gets you out of your comfort zone
- gets you a head start on what can be a long process
- forces you to learn new things

Don't think you have to know all of the tasks you want to outsource before you outsource.

Imagine if all of the "bosses" in regular companies had to know how to do what the emploees do before they could be the boss...half of them can't do their OWN jobs ;-)

I have a webinar coming up on outsourcing...feel free to join in.

Mike

I've outsourced articles and Wordpress Amazon & Adsense site creation.

With the Amazon/Adsense sites, the person added the Wordpress theme, chose Amazon products based on my keywords, wrote their own reviews and added pictures.

However, I could not bring myself to give him my affiliate and Adsense ID's so I had to go back in each individual blog, enter the affiliate codes and then change the password, which defeats the purpose of someone else doing the tedious stuff.

I still have like 20 blogs I have to get to.

I guess I'm paranoid, but for those of you who hire VAs, do you give them site access information or affiliate/Adsense information?

Thanks.

Hi gmoney 38

Outsourcing is a life saver - and it can also be the biggest mistake.

Way back when... I felt the same way as you. I thought "if I could just get someone else to do this for me, I'd be making the big money". (or at least I would quit banging my head against the wall)

First - I'm so glad that I learned everything the hard way. I know what I like to do and what is boring but necessary. I also know how long a task should take so I don't get taken advantage of by VA's.

I've had good and bad experiences with outsourcing and hiring VA. I've never hired off shore... I always hire those that need the work right here in the good 'ol USA. This is not as cost effective, and does cut into profits, but you have to go where your heart is.

Looking back - and knowing what I know now - I ask this question. How would you know what you really need to hire someone to do, unless you know what you need? Once you are immersed in your new business the "needs" will rise to the top.

Oh... and I am very much on the side of "just get something going". Spending money and time "planning" is a waste of your valuable time. Not that a good business plan isn't important.

Learn to do one thing... get it going... make some bucks... rinse and repeat.

I've met so many new IM'ers that have the idea that they need to search for the right business model and get all the ducks in a row.

Most experienced IM'ers will tell you that their business model changes often. They keep what works and ditch the rest.

Everything works online. Some things will work better for you than others. A "Best Online Business Idea" does not exist. It really is a matter of passion and working lot's and lot's of hours.

The great thing about marketing online is that you don't have to rent a storefront and fill it with inventory. You don't need to hire employees or even a cash register.

You do have to have something to sell or sell someone's product as an affiliate. How you accomplish this is up to you.

Don't let anyone tell you that an "easy button" exists. The only easy buttons will cost you big bucks and will be a flash in the pan.

wow... did I go off topic.