Why "Done For You" Services Suck...

Hi Lance,

There's always a trade-off with the Done For You stuff. Some seek convenience above all else. Others don't want to get their hands dirty.

Nobody cares about the quality of your work and business quite as much as you do. That being said some outsourcing companies do care about their clients and put out the best quality work possible. All you can do is research like heck and if you feel comfortable with the group fork over that scratch.

I like to do things on my own for the most part. I learn how stuff works and in the future have the option of outsourcing to save myself some time, knowing if the company is doing a good job or not from my own experiences.

RB

It's a time factor and if you can find a good company to run things for you, then all the better.

I don't know anything about the two services you mentioned specifically, but I think that there just isn't enough hours in the day to do everything yourself so if you want to grow your business you are going to have to get help somehow.

If you hire it out yourself, there's all kinds of headaches in managing the people and training them, then replacing them when they leave.

Not to mention the expertise that (I assume) you would be getting with services like the ones you mentioned.

As far as a ridiculous markup goes, if you could invest in a service that allowed you to make $500 extra a month (after you paid for the service) and didn't take up any of your time, how many of those would you buy regardless of how high the markup was?

I'm all for hiring services, buying websites or investing any kind of money that helps me make more money and spend less time doing it!

Lee

If you don't know how to do something yourself, or you don't want to, then you need to outsource it.

That basically makes you a Project Manager.

Unfortunately, most people don't know how to manage projects any better than they know how to do the stuff they're trying to outsource.

If you DO know how to manage projects effectively, there's money to be made with "talent arbitrage" -- buying talent at $2/hr in bulk, packaging it up and selling packages of pre-defined services that can reasonably be sold for hundreds or thousands of dollars. Your actual cost is a tiny fraction of that. So you make 50%-75% margins.

But finding the talent, training them, keeping them busy, dealing with the load-leveling and personnel issues, etc., is not a trivial task.

It's just like how every other business runs -- except you're building teams with really cheap labor and selling the services to people who are used to paying for expensive labor.

-David

Done for you stuff can be pretty cool and I've bought a few. I think the most I'd pay is $500 for something such as a set up business that I had to drive traffic to.

The problem with most Done For You stuff is that you don't learn what it really takes to be successful at the business given to you. Thus it doesn't make money. Most people are too lazy to really get into a business and think "I buy something for $2000 and it'll make me a full time living."

I own 3 businesses and write for clients as well...and I can most definitely tell you that most businesses cost a lot more than what it appears...these done for you stuff prey on people who aren't really "business"-oriented and are most of the time wanting a job.

A business...is a lifestyle. The 4 Hour Work Week-style stuff can exist for people and it does but what they don't tell you is that they worked hard to get it going to that point. I'm sorry...but buying something for even $100,000 won't get you what you want.

Let me give you an example of the problem with buying a "D4U" style offering or buying a franchise/existing business.

Let's say the business is selling for $100,000 for simple math's sake.

For it to make a full-time living (I consider that to be 3k a month for an average person...median income in the U.S. is around $40,000 a year I think for a family...could be wrong but it doesn't really matter), it must make the per-capita income of a person per year. For a $100,000 priced business...that means it'll generate $40,000 in profit.

Assuming about a 5-10% profit margin after all expenses that means that the business generates $400,000 to $800,000 in sales.

Who is going to sell a business generating 400-800k in annual sales for only $100,000.

This is obviously super-simplified but it just shows that done for you services selling for cheap aren't really worth it and that the expectation that it will be "set and forget" are just so pie-in-the-sky absurd that's it's ridiculous.

Build a business for yourself. Or work for someone in an "assistant" type capacity who can teach you what it takes to build a real and sustainable enterprise.

D4U stuff is not meant to be a "be-all-end all" type thing. And if it was...why only sell for 2k and not 100k+ dollars?

Hopefully this makes sense to those out there...be real...don't be a sucker

Cheers,

Brad

Thanks for all the feedback guys. @Lee, you're 100% right, if I found a way to make $501 for every $500 I spent, I'd do nothing but dump money into that process.

@David (SageSound), do you know any warriors who specialize in the type of project management/talent arbitrage you're talking about?

@Brad, I was on a similar common-sense page. It's similar to the courses that talk about the potential to make millions of dollars without lifting a finger - net profit is relatively low (compared to the numbers they're throwing out). And I'm ok with that - just figured I'd see what other people think about it. And in all seriousness, are you related to Jason Fladlien? I see some serious resemblance...

Again thanks for the feedback guys!

JMJ -Lance