Need advice on outsourcing!

That's one of your risk in outsourcing, since clients communicates directly with the designer. The best way to keep your client is to also build trust, communicate and make them happy and satisfied with your service.

I don't think clients will communicate directly to the designers. If they are that capable, they will come to WF, DP, oDesk, Freelancer or eLancer themselves instead of coming to you Its the other way around normally. And working with trusted partners should save you there. But risk is always there as long as you are in business. Let it be any business

If you want to venture into this type of business model, you need to establish a business identity. By doing this, you will be able to approach clients as a business entity rather than an individual who is going to play the middle man between the client and the designer.

Your job will be to find the clients, agree to payment terms, over see their project, take care of customer relations, and outsource the design work (if you can't do it yourself) to someone else who is capable of doing it.

In other words, you will manage a small web design business that employs freelance web designers for the time being because your web design business can not support an in-house web designer.

You don't need much to get something like this up and running.

Go to your local government small business administration and register a business name (DBA). Then, acquire a federal tax id number for your business. If you would like, you can hire a company online to do this for you for a fee. Finally, register a domain name, preferably the same as your business name, and setup a website with an email account.

Maybe even go one step further and order some business cards. UPrinting can offer you 1,000 standard business cards, back and front design, for under $25.

Eddie thanks that was really informational. Will definitely be looking into that aspect!

Hoping to hear any other opinions from other members.

Bump bump .

In all honesty, you're nowhere near the planning stage. You need to research. Try "outsourcing consultant," "outsourcing advisor," "outsourcing arbitrage," "outsourcing laws," etc. Then research licensing and bonding. Then research the IRS's tax codes and requirements for independent contractors. Then keep researching until you have a headache. Then research some more.

Works for me!

Unisons,

Good that you are planning ahead, I would suggest you to do more research on the web regarding this, don't know why you didn't find any idea or relevant answer but I am sure some conclusion you must have got. See there is not any procedure mentioned but yes you can list it and follow.
First get you website done with proper content for each page and what you are best at which will attract viewers

1. Submit your website to several web directories and search engines
2. Start with email marketing, send newsletters and sales pages email to various people worldwide. You can get them from whitepages and similar sites and can also send targeted newsletters or email mentioning their niche design and the benefits you could provide and they could get further
2. Then get a quality press release written and submit it to several press release submission sites
3. Post some quality articles on Ezine and Hubpages and other top article sites, all unique and quality content
4. Create a free blog on WP and Blogger where you post on different topics related to design and similar topics which will help in attracting users and businesses
5. Use forums as you are using for more help
6. Make sure to have social media page or profile where you can market your website by posting latest status updates about your business/website or in your niche market.
7. You can do cold calling as well to get more customers

Remember your service and reliability will be your key to success.

I agree with Eddie Titan - you will want to establish yourself as a business or a team and act as the front line for your clients, and let your designers do their thing.

I think it would also promote a more sincere feeling with your clients because they know from the start that they are working with a team.

Hi Unisons,

As an Internet marketing coach, I have a lot of clients ask me to do their web site. I don't do web or graphic design myself, but I have access to some good freelancers I have worked with over the years.

So I act as a "general contractor" for the web site and marketing program, the same way a general contractor buiding your house hires plumbers, carpenters and electricians.

This is a win-win-win situation.

Win for the client as they have my Internet marketing and project management skills applied to the project and they can rest easy that everything is taken care of by someone they already trust.

Win for the web designer as they get clients they wouldn't have otherwise.

Win for me as I earn money on skills I don't have myself.

My designer never talks to my clients. Rather I talk to the client as a web marketing consultant to make sure what they want works from a marketing perspective. Then I have the freelance designer to the work.

depending on the job I use scriptlance.com, Fiverr.com, Tenbux.com and have used gigbux.com