Outsourcing Work - Do you Do It?

Here my suggestions, after working with probably 100 different people.

1. Make a rules to yourself how you select provider. Do this part very slowly, later it pays off a lot.

2. At first give smaller task, and see how they perform. For first task, view not transactionl side, but your priority should be to see how one is working.

3. Be friendly, profesional to them, but keep in mind, that situations changing, and after some time that might want to change their rates drastically, or they performance drops down and so on. Be gratefull when they are doing their work well, but be prepared to change them, if performance goes down.

4. Do not get emotional in any situation. Make another rules for yourself, how you value their performance & values. For example I fired lot of people, who's performance was high, but internal values were low, because they demotivated remaining team, and it was too stressfull for me managing them.

5. Do not become too much dependend on on person. If you hire throught internet, one day he might just disappear.

6. Managing people requires skill, invest time learning to do that. If can one of business leverages, if you do it well, it can be total nightmare if you do ir poorly.

Good luck!

Oh forget one more factor.

7. Usually I like to hire detail oriented profesionals. Usually I check their website, proposal, how it looks, does person put attention to details, or not.

When you outsource, what is out of the door should remain out of the house. DOn't bring it inside.
Details are often required, but most often set the rules and keep to it.
If it is strictly business, let it be so.

You may be tempted to be flexible, but take note, what is done at the other end is a duplicate and can at times be disastrous to the business.

I've probably outsourced something to every country that has web helpers over the years. Over the past two years, however, I have enjoyed slimming down my offerings and just doing almost all work myself. So, I can speak from both angles.

There are a lot of nightmare stories out there as well as success stories. If I could only pick 3 things to add to this discussion to help when you go to outsource, it would be these:

1. Be sure to get originals of everything and make sure you have full rights to ownership.
2. Never give top level admin access to anything....always create a secondary admin login, something you can always override to get access to your account
3. Pay your bill quickly...you'll get much better service if you get a reputation for not quibbling about money and just getting the payment part done

I really liked this comment:

It's very true. Almost every outsourcing helper I've worked with was always looking for a more full-time gig.....unless they're working with an agency where they are already full-time. But, then you run into other hassles like when the agency worker contacts you behind the agency's back to see if you would like to hire him/her direct for a lesser fee.

Note too that prices have been increasing in the Philippines and India. It's harder to find people willing to do $1,000 worth of work in US dollars for payment of $50 these days.

Knowing overseas helpers are getting a lot of the business, you'll even find English speaking contractors posing as Philippines or Indian just to get the gig....but they really live in Chicago! Kidding a little, but true at the same time.

Getting one helper to do tons of work for you every day is much better than having 10 helpers do a little every week. When you work with women helpers, be very complimentary! Always tell them how great a job they're doing and how valuable they are to you and your operation. Women just don't get that kind of positive feedback in the popular countries known for outsourcing.

I could go on and on but those would be the high points. Good luck!

I am looking at this still and thinking of joining up with a guy and between us we maybe able to keep someone going full time

The mission continues

By the way Udemy, have like 4 courses of outsourcing and it's now 40% off.