Process of Outsourcing web design

Hi marketman007,

I am starting out in my local area and have been having the same trouble. I was wondering if i could possible get your Custom Website Brief - General?

I couldnt PM you - not enough post count - my email is takeyoursk<@>yahoo.com, I hope to receive an email from you.

Thank you in advance.

if you use odesk or elance you will find someone cheap but it comes with a lot of hassle because they will only do what you tell them and if something looks cheap or tacky its your job to tell them the rite way.

Hi herb,

I agree with Crosby, finding the right person is very very hard, and has taken me years to build up a professional team.

What prices are you thinking you want to charge?

Here are our prices we are charging to clients depending on how the client comes to us

Template website $500
Custom - 10 page $1500 - $4000
Custom - 15 page $1900 - $7000
Ecommerce module $1200 - $3000

SEO - 8 keywords - $500
SEO - 14 keywords - $700
SEO - 25 keywords - $1000

If you want, you can access our team, and use our processes, briefs, basecamp etc to get these products delivered.

Your prices would only be 20% of what my rates /costs are, if your interested in that? Then you can charge the same sort of prices I charge out to make your profit margins.

Great to run into this thread. I'm in the same position as OP - suck at design creativity.

What kind of info do the outsourcer need? How far do we go as to letting them use their creativity?

found my main person on elance. i went thru about 10 people , before i found the right guy that understood my vision, in how i wanted to grow.

he now finds people to add to the team thru his network.

odesk i only use for small link building jobs..

the rest of the team that joins is thru networks.. and i also have interns join me in my office.

so its standard practice to grow a business with people, by alwyas looking out for good help

Thought I would chime in here real quick as this is a rather large part of my business. As far as finding the right people to help with your projects, it all comes down to networking and meeting people that understand where you are coming from and understand what you are trying to accomplish. There are many outlets for this, a few have been named in this thread. Communication is key. You must communicate exactly what your needs and goals are to the designers so they can produce quality work that meets you and your clients expectations. This takes a little time and there really is no easy way than to just to get right down to it and start negotiating terms with your potential team-mates.

If you are concerned about not making enough cash on your deals, try going after some larger ones instead of one off $300 website deals. Once you outsource that job, there isn't much left on the table for you. However, start closing $800-$2000 jobs and you have plenty of room for profit after you pay out your outsourcing costs. You will find people that do work for dirt cheep, but quite often you are going to be compromising quality, time, communication, or ease. Sometimes it's just better to suck it up and pay more and get the job done right the first time with someone you know isn't messing around.

Also, it most certainly is possible to make 50% on top of the design work

Again, it is just a matter of going through potential partners and finding the one(s) that are right for you. There's been times where I've interviewed over 20 applicants and didn't hire one because in my mind, they weren't a good fit for my team. Other times, I actually hired the very first one or two applicants that applied. It's like prospecting for clients almost. It's a numbers game and some clients just aren't your market. You need to find the applicants that are your market.

That's pretty much how I do things as well. Usually get 40-50% per job. I white label my services and consult with the customers themselves sometimes to get more, accurate information about their business.

Also, after you spend the time finding a reliable designer and you don't want to pay them what their worth, you are setting yourself up for possible headaches. You get shoddy work that you have to present to your client and you still have to go out and find another designer for future project fulfillment. It's a huge pain in the ass. On the other hand, if you make an agreement with a solid designer, than everyone's happy. You turn over quality work for your clients, and your designer is happy that he's getting paid what he's worth and you have a reliable team member for the life of your business.

What I tell my sales team/consultants/marketers is to gather as much info about the business as possible. You are hopefully meeting with the client or doing consultations over the phone for some time. After that you should have a pretty good idea of what type of business you will be working with. Ask as many questions as you can. What types of services do you offer? What sets your business apart from your competitors? As them to tell you some general information about the their business. Then move onto the design aspects. The first thing I ask is "Do you have anything in mind in regards to what you want your new website to look like?" I love samples. But most of the time they have no idea. So then I ask do you have a logo or would you need us to make you one? What colors would represent your business the best? Do you have any brochures, business cards, documentation about any services or products you offer?

After talking with them you should have plenty of information to get started. Granted, some jobs are much bigger and require constant communication with the client to gather content, resources to complete the job.

After you take notes on all your clients information (it is your job to gather this info from the client) send it over to your designer with as much guidelines from your client as you can.

That's how you go about finding the right people for your team. It's a numbers game. Once you know exactly what you are looking for, you have a better eye in determining who is a better fit for your team. Always keep your eyes open for people that you think you can work with.

There may be ways of protecting yourself from those kinds of people, I'm really not sure. I guess number one would be try and pay attention to who you are dealing with. Ask questions. The way I see it is, who has the time to network, interview, communicate back and forth for several days just to gain back end access to a WP site that isn't even built yet. Honestly, the majority of my clients don't even know the login information for their sites. They don't care. And why should they? They know that they can contact me ANYTIME to gain access. Keep your passwords separate for each project and team member and you should be fine. The idea is to network with people, build trust, communicate efficiently, and you shouldn't run into those types of issues.

Also asking for references and previous work helps out too.

i give them my log inname and password.

if you dont have any history or trust with them, then change the log in details after they have done the work

you can always use our team for your wordpress work. i vouch for them, as they are my team haha

we use plugins on the wordoress platform for the mobile sites. so nothing really to show you, as it does just want the standard wordpress plug in does.

i dont think my team has built any custom mobile websites but i will ask them now, maybe they have just not thru me.

will get back to you soon

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are you looking for custom mobile websites, or the wordpress plug in type mobile websites, which are much cheaper and faster to do?