Archive for Outsourcing
Outsourcing Tears and Fears and Meeting the Challenge
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s hard to believe it’s almost 2 weeks since I last posted. But it’s been a real “head down” time for me. I’ve had my son to get sorted for the new term and his Woodcraft camp, wedding dressings to peruse with my daughter, friends and relatives staying and re-engagement with the whole oustourcing thing.
So, here I am again in my favourite cafe, skinny cappuccinno and ham and mozorella panini ordered, ready to write. If I’d stayed at home the tasks of the day would have taken over and it would have been an even longer gap between posts.
So, where did I leave off?
. . . I was off to find 20 likely candidates to email.
This time I foccused most on English language skills. I sent 20 emails and received 11 responses, 2 of which were to say they were no employed elsewhere. After some emails back and forth where I was looking primarily for examples of content they’d written, I chose 2 people from the remaining 9 to take on on a trial basis. John Jonas of Replace Myself recommends taking on 3 to 4 with a view to finding 1 good candiate. But I’m glad I only chose 2. Even that was a lot to manage.
One was primarily a writer (I’ll call her Elaine) and I had most hopes for her. The second (I’ll call her Ann) had some SEO experience as well so I set her off with a 5 Day Traffic Blitz project from Web2Mayhem.
After 2 days I could see that that Ann was going to be a better choice. They were both very keen and both worked hard but Ann followed directions more precisely and actually had a better standard of English. To be fair, Elaine’s English was very good compared to other writers I have tried over the years but I found myself editing more of it.
I’m the first to admit that my standards are very high and I was tempted to go with “good enough” and keep Elaine on but my gut was telling me not to. That opened a whole ‘nother can of worms.
I felt really, really bad telling Elaine I didn’t want to keep her on when I knew she was desparate for the job and had tried her best.
I normally deal with this type of situation by coming up with a load of rational reasons as to why I should keep her on and then doing so. This just makes matters worse as I’m really just delaying the inevitable.
This is an old pattern of behaviour that doesn’t work.
I could see the most likely result of ignoring my feelings now would be that I would have to tell her later, anyway, that I didn’t want to employ her. And it would feel even worse, having raised her hopes and I would have grown more and more frustrated.
I was surprised how hard this was for me and ended up becoming very tearful over the whole thing. But, better out than in!
The next time I have to do this it will be less emotional and the time after that, easier again. So I feel I’ve made a big step forward with this.
I’m never going to have a successful business if I can’t make the hard decisions. And, of course, that is also true for you.
Although, what’s hard for me may be easy for you, whatever your personal challenges are, they will need to be faced and taken on.
But, ultimately, this is good. This is what makes us feel alive. It’s a bit scarey at first but there’s such a sense of achievement and movement that it’s well worth doing.
So, if anyone needs a bit of a support with a challenge they’re feeling stuck with, please feel free to contact me and I’ll do my best to help you tackle it.
Outsourcing Article Writing
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve been dragging my feet a bit in relation to restarting my internet marketing outsourcing project. Partly because I wasn’t successful last time and partly because I now realise my expectations were way too high.
For example, John Jonas of Replace Myself recommends that you start off by giving your worker just one task to begin with. He describes how he works with content writers by expecting them to write 1 or 2 articles a day and then submit them to article directories.
No wonder my first worker disappeared. I told him I expected him to work up to writing an article in 45 minutes. After 2 days he hadn’t produced anything. I can see that that gap would have seemed enormous to him to be able to close.
Something else John Jonas said that really struck home was “Some people, after listening to my initial presentation, think that hiring someone in the Philippines is a magic bullet for their business. They think this is some magic talent pool of people who are going to fix all their problems.” Although I didn’t think an outsource worker would “fix all my problems”, after listening to John Reese’s presentation back in May, I definitely thought it was going to be a hell of a lot easy than it turned out to be.
John Jonas spends more time emphasising the learning aspect of hiring someone overseas to work with and that it takes time to learn how to manage them and the systems you will be using.
So this time around I will have to be more patient. Last time I was looking for someone who was good at English and had some SEO and WordPress experience. This time I will focus primarily on the English skills since article writing will be the first thing I need to have done.
Currently, it’s relatively easy to get good enough articles written for $5 each so I could be losing money when I start out. If my worker writes 2 articles a day that’s $50 worth a week which works out about $200 worth a month. Chances are I’m not going to find someone with good enough English for that rate so I really need to look at this as a long-term investment.
I won’t know until I try though so I’m off to find 20 potential candidates to email.
Outsourcing Round Up – Back To One Task At A Time
Posted by: | CommentsThe biggest lesson relating to my internet marketing outsourcing project was that it wasn’t as easy as it sounded when I watched John Reese’s videos. I remember wondering, at the time, why anyone would buy his course since he appeared to have given us pretty much all we needed to know. There’s obviously more to it than I thought.
Looking back, I simply wasn’t ready for a full-time outsourcer since I still don’t have the strategy for my internet business clearly defined enough. So, even if the people I took on hadn’t disappeared without a trace I think it would have been hard going to manage.
So now, I’m going back to outsourcing tasks and will build from there. Maybe even find someone full-time eventually as a result.
The tasks I’ve least enjoyed doing these past couple of months have been writing and spinning content. I’m actually able to write a good article in about 30 minutes when I’m in the right frame of mind. But, since most of the time, I’m resenting doing it and feeding myself negative thoughts about it, it can take me the best part of 2 hours to complete.
I’ve tried to be positive about it and link the task to my long-term goals but I always seem to default to my moaning, complaining stance so it makes sense to outsource this first.
There are a number of places you can get articles written for $5 so I’ve started trying them out and will budget for that in my 4 week plan.
If you want to read the full story of my outsourcing experience so far just click on the link on the right of this page and you will find all the posts I’ve made on the subject in date order.
Top 7 Must-Do’s Before Employing an Overseas Assistant
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve not posted for a while as I’m needing all my time to keep up with the promotion of my sites whilst trying to progress my internet marketing outsourcing project. To be honest it’s proving more difficult than I had anticipated. So far, I’ve taken on 2 people only to have them disappear on me. This is the point when, in the past, I would have abandoned the idea and moved onto something else. However, if I’m going to turn this into a real business I need to keep at it.
I’m tempted to go back to taking people on, on a per project basis but ultimately I’m looking for one person so, for now, I’ll continue with that approach. If I can find the right person then, in the future, this whole process will be a lot less painful because, hopefully, I will be able to delegate some of it to them.
So far, these are some useful things I’ve learned, the hard way 
, to do before taking someone on:
1. Know What You Are Looking For
Take the time to do a detailed job specification that includes the projects and tasks that you need doing. Write a person specification to clarify the essential qualities of the person who will do the job.
2. Be Prepared
Know what exactly is involved in a project and how long the various taks take. Wherever possible, have experience of the work yourself so you have first-hand knowledge. If that’s not possible, make sure you ask candidates for estimates of how long they think they will take to do a particular task. Bear in mind that generally people underestimate how long something takes.
3. Have Realistic Expectations
In most cases you will have to train a worker to do the job exactly as you would like it done. Even when they tell you they have experience the chances are they won’t do things the way you need them to. Also, what you understand by a task or skill can often be different from what someone else understands.
For example, if you are looking for a content writer be very specific about what sort of content you require – blog posts, online articles, print articles etc. – and, related to that, what experience you require.
4. Check Authenticity
If available, look at applicants’ profiles carefully and any feedback and ratings from previous work carried out. If you can get references do so, especially if you can speak to the referee.
5. Check The Quality of Work
Ask for examples of past work. However, it is easy for someone to pass off other’s work as their own so, if satisfied with this part, move on to a test piece.
6. Ask For a Test Piece of Work
Ask for a piece of work to be completed as part of the selection process. Depending upon how time-consuming/skilled this is you may or may not want to pay for it. Ask them to time themselves and and make, at least part of it, open-ended. This gives you a chance to test their initiative and their speed and also gives you a comparison point between all candidates.
7. Conduct a Short Interview
Conducting an interview is easily done on Skype. If spoken english is an important part of the work you want done then interview over the phone. If not, then using chat will give you an idea of how comfortable they are with english and how easily they can write in it. Prepare the questions you want to ask in advance, relating them to your job and person spcifications.
Once this steps are completed you will be ready to make a well-informed job offer.
Outsourcing Strategy – Take 3
Posted by: | CommentsContinuing my outsourcing strategy project . . .
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I signed up at onlinejobs.ph taking the one month subscription for $49.
I then spent 45 minutes looking through the most recently added resumes and emailed 5 likely looking candidates.
The next day I got up early and rushed to my computer expecting to deal with the problem of “which one will I choose”? Instead, of which there was a deafly email silence and, in fact none of these 5 people ever responded.
Trying to shake off my disappointment I returned to the site where I discovered that as well as contacting candidates directly, you can also place an ad. So that’s what I did. Within a couple of hours I had 2 responses, neither of which were of a high enough quality for what I was looking for.
When I got up the next day there were 5 more applications in my inbox and things were looking up. I started to go through each one and write down their standard of English, whether or not they’d followed the very specific instructions I’d given with regard to “How to Apply”, and what wordpress/techie experience they had.
By the end of the fourth application I was beginning to panic that I might have set the bar too high as there was no-one that jumped out at me particularly. Then I read the fifth one and I was sold. His level of english was excellent and he’d made a real effort to impress me and show willing without grovelling. The wage he was asking for was lower than I’d anticipated and he was willing to be trained. So we sent a few emails back and forth and, long story short, he started working for me, for a trail period this morning.
Very exciting!
And a whole ‘nother level of learning has begun.
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A Few Tips – Assuming you’ve written a job and person spec, so you know what you’re looking for:
- Consider going straight for the ad rather than wasting time looking through people’s resumes who may or may not reply to your email.
- Ask applicants to reply in a very specific way so you can get an idea of their attention to detail. For example, I asked them to make the subject of the email “Web Assistant Application – Your Name” and asked them to rate some things and send in an attached word document.
- If language skills are important to you ask them to write a couple of paragraphs about themselves so this will give you extra information to assess them with.
Outsourcing Projects Take 2
Posted by: | CommentsThis weekend I went ahead and placed an ad at bestjobs.ph as mentioned in outsourcing firms reviews.
On Sunday I thought of a couple of other skills I wanted to add and so went back to my submission to add them. What I found, however, was that my account had been deleted. John Reese mentioned in a video interview that you might not be able to use this service from the US but as I’m in the UK I thought I’d give it a go. I emailed bestjobs support to find out why the account had gone but have had not heard back yet. I can only assume that the free ads are not available to UK users although it doesn’t actually say so on the site. I will, of course, keep you updated if I find out more.
So . . . where does that leave me with my outsourcing projects campaign?
The 3 months options for both bestjobs.ph and onlinejobs.ph are similar but, as I want to take someone on asap and I’m only looking for one person at this stage, I’m going to go with the onlinejobs one month offer. Not to mention I’m feeling more than a little miffed with bestjobs for wasting my time! At least, by writing the ad, I know exactly what I’m looking for so that should save a few hours.
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Tip
If you’re going to go straight for a paid service and look at people’s full resumes I recommend that you spend some time writing a job/person specification so you know exactly what you are looking for. Let it sit for a couple of days because you’re sure to think of extra things. BUT, remember fail in the field. So balance your preparation with just getting on with it.
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25.5.10 Update
I signed up to onlinejobs yesterday and spent 45 minutes looking for likely candidates. Then emailed 5 of them.
Outsourcing Firms Reviews
Posted by: | CommentsContinuing my outsourcing project . . .
As explained previously, I am now looking for a full-time worker rather than just taking someone on, on a per project basis which means that the sites I have used in the past, such as Elance and Guru.com will no longer be suitable for my purposes. What I need now is to shift to sites that display people’s resumes.
I have heard great things about workers from the Philippines so I will start my search there. A few places suggested by John Reese are manila.craigslist.com.ph, Onlinejobs.ph and bestjobs.ph.
These are my thoughts about each . . .
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1. Craigslist
You need to go to the “resumes” section of the site to find people looking for work. However, the majority of listings have been added by people looking for workers rather than the workers themselves.
You often can’t tell from the title whether the ad is by an employer or an employee so you waste time opening listings to find out.
Each ad is individually written with no formal structure so it’s hard to compare like with like. Many don’t have all the information you need to make an informed decision. Required salary is often missing, for example.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
2. Onlinejobs.ph
No “how it works” for employers – only for employees – so you need to really hunt around for the information. But see below for what I was able to discover without signing up.
You can see a good amount of information about each potential worker but you need to join to see contact information.
Prices are:
Monthly Subscription – $49
3 months – $105
12 months – $299
So, to all intents and purposes it will cost you a minimum of $49 to employ a single worker, assuming you can do so within a month.
There are 4 additional options available:
Prefound Workers who have been verified as available for work, have a computer, internet connection, etc, and that they want to work from home for an international company.
Finders fee is $350
Tested Workers who have been verified as above but have also taken specific tests that prove their abilities. A score of 60 and above is considered quite good so you are able to compare workers on specific skill areas.
Finders fee is $800
“Done For You” service
For this service they will:
- Recruit multiple potential employees.
- Administer a test with each potential person.
- Work out salary details.
- Figure out employment details (part/full-time, daily hours worked, internet/computer access, start date, …).
- Manage their expectations in working for you.
- Make sure they don’t just quit on you.
- Make sure you’re up and running with an employee who will work for you.
Cost is $800.
University Recruiting Service
With this option you are trading experience for pay. Candidates are university graduates who have not worked before but salaries start at as little as $100 per month. One advantage with this service is you get to teach the person your way of doing things but, obviously, that needs to be balanced by the extra time it will take to get up to speed.
You are able to specify:
- What kind of worker you would like, e.g. “general”, “admin”, “graphics”
- What specific tasks you will you be giving this person
- What skills you would like to see in this person when they start
- Full-time (40 hours a week) or Part-time (20 hrs/week)
Cost is $200 for each person recruited.
Payment is by Paypal and Credit Card.
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3. Bestjobs.ph
– Update as of 31.5.10 – as far as I can tell this service is not available to US and UK subscribers. The free ad definitely isn’t and I suspect the paid service isn’t either. However, they have not replied to my emails so I can’t say for certain.
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You can carry out a resume search by a number of criteria including job category, e.g. marketing and sales, clerical and administration, by resume date and by keywords to give you an idea of candidates in the database.
The resume search search is free but you will need to log-in to access the full details.
This is the information you have access to without registering:
Resume reference:
Date last updated:
Education:
Experience:
Employment situation:
Salary expectations:
Availability:
Type of employment:
Location:
Looking to work in:
Age:
Gender:
Marital status:
Own transport:
Driver’s license:
Citizenship:
Right to work:
English level:
Filipino level:
Free Registration and Basic Service
Offers unlimited job adverts on the website “which gets thousands of visitors every day”.
All vacancies are distributed for free by email to “thousands of job-seekers” who are subscribed to their distribution list.
A Business profile page will be created displaying your business details and list of vacancies, which will be included in the employer directory.
Advanced service
Includes all the features included in the basic service, plus unlimited access to full resumes in the database with contact details.
Also, your vacancies will be highlighted over the rest and they will rank higher on every search.
Costs
- 3 months - 5000 pesos (approx 45 pesos to the US$)
- 6 months - 10000 pesos
- 12 months - 20000 pesos
Payment is by credit or debit card or International bank transfer.
Basic and Advanced Services Compared
The main difference between the paid for advanced service and the free one is that you get access to each candidate’s contact details so you can get in touch with them directly. With the basic service you are reliant on potential candidates responding to your ad.
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From what I’ve discovered I’m going to start with bestjobs.ph and give the free ad a go.
Next Step is to clarify exactly what I’m looking for and then write an ad.
Outsourcing Project Setup
Posted by: | Comments
Having made the decision to set up an internet marketing outsourcing project it’s time to plan what steps I need to take in order to make that happen. I’m feeling quite nervous about this as I’ve never taken on a full-time worker before and I have hundreds of questions and concerns going round in my mind. However, applying the dictum of ”Fail in the Field and Not in Your Head” I’m just going to get on with it and take it one step at a time.
1. The first step is to answer the question:
“What work could someone do for me today that would allow me to generate income fastest?”
In my case, the answer is:
- article marketing – consisting of writing, spinning and submitting to article directories
- creating backlinks – by commenting in forums and blogs.
Since my site is new, I am still trying to build up traffic to 100 uniques a day. The above is the web marketing strategy I’m currently using and this is where I’m spending the bulk of my time. They are tasks that are easily outsourced.
Depending where you are in your online business some other answers might be:
- building a website
- creating a product
- video production
- customer service
- accounting etc. etc.
2. Next I need to look at how long it would take them to do those tasks to determine whether or not I have enough work for a full-time worker or whether, perhaps, I could share their time with another internet marketer. If you have an established business you may have more work than can be carried out in a month, in which case you will need to prioritise what will make the most difference to your bottom line, and either get those tasks outsourced first or consider hiring more than one worker.
My task break down looks like this:
| Task | Hrs |
| Write article/edit PLR article | 1 |
| Submit to Ezine Arts | 1/4 |
| Social Bookmark | 1/4 |
| Spin and submit to MAS | 3/4 |
| Spin and submit to AMA | 3/4 |
| Spin and submit to FTS | 3/4 |
| Add to Art Dash and Base | 1/2 |
| Total Time Per Article | 4 1/4 |
| . | . |
| Hand Commenting | 1 |
| Directory Submissions | 1/2 |
| . | . |
The directory submissions are low down on my list of priorities and could be if and when all other tasks are completed. So, as a starting point, if I do one article marketing cycle a week plus hand commenting, I’m going to need a minimum of 7 websites to keep someone busy full-time or 3 to 4 if I do 2 articles per week. I have this, although article marketing wouldn’t necessarily be the best strategy for all of them but at least this gives me a place to start and allows me to get on with the business of finding someone to oursource to and training them to do this first task.
3. I need to decide where I am going to look for a worker.
4. I need to decide what system I will use to manage the work.
5. I need to decide what system I will use to manage communication between myself and a worker.
Since there are a number of possibilities I want to look into, and I’m trying not to go into overwhelm, I’ll cover these points in future posts.
Internet Marketing Outsourcing Tips
Posted by: | CommentsIf you’re considering outsourcing for your business or wondering how you’re ever going to get everything done (think Life in the Grind) then there’s a launch that will be of interest to you. As is often the case these days, there’s a lot of gold to be found in the pre-launch. What I heard last week, has already galvanized me into getting over my resistance and giving outsourcing a try again. But this time, based on the expertise provided by John Reese, I will be doing it differently.
Word of warning though. There’s some great information in the first video, with hopefully more to follow, but you’ll need to put up with the usual sun glasses, shiny car, ocean back-drop etc. – barf, barf. Don’t let that put you off though, if you’re serious about learning to outsource.
John Reece’s prelaunch series is here:
http://www.outsourceforce.com/2-dollar-per-hour-power-formula-sp
And there’s more useful information in an interview of him by Ed Dale where Ed pre-empts some of what is to follow later in the series:
http://www.eddale.co/general/the-dirtiest-of-internet-marketing-secrets-revealed-in-this-video
The main shift in my thinking about outsourcing, as a result of listening to the interview, is to think of hiring someone for a number of hours, rather than on a per project basis. And, according to Reese this can be done for $300 per month, full-time.
My experience of outsourcing has, in the past, been on a project by project basis. A couple of drawbacks with this is that I had to keep training new people when they changed their mind about wanting to work part-time, or they got a “real” job or someone made them a better offer. A good thing about having someone work full-time (and exclusively for you, as recommended by John Reese) is that you can build a long-term relationship with them and reward them for their innovation and loyalty.
Other points that were useful included:
- the more detailed the specification you can give, the better and faster you will get the work done.
- don’t give any one person access to all the parts of your business or to critical financials such as Paypal.
- ask for regular reports (e.g. every 2 days), create milestones and hold them accountable to them.
- look for someone with multiple skills such as designing and content writing
- require them to sign a contract to work exclusively for you
There’s much more good stuff in the interview but these were the most important points for me. I’m looking forward to the next video. But before that . . .
. . . here’s a tip of my own:
If you don’t have a good system in place for the work you’re doing, don’t even think about outsourcing. Instead of having one disorganised and unfocussed person you’ll just end up with two AND be paying for the privilege. A lesson I learnt the hard way.
But, if you’ve read my past posts such as “how to manage boring and repetitive tasks” you’ll know I’ve been practising keeping on keeping on, even when I’ve been bored with what I’ve been doing. And the result of that is that I’ve pretty much set up a system for spinning and publishing articles that maximises my time and the results achieved. So I feel that this is something I could now outsource (along with some of the more straight forward link building).
I notice that I’m not bounding into the sunset, thrilled to be able to do this though. Because I know that getting everything running smoothly and managing a new relationship will be another steep learning curve. However, I recognise that if I want to develop a real business, rather than one I’m just playing around with, I won’t be able to do everything myself. And, even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. So, I’m putting my fear behind me and rising to the challenge.
