Archive for John Reese
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 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.
