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.
Moving Forward
Posted by: | CommentsLast week I experimented with doing only what I wanted to do, in the moment, rather than things I felt I “should” do because it would bring me a certain result in the future. It was hard, not least because the critic in my head kept telling me I’d never get anywhere if I didn’t knuckle down and focus and I’d just gone back to my old, bad habits, and I was just avoiding things.
But, surprisingly I did actually get a lot of things done and, a lot of time I worked in a more balanced way. As soon as I found myself staring at the computer screen or trawling through email or forums I made myself get up and went and did something physical. Then I came back to the computer and did the next thing.
When I wrote my earlier post, I’d got to the point of questioning whether or not I should continue with the internet business because I was not enjoying my life writing and spinning articles. That’s what it felt it had been reduced to, so narrow had my view become.
But, after a week of experimenting, I confirmed for myself exactly what it is I enjoy doing in this business and what I don’t. I feel a new determination to find a way to make this work without spending so much time on tasks I really dislike.
In addition to this I also discovered some other things that had been buried by the daily grind. One was that I really, really want to do an apprenticeship with Michael Neill and the other was that I’d been allocating no time to my coaching business.
In order to do the apprenticeship I need to create a big chunk of money by the end of December. Previously, the only way I could see to do this was to force myself to ramp up the internet marketing, doing stuff I don’t want to do and I now know that that just isn’t going to happen.
As soon as I began experimenting with the “want to” and let go of the “how to” I started to notice other options.
One is an autoblogging course being piloted by Web2Mayhem (more about that in future posts) and the other was an old site of mine from which I sell an ebook I wrote a while back.
The ebook and site is about depression recovery and has been languishing away in cyberland untouched for years. It’s an obvious place to step up my income but I tend to ignore it for a number of personal reasons.
If I put those aside I ought to be able to increase visitors and sales. However, I don’t want to handle the customer service or spend a lot of time updating it and then maintaining it, so I put it to the back of my mind again.
A couple of days later I realised a better idea would be to make the improvements needed and then sell it. Then I wouldn’t need to manage customer service or keep the site updated. And, since buying and selling websites is one of Ed’s special areas of expertise I’m in the perfect place to do this.
Finally, I attended a call that was given by John Jonas of Replace Myself. He’s the owner of the site I used previously to try to find an outsourcer. An encouraging thing he said was that it is common for workers to disappear overnight (as happened with both my attempts) and it was usually due to their feeling embarrased about not being able to do something. That fits with my experience. I was probably expecting too much from them, too soon.
So, armed with that knowledge I now feel ready to give my internet marketing outsourcing project another go. This time I will have a more precise plan of exactly what I need them to do. Starting with something simple and building up from there.
I’ll let you know how it goes . . .
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.
Hoorah, hoorah, I’ve Something To Say
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s been 2 weeks since my last post and for a moment there I thought I might never have anything interesting to report again! There’s been a bit of a lull in the mentoring, so no 1 on 1′s with Ed or webinars to write about.
My outsourcing project has also ground to a halt so, for the most part, I’ve been plodding on, head down. After trying out 2 different outsource workers and having them both disappear on me I decided to take a break and rethink my strategy as I was spending huge amounts of energy on it without positive results. I’ve been trying out 2 automatic submission tools and, once I decide which one I’m going to go with, I’ll probably, outsource that work, one piece at a time and build from there.
I’ve made a change to how I organise my CFT blocks, after doing the exercise I mentioned in my “critical focus time backwards” post . Putting pen to paper I realised that working at the pace I was, with the time I have available, I was already at full capacity both in terms of sites and tasks. So I reduced my CFT block length from 45 to 30 minutes which gave me more available work slots. This also had the added bonus of speeding up my work. So now I’m getting more done in less time and with more time to do it! The result is I now have 4 sites in my work rotation.
I feel I’m making real progess now in putting together a system that works for me and the discipline of keeping on, keeping on, is paying off.
The brilliant news is my plugging away is bringing measurable results.
Fan fare of trumpets please . . .
I’ve hit the top 5 on page one of Google and, although my main keyword only has average traffic potential, I am expecting that traffic to pick up from here on in. So more people should be finding me through the search engines who are looking for coaching. This means it’s now time to turn my mind to what internet marketing coaching packages I’d like to offer.
Ed has suggested that any mentees taking the 2010 Challenge should lead a group so that’s one possibility. I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m most interested in coaching people who, although not newbies, are having very little success so I could form a group around that. Hmmmm. Wonder if I could set up a forum we could use on this site . . .
Long term, I would like some local clients so I could do some face-to-face group coaching.
If you have any thoughts about what coaching packages you would like to see or what has worked for you in the past, please leave a comment below. I’m all ears! 
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.
Critical Focus Time Backwards
Posted by: | CommentsJust had a 1:1 session with Ed Dale as part of the mentoring program. As far as this site is concerned I was a little concerned since I’ve been pretty much stuck at the bottom of page 1/top of page 2 for my main keywords, since April. However, Ed thinks I’m doing well, since I’m not going to get much traction from the search engines without a lot of time and effort as my main keyword terms are so competitive. So that’s encouraging.
I’m building this site for the long haul so, whilst more traffic and “conversation” would be great, I’m happy to keep at it and tell the tale whilst building the money-making part of the business elsewhere (for the time-being). One of my biggest challenges at the moment is not being able to get all the work done.
I’m much better at following a system and keeping to my CFTs but it’s still not enough to do it all. I’m still in the process of getting my outsourcing project sorted but that is taking longer than I anticipated. If I keep building sites the way I’m doing I’m just going to end up with a bigger log jam. Not to mention the other sites that I already had, before the start of the mentoring, that I’m not working on at all.
Ed was a great help with this by giving me a different way to look at the problem. I’ve always recognised getting a change of prospective to be one of the great benefits of working with a life coach and now I see that internet marketing coaching is no different.
I’ve built 2 sites so far, following the 5 CFT Challenge parameters, and, whilst I built the second one faster than the first, I’m struggling to keep up with the link building stuff necessary to keep them ticking over. The recommendation in the Challenge is to write, spin and syndicate one article a week and that’s what I’ve been trying to do. But I’m pretty much working at full capacity so there’s no room to build more sites and test new markets or to implement other sorts of promotion.
Ed’s suggestion was this. Instead of starting with the method first (in this case article promotion once a week) and trying to make it fit the CFT available, start with the CFT and allocate specific blocks to each of the sites, keeping some clear for new sites or development of old ones. This means that I won’t be able to write, spin and syndicate one article per site per week but I will be able to keep all my sites ticking over. So my next move is a plain sheet of paper, lots of coloured pens and a trip to my favourite cafe to sketch out the new plan.
Outsourcing Strategy – Take 3
Posted by: | CommentsContinuing my outsourcing strategy project . . .
~~~~~~
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.
~~~~~~
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.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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 . . .
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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 $200 for each person recruited.
Payment is by Paypal and Credit Card.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
3. Bestjobs.ph
– Update as of 31.5.10 – as far as I can tell this service is not available to US and UK subscribers. The free ad definitely isn’t and I suspect the paid service isn’t either. However, they have not replied to my emails so I can’t say for certain.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
You can carry out a resume search by a number of criteria including job category, e.g. marketing and sales, clerical and administration, by resume date and by keywords to give you an idea of candidates in the database.
The resume search search is free but you will need to log-in to access the full details.
This is the information you have access to without registering:
Resume reference:
Date last updated:
Education:
Experience:
Employment situation:
Salary expectations:
Availability:
Type of employment:
Location:
Looking to work in:
Age:
Gender:
Marital status:
Own transport:
Driver’s license:
Citizenship:
Right to work:
English level:
Filipino level:
Free Registration and Basic Service
Offers unlimited job adverts on the website “which gets thousands of visitors every day”.
All vacancies are distributed for free by email to “thousands of job-seekers” who are subscribed to their distribution list.
A Business profile page will be created displaying your business details and list of vacancies, which will be included in the employer directory.
Advanced service
Includes all the features included in the basic service, plus unlimited access to full resumes in the database with contact details.
Also, your vacancies will be highlighted over the rest and they will rank higher on every search.
Costs
- 3 months - 5000 pesos (approx 45 pesos to the US$)
- 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.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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.
