I’ve started using the services of a new outsourcing, freelancer site this month and I have to say I’m blown away by the quality of talent I’ve found there.

I’ve used elance.com, rentacoder.com, and scriptlance.com alot in the past – but after trying this new site, I have to say I think I like it most…

What is it?

www.getafreelancer.com

The signup and posting process is easy, they don’t put restrictions on you with regard to contacting the freelancers outside getafreelancer.com itself, and the quality of people there, especially content writers…

I found an incredible lady, from the UK, a college graduate, who writes with better english than me, who will write 300 words for $3. That’s $3 well spent when you don’t need to proofread. Her quality has been outstanding, she’s met the deadlines and been in contact with me every day through the project.

My girlfriend started using the site and had similar experiences, great quality, reliable writers who speak great english – a rare find!

We’ve also started searching for staff to develop WP blogs, build backlinks and so on – also great value – we had no trouble finding staff who would work for as low as $2 an hour and with hundreds of incredible feedback testimonials.

If you’re looking to get anything outsourced soon, I suggest you check it out – WELL worth your time!

Andrew

This is part 2 of 2 in the Guide To [tag]Outsourcing[/tag] post.

If you didn’t see part 1, Click Here

3. Get recommendations from a friend:

When I need something done now, the FIRST thing I do – that’s before going to Elance.com, Rentacoder.com or anywhere else, is ask someone I KNOW.

When you get a recommendation from another business owner who’s had similar work done by a person they can tell you the good and bad about them right from the start. They can tell you the information that you won’t see on their Rentacoder bid and MORE…

Obviously this is where it pays to have acquaintances in the same business and hence, spend some time on hanging out at industry seminars, posting in forums online and so on. But even with no acquaintances, you can even go straight into some forums and just ask “Can someone recommend me a PHP coder/article writer/tech support worker/?” and so on and so forth.

The point I’m trying to make is that free lance sites are great but if you’ve ever used one you’ll know it’s not always smooth sailing. It’s ALWAYS hit and miss. You might get someone great and you might get someone horrible, no matter HOW good they seem from their initial bid. Getting a recommendation (generally) eliminates the hit and miss which saves you BIG time and money.

The other reason that this is great is that you can even ask the recommending friend how much that person charged them for the work they had done. Find out what they did and how much they charged and it will give you leverage when negotiating the price of the project/work with the freelancer.

You can find out whether they’re cheap or expensive and whether they’re worth it rather than finding out using your own time and money.

In the event that you can’t get a recommendation, its time to head to the freelance sites.

I’ve primarily used rentacoder and scriptlance for high quality technical jobs and low quality writing jobs and elance for high quality writing jobs.

The biggest (and perhaps most obvious) tip I can give is “Focus on Feedback”. And I don’t just mean look for someone with good reviews, I mean look for someone who cares SO much about the feedback they get that they’ll do ANYTHING not to get a bad review.

A particular coder we started working with is in the top 20 coders and is actually featured on one of lists at the freelancer sites – ALL his ratings are 10′s so if he even gets a 9, he slips out of the top ranking and I’m guessing loses a decent bit of business… You think he cares about delivering a quality project? You bet he does!

Don’t even bother with anyone who doesn’t have a high volume of GREAT feedback, and if possible, someone who whatever reason, REALLY needs to keep getting good feedback.

Find people who can show examples of high quality work that is as similar as possible to that which you’re getting done.

If you’ve done everything right up until now and you have to use a freelance service, DON’T expect it to be smooth sailing.

Let me put the icing on this outsourcing cake.

4. The Ongoing Journey Of Outsourcing.

Basically here’s a general rule.

You’re not going to find the perfect person first shot, and even when you do find the perfect person, they’re not going to do a perfect job first shot. If they do, you’re on a MAJOR winner, it just doesn’t often happen.

So what do you do?

Start small.

Whatever you’re task you’re wanting to get done, don’t give them THAT task immediately.

Take MAJOR advantage of test projects. And not just one, but a number of test projects, gradually increasing in size and importance.

As the person proves their reliability and quality to you, you give them bigger more important projects.

Not only that but as you work with a person, you get a real feel for their work ethic, their values and their goals in THEIR businesses. You find out how good they are at doing what they say they’ll do – how they handle unexpected changes – how they take feedback, particularly negative – and ALL of this you can find out before you trust them with something so important that getting it done on time or not could be the difference between thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in your business.

I can’t tell you how much time and money I would have saved if I’d known this from the start.

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Finally I thought I’d include this section on what I personally outsource, partly for interests sake and partly for the benefit of some of you too.

I primarily outsource:

1. Programming work: I have no technical knowledge whatsoever so this one’s a no brainer. Whenever I can’t work out how to get a blog theme looking right, need a new plugin programmed, and of course with the software programs we develop, quality coders have played an important role.

2. Article Writing and Submission:

The next biggest thing I outsource is Article Writing and submission. Interestingly this is actually something I’m quite good at. Why do I outsource it? It’s not in my 20% activities that’s why. It’s cheaper and more profitable to get it done by other skilled writers than get bogged down in it myself. I work with a small office of writers out of the Phillipines who are the BEST freelancers I’ve ever met – I’m lucky to have gotten in contact with them.

3. Link building:

I am on the client lists for a number of people who do link building work. Basically they have large databases of sites and large numbers of clients who they help to acquire links and advertising opportunities for. I get notified periodically of new link and advertising opportunities for our niche sites every so often and tell them which I want to accept, after which they organize the link or help me organize the payment etc This was a REALLY hard one to find a good person for. We tried a LOT of guys who sucked before finding the ones worked well at this.

4. Tech Support/Emailing/Management

I don’t really classify this outsourcing because this person is as close as possible to having another ME running around AND this one I’m extremely fortunate with… I was able to enlist the help of my girlfriend to manage our finances and other personal matters like emails etc Obviously I wouldn’t entrust things like these to someone I wasn’t particularly close to so this has worked well. She’s also great as she’s able to oversee and MANAGE alot of the other staff we have which helps me out alot too.

5. Accounting obviously. Both bookkeeping and tax preparation.

With the exclusion of a few other random tasks here or there, that’s about it.

It takes time and money to develop a team you can truly rely on to produce quality output and increase your businesses bottom line but then again, it’s pretty tough to build a real business and make a PHENOMENAL income without it, more so than ever in the virtual world.

If you follow the steps above, and approach your outsourcing with these ideas in mind you’ll have the greatest chance of success.

I hope you’ve found this two part post helpful and I wish you all the best in your own outsourcing endeavours!

Andrew

This post is part 1 of 2 in Guide To [tag]Outsourcing[/tag]

Alot of people have been asking me about outsourcing lately – what I outsource, how I find the people, how much I charge etc.

I thought I’d make a post to answer some of these things for everyones benefit because the truth is that great outsource staff lead to a better business and a less stressful, more happy life for you the business owner.

Further to that, it’s something I’m particularly interested in. There’s nothing like the feeling of being somewhere else, doing something else and knowing that you have reliable personnel holding down the fort and moving your business forward without your perpetual oversight.

At the same time it’s the worst feeling knowing that a project is late because you’ve hired the wrong person for the job and you don’t want to fire them mid project because it will only cost you MORE time… Not to mention hiring people who cost too much, produce only an average level output and take weeks past the deadline to boot.

Bottom line, outsourcing is important and knowing how to do it for the benefit of your business is a vital skill to being a successful entrepreneur.

I’m just going to spill these ideas in a random manner but they are all equally relevant and important.

1. Decide What You Want To Outsource

First, is the question of what should you outsource?

Of course the answer to this is is different for everyone but an exercise that you should perform regardless of whether you plan to outsource or not is this:

Start looking closely at the tasks you’re doing each day. I mean really look at it… Look at how much time you’re spending on producing content, making/improving your sites, driving traffic – and divide it up to individual tasks too so you REALLY know what you’re doing. It’ll be an interesting experiment in time management too.

So once you can see everything you’re doing each day how do you decide what to outsource?

Even that answer could be different for everyone but you want to start by choosing the activity that’s taking up the most of your time and working your way down the list. You might find the first task is “answering email” which you can’t outsource yet so you move to the next option and so forth.

Basically you want to work off the principle that 80% of your results/income will be coming from 20% of the activities you’re performing, so you want to make sure that YOU are focusing on those 20% activities and the rest you’re getting taken care of by someone/something else.

You could also start by asking the question “What of my daily tasks are HARDEST for me?” What you also need to do as a business owner is realize what your core skills are and focus on those tasks rather than trying to do everything and anything – including the things that you plain SUCK at…

Some tasks in your day will be harder and some will be easier, and my guess is that those will correlate with the tasks that take you the most time and those that take you the least time too.

Do what you’re good at and find other people to do what you’re NOT good at. It results in a higher quality output too because you can outsource the stuff you SUCK at to people who DON’T suck at it! Your work will be quality and their work will be quality – that equals greater profits I can promise you!

Ok so you’ve decided what tasks you suck at or take too much of your time for not enough effort – now what?

2. You Create a System

Depending on whether you’re looking for someone for ongoing work or a one off project you will have to create a system or develop a project description.

Basically you have to ‘teach’ someone else to do this task so that if they jumped onto their computer somewhere else in the world, they could complete that task without messing it up and without having to bother you every 20 minutes.

If you just want some articles written, this is easy. Be specific with what you want and when you want it done and create a description.

If you’re looking for someone for ongoing work, you’ll need a little more planning but really it’s not a big deal.

To create a system, you’ll need to break down the big task you need done continually into all the little tasks that go into completing that thing.

Note the tasks down carefully and in order. You need to set them out in the chronological order you want them completed, how many of each task you want completed every unit of time, hour/day/week.

Make the description as clear as you can. Make videos of YOU doing the task with Camtasia and upload them to the web for your prospective staff member to look at and so on.

You can even set the small tasks of the system out in a spreadsheet with the tasks on one axis and time on the other axis so that the person doing them can tick them off as they complete then, making it easier to track their progress and get the task completed.

Finally note that it’s usually best to hire someone on an ongoing basis when you can because it gives you time to get to know the person and train them to get the output as close to what you want as possible.

In the next half of this article we’ll look at what to do once you have a description together – how to ensure you get the best output from the best person on a consistent basis.

Andrew Hansen