I decided to write a bit about outsoourcing and how to deal with people if you want to earn a little bit of money. It's going to be a long post, but if you read carefully, you can learn some valuable free lessons around here. Good luck! 1. Most of the people I know waste their life working for themselves. I don't say it's bad, but it's boring. I still prefer taking a long walk or running with my girlfriend, rather than testing my Adwords or doing other online jobs. The next step in to make money online is outsourcing. Find out an idea and put other people to work for you to make more money. 2. Where to find your workers? you can find good people in cheap/poor countries. The only disadvantage of these countries is that people are kinda stupid, but you'll find some smart/cheap people around here to. Patience! Do some Google Adwords campains in a cheap country. Find a country where paypal is available so you can pay your workers Get some free vouchers and gather some people Don't be to emotional, because some people are going to "play with your mind". 3. It's very important to build a serios and hard working team. Filter your team in order to find the best people. If someone else can tell other good advice, please tell more.
Really? Is that the sort of people we have talking on DP? You can't come here saying "Outsourcing secrets" and then come up with this rubbish. You want to learn how to outsource correctly? Here is five quick things you should do; - My preference is to use oDesk for two reasons. You can hire two guys for the same project, brief them both tell your preferred guy he has got the job, keep the second guy to pick up the slack if it falls through. - Always treat and brief your guys thoroughly, explicitly and as if they have never seen a computer before. Not because people are "dumb", but because sometimes people misunderstand, language barriers can get in the way, people may be thinking of one thing when you mean another. If they are smart, the extra information will just help, if not, you will know straight away - Always put time constraints on your tasks. Say "I want you to do x within two hours by tomorrow". Don't waste anyones time. Anytime someone working for you misses a deadline, thats one warning. Miss two deadlines, get rid of them and move on. - When writing a task always ask specific questions like "tell me what tools you would use to do this job" and ask for examples to where they have done it before. Always say things like "I only want you to show me examples of your work specific to this task" It will help weed out the guys that send cookie cutter cvs. - Don't waste people's time. Only post jobs to intend to hire for.
last 6 moths did work of $35 thousands dollar, 50% upfront/advance. rest upon completion, and never work without payment. if you know how work then people ready to pay you upfront.
It's my personal mantra: Always try to reach at the position, where you don't have to do ANYTHING which can be done by somebody else. Always invest your time and energy in those things, which can only be done by you and no-one else in the world.
Lots of people here on DP are not stupid, rather newbs and unexperienced (not everyone here is 20+ years old, not everyone here has a company and not everyone here is used to work with thousands or dollars per month). I hire people for a living and I know and I bet that each poor/cheap country has good/smart/cheap people. Yes, I may waste a bit of time to find good people, but once I find them, they are good to go. There is no correct form to outsource. There are tons of possiblities and if my outsourcing works and I make lots of money, that is a correct form too. The best thing about outsourcing is the following: "hire cheap, not to smart people, from 3'd world countries". The rest follows. Constraints are very important and I have to say you are very right. I am a very strict person and they way I do business is by rules. I put very strict deadlines and I don't pay any money to people who are cheating me. Yes, people cheat and they always think they will go without a notice, but at the end, I always win. It is very important not to fall emotionally, because some people from 3'd world countries, because they are poor, they want to work less and gain more money.
Not necessary. The best thing is to post a job and only the people who can do it do answer it. The VA may not know to do link building or content writing. The VA may not know to research or do something. But, if you hire someone specially to do link building, better the chance to pay cheap and waste a few minutes with your worker every month/week.
Outsourcing is not a bad idea. On the other hand it is felt by many that self-writing would be great.
If you really want to make lots of money online, self writing it's really a bad idea. Rather outsourcing and content generation are the future.
in my opinion best way to outsource is to check the grammer of that guy whom you hire from cheap/poor country,then give him a test order,and see the results, it helped me alot in my outsourced projects,
Very informative post! There's this book about outsourcing called work 4 hours work week by Timothy Ferriss.
My advice is to outsource one task at a time. Don't try to outsource all aspects of your team at once. You'll spend all of your time trying to hire people, and you'll never get anything done. Figure out what you want to outsource first, and hire someone to do that. Depending on the task, you might have to hire several people until you find a good worker. Master the art of outsourcing that one task first. Once you have that down, find a second task to outsource, and concentrate on outsourcing that task. Keep following this method until your whole business is outsourced. I have found that certain tasks like hiring writers is much more difficult than hiring someone to create social bookmarking accounts for me.
I´ve outsourced to people all around the world. The best experience I´ve ever had was with people from the Philippines. Don´t try to find one VA for al of your tasks like content writing,link building,email marketing,wordpress installation,video creating.... That won´t work. If you want to select people by skills always choose good English (spoken and written) and good grammar. All the other skills can be thaught quite easily. Hope this helps.
outsourcing is for sure the route to scale your business up... and one thing I learn from my own experience is you have to learn how to maintian good workers. Since if you have a good worker, you are all set and have a peace of mind. So once you locate a good one, do something to build up the relationship, touch on their persoanl life not just straight business -to-business. and reward them constantly for their good job... so you can have them in your team for really long term.
Me? LOL. I am on the other side mate, looking for peoples to hire/partnership. http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1899910 Anyways, what's wrong with your avatar? I mistakenly stared it for a couple of minutes and I started feeling dizzy. The world around me turned upside down and I soon found myself sitting on the roof whereas the fan was moving on the floor!!
When it comes to outsourcing, use a service to protect you in the beginning. I've been using odesk.com for some time, and have pretty good experiences. I always look for people with a bit of experience and in the end, if they give me the 'right feeling'. Frank
Thanks for your answers and thanks! It's a good feeling someone likes the free informations I put around here. Btw, back to the subject. It's not all about the grammar, altough the grammar is an important part of the test. Initial test. Think about it - maybe your cheap worker knows english every good (or else you won't hire him/her), but that worker is not too serious and you waste your time teaching her/him how to write good and he makes you no profit. Resonsable? I don't think so, so grammar is not the only thing to take into consideration. I would say the most important thing in outsourcing, besides getting cheap (not to cheap, is important too) is to check people's profiles (I mean psychological profiles) and bet your profile on their profile. When I hire people, based on their first email I already know if I can make a profit with them or not and I only hire people that I make profit with. No other people. Yes, you need to hire hundreds or maybe thousands or people before realizing it's all about psychology of human beings. Outsourcing is being a good manager. You manage your people, you already know what profile do they have and how much trust you give to them. I say you give them no trust from the beginning to the end and know when to fire them, but that's just me. Do how you want! I had my cases, so I know what I'm talking about, in my case. Mastering the out of outsourcing is a complicated thing, most of the people aren't able to acomplish. For the moment I'm teaching my girlfriend how to outsource (for a couple of months, day by day) and she'll getting it. It's complicated and it's all about decisions. I think it's easy to learn people to master outsourcing and I already see some patterns inside it. If you notice the patterns (poor and stupid people are going to make you lose or profit), you're going to make lots of money. Let me tell you some tips you'll never forget: it's always easier to outsource using women (28+ years old, preferable without a kid) because they are more likely to work with you more than 4+ months. Students are more likely to be iresponsable (no offence) and 15+ years old don't take jobs with full responsability. Never hire people who don't have any jobs and they been fired from all the jobs, because those people are more likely to be iresponsable and not to care to much if they screw you or not. I'm saying more likely, so don't touch to much on the subject. Outsourcing teaches you to keep your emotions in bed, rather in your email to the outsourcer. You get what I am saying here. I bet that! "Since you have a good worker you are all set with peace in mind" - false! I seen that everytime your best worker is going to screw you. Not in the first month, rather the 6-7 or the second, third year and so on. He/she'll do that because they think you trust them and they need to screw you. It happens and it's well explained on psychological bases. So, it's better to get more good workers and always try to get others, test them and, when that good worker is going to make a thing, replacing with or without warning. It's always the best to be prepared and not to let a part of your business automaticaly in other people hands. Don't trust anyone! It's always better (from my part) to hire people with zero experience because they are cheap. Experience means more money in my pocket I don't want to give someone else. Not greedy, but not paying other people food/rent/etc because they have more experience. Remember: Forgot to tell you a few ideas, so I edit this post and write down here. It's always better to show to the people you are working with you are the boss with the money, not them. If you are in charge, never be a pussy, because people will "play with you like a pussy you are" (of course, if you are). It's important not to be to emotional, because the only thing they are for you is profit. No, not friends or enemies, rather profit! Remember what I say, because sometime you'll fall into the same path. Only experience with people and making hard decisions is going to teach you business, or someone to teach you the ropes. Outsourcing is the base of all business, you name it. Without it you are nothing and you're going to acomplish 1% of your potential. Trust me! It's not that people can't do without it, but it's better with it. I don't care about my outsourcers personal problems. Neither do they, so don't fall into that trap. Never fall believing that someone is your friend. I saw this happening with some people I teach about outsourcing, but it's not good. I let them hit the ground and learn by themselves, minimizing the loses, but they understood I am right. Yes, you have to have a gift to sense those people and not to care to much or zero about them. I don't care about people emotions. Yes, maybe your mother is in hospital, or you just got an operation, but it's not my business. You could email be and tell me you don't work any more. Also, is very important to understand they are not in charge with the payment. One person that writes articles for me had a delay of 9 days. She told me that she wants the money because she'll go in a holiday with her husband and she needs those. I told her simple: I'll give those when you come from your holiday, because you gived me a delay and you never told me you are leaving, so I know "hey, she'll leave, I need to hire someone else". I told her to tell me when she leaves, but she never did. She wanted the money and she didn't care about me or the thing I don't need those articles any more. I knew that would happen and I knew she'll not beg twice because I know how to deal the situation. @Thanks Justin_Dupre. Do you have some relationship with Volk Jonathan? If you do, please pm me because I have some questions to ask you. I really loved your interview.