Small Biz Blog Owner Reveals Her 5 Best “In-The-Trenches” Outsourcing Tips!
I’ve been working online for quite some time now, but like anything, you tend to get overwhelmed after a while. Yes, I have too many projects on my hand and in order to lessen the load on my side, I figured that I would go overseas to have people help me.
A lot of my website projects are content based, and since it takes time to build links, write content and design graphics, I thought I would look into the Philippines since I have heard so many good things about this country.
I have been outsourcing a few years now, and I have learned a lot during these years. There have been my ups and there have definitely been some downs. I wanted to share some tips that I have learned during this experience.
#1 Always get a sample – Before you hire anyone, you’re going to want to get a sample from them. Don’t just accept a sample they send you, ask for one personally. Your goal is to make this sample as hard as possible to see how they do it. 99% of the time, they will send you a sample per your request. This is a quick way to weed people out.
#2 Ask questions – Any employer is going to ask you questions if they want to hire you. You should do the same thing with your potential assistants. I will ask some of the following questions:
- What were your old jobs?
- Why did you quit? Why were you fired?
- Who was your old employer?
- What are your skills?
- Can you meet our requirements for the job?
#3 Start low and incentivize – Most overseas people will want to start a higher salary right away. What I have found is that employees generally tend to work harder when there is a bonus involved. Since I want my work done daily, I tell them that they will get a monthly bonus if they submit on time for a month straight. This tends to work very well.
#4 Give them time – The first week or so is going to usually be slow. This is your time to mold them, and train them. Keep in mind that they won’t be a pro over night. Instead, try your best to write up a fantastic training packet and always make sure that you pick out their flaws. You will just want to make sure that you’re not too picky.
#5 Be nice – Just because the person lives overseas, it doesn’t mean that you can treat them like garbage. You will want to make sure that you treat them with respect, and just be nice to them overall. I have found that if you treat them like a human being, they will tend to work harder for you in the long haul.
Yes, outsourcing can have its ups and it can have it’s downs. It may take a few times to find the perfect employee but when you do find them, it’s well worth the time and effort put in to find them!
(Liz Cutten over at FindBizCards provided this guest post for your benefit. Please thank her by visiting her small business blog.)
Outsource Online Marketing: A Strategy for Entrepreneurs
Why would a company owner outsource online marketing? Sales and direct client contact could be a superior gain for entrepreneurs; sales is actually bringing in money and often the direct client contact is delivering the product or service being sold. So it is easy to spend time on the activities which are closer to the cash; and it is simple to allow the internet marketing to slide.
Anyone who’s in business knows that online marketing is absolutely essential in order to make a living wage, whether offline or on the internet. Without internet marketing, you will have no traffic. Without traffic, you have a flat business. Although this is true, many business owners and small business owners just don’t have the time to accomplish it all themselves. By the time the business fundamentals and urgent telephone calls are checked off of your to-do list, you may not have much time or energy left to do the online marketing or promotion your company requires to thrive.
What does outsourcing marketing mean? Simply put, outsourcing is assigning some or all of a task to someone else. One of the best ways is to hire someone that is very good or experienced at the task you are delegating. The business owner hires a virtual assistant to perform internet marketing jobs, like generating online content or implementing social marketing, and is still in a position to direct the work, but doesn’t have to complete all the work themselves. This frees up the entrepreneurs time for other priorities, and also life outside of work!
Where can you find outsourcers? There exists a whole industry built up to satisfy the requirements of busy small business owners for outsourcers, also called contract workers. According to what work you have, consider employing a college student or teenager with great tech skills for some of your computer or online tasks; many younger people have grown up using PCs, so they catch on quickly. Another option is a friend, neighbor, or stay-at-home mom for part-time office work. Perhaps even a virtual assistant, who could be overseas or located right in your city; an English-speaking outsourcer is important for most US businesses.
Outsource internet marketing alternatives include writers to create information products and write reports or graphic designers for logos and internet site banners. Having an impressive website that ranks well is also important, so hiring a website designer for a great look or a coder so you are able to do business on the internet could be high on your list. Among the first virtual assistants that many business owners employ is an assistant, usually a virtual assistant but they could also be someone physically located in the office. This individual handles telephone calls, emails, scheduling, and a myriad of other daily minutiae that make the small business run well; plus they can also handle the normal marketing actions like posting content, submitting articles, and building backlinks to your website.
Regardless of the particular needs of your online business, outsource internet marketing has the potential to take your business to a higher level. Hiring trustworthy, experienced outsourcers can boost your production while greatly reducing your own time in the marketing and advertising of your small business.
Learn more about outsourcing marketing. Stop by Michael Wilson’s site where you can find out all about “7 Steps to Outsourcing Your Online Marketing”.
Outsourcing Pros: Getting More Productive With 80/20 Rule
Today I have to give you something which is what we call the 80/20 basic principle and it’s the Pareto’s Law at the same time, too if you have heard of the 80/20 or Pareto’s Law, it’s the same thing. Exactly why I need to consult with you around the 80/20 rule is I need to mention the actual way it refers to outsourcing. I had a question in one of my recent workshops also it was really attention-grabbing because I think lots of people were struggling about what to outsource. They can’t determine how as a way to take themselves out of their business and outsource their work to the right people, and it’s quite simple to say look I’m just going to hire someone and let them just take over of everything. Because as an entrepreneur, you do literally sets from handling client service emails to all the way to uploading things up onto the internet for videos and so forth. You’re kind of the hands-on person who does everything. And that’s very normal and very common for solo entrepreneurs. I’m very much aware about it because I’ve been there and I’ve been doing that as well, too during the past.
Now, taking a step out of that to really release what you’re currently doing and to give the individual that you’re outsourcing to, to do the work correctly requires a bit of thinking and it’s not as simple as just providing them with all the project and say look, you do that. You need to firstly give them understanding on the actual way it works and also knowledge of what needs to be done and then setup the systems and the automation process that are involved. Now this is where the 80/20 concept comes into play and when you look at the way it works, it’s actually very simple concept. Let me explain to you what the 80/20 basic principle is if you don’t know what it is.
The 80/20 principle is where 80% of your results originates from 20% of your efforts. Let me give you an example. Say as an example, you’ve put in 20% of your time to producing 80% of your results. Let’s look at a good example. For instance, I know that 20% of the people in the world, make about 80% of the wealth. That’s one such thing or common phrase that goes around. Apparently, with the new age and everything that changes, about — it’s moved from about 10% of the people in the world make about 90% of the world, or wealth I should say. And it’s a very generalistic term. Don’t blame me if I’m telling you the facts. I’m just hearing these from books I’ve read and also articles I’ve read and the like but basically that is the terminology. Now if you’re going to apply that to outsourcing, where say 20% of the things that you do as part of your business will generate 80% of the results. And why by that is say for instance, you spend 20% of your time on making money. You’re doing dollar-productive activities. Those dollar-productive activities must provide 80% of your income. If you’re making $100,000 a year by way of example and — 20% of that time that you spend in your business, you’re making the dollar-productive activities, that’s basically 80% results.
That’s basically a very simple understanding and concept. Hopefully I’ve explained that. I know I’ve been saying that again. But what I want to say now is looking at outsourcing. What you need to do is look at what are your activities in your business which are dollar-productive for you that you are doing right now, that is generating 80% of the results. Think about that for a moment, what are those? Once you’ve figured out what those things are, then the 80% of those things you can either eliminate, that’s the first thing or automate which is starting the systems, or outsource. And this is what I’m talking about, those 80% of the things that you don’t need to do. Examples are email, you might not need to check your email everyday, you could get someone else to do that for you depending on which kind of company you have. Cut it down, eliminate, setup these filters, setup systems so that it automatically answers them for you either. That’s 80% that’s administration tasks that doesn’t need to be done. Uploading videos; you don’t physically need to sit there and upload videos online or uploading content, posting blogs, etc. You can have a VA log into your computer and do that for you while you’re away. Those things are not making money but in the — in the essence of actually producing content for the net, you’ll need to do those things if you’re a blogger, or someone who is promoting online. So those activities are essential but, you don’t need to do them yourself. The things that you may think that are dollar-productive for you are talking to clients, writing out newsletters to potential prospects on your newsletter list, subscribers for example. Those are dollar-productive. On the lookout for new leads for instance and generating more income through sales.
So those things are dollar-productive. Things that will make money for your business. You can deal with that or you can setup a system to be able to have that all automated for you. And that’s crucial. If you get to a certain point where basically you don’t even need to worry about those ideas and you look at everything from strategic and looking at from the overview point of things, then that’s where the place you want to be is putting all the strategic concepts into place, so that, that way your team your outsourced staff can actually do all the work for you and all you should do is sit back and collect the income but also strategically drive the business forward on where you want to go.
Want to learn how you can outsource your entire life to the Philippines and make over $100,000 plus a year income working less than 10 hours a week? Mass Outsource is an outsourcing course dedicated to teach you the systems behind the real outsourcing strategy and how to benefit from it.. This article, Outsourcing Pros: Getting More Productive With 80/20 Rule is released under a creative commons attribution license.
I’m Now Outsourcing Most of My Social Media Marketing. Are You?
Do you know what kind of symbol that is?
What if it contained information you REALLY needed to know? (like “How is Mtn Jim outsourcing his social media marketing?”) 
Hint: Do you know what percentage of Americans now have smartphones?
Should I Outsource This?
I just spent about 3 hours putting together a YouTube video to promote my Self Publish Your Ebook product.
The primary tools I used were Jing, Animoto, and YouTube itself.
Some of the process was fun, and a little creative.
But, was this the best use of my time…or should I outsource this type of thing in the future? Please comment and tell me what you would do and why.
Here’s the video:
