In this post I’m going to provide some very practical outsourcing tips for Internet Marketing. I’m doing this more and more in my own business, and have learned some things that I want to pass onto you guys, so you can get the most out of your own outsoucing.
Having a varied readership to this blog, some people being complete newbies and other having more experienced, I think it’s a good idea to first explain what Outsourcing is. Outsourcing is where you pay someone else to do tasks for your online business that you don’t need to be doing, so that you can move your overall operation forward much faster.
What to Outsource?
The first thing you need to decide is what to outsource. Now this will vary, depending on what marketing approach your pursue in your business. However some of the main things that I outsource are link building and article writing and spinning. I also outsource graphic design too, but this is not on a regular basis.
When to Outsource?
Often people ask me if they should outsource jobs for their business straight away, and my answer to this is “no”. The reason I say this, is because in order to get the best result from your outsourcing, you need to know how to do the tasks that you want outsourced first.
Before I outsource any link building or writing job, I always make sure that I have done the task myself. Before I hired any staff to work for me, I did everything myself. I wrote and spun all my own articles, built all my own links and websites.
There’s two reasons I do this. The first one being, that if I have done the task myself, I know how long it takes to complete, and number two, I know what kind of results to expect. By doing this I know what is reasonable to expect from my outsource staff.
Not only that though, you can also offer advice and solutions to your workers if they are finding the task difficult, as you’ll have experience doing it, and be aware of the common difficulties and how to overcome these. I also advise people to wait until they are making money online before they outsource any tasks.
When you are starting out in Affiliate Marketing, it is important to keep your costs low and your profits high. So hold off on the outsourcing until you can see money coming in, and it doesn’t have to be much, what is more important is that you know how you did it and could easily make more money if you replicated what you did.
One lucky sale is not really a good indication that you have worked out a good system to replicate.
How to Outsource?
Once you are ready to get some outsource staff working for you, I recommend that you go over to Odesk, as they have a huge number of workers for you to choose from, and they can work for you on a per project basis or ongoing. That link to Odesk is an affiliate link by the way, however I am a user of this service so believe me it’s quality.
I HIGHLY recommend that you look for people in the Philippines, as my experience with workers from here is very good.
However make sure you read their background information carefully and select people right for the job.
When you have shortlisted a few people that you think will be good for the job, what I recommend you do next, is set up a 30mins test for them to complete, so you can assess how competent they are and how well the follow instructions.
One of the best free tools to help you communicate with your workers is Jing. I did a post on Jing recently and I recommend you read that to learn more about it: Using Jing.
Also I always request that my outsource staff be available on skype, so that if I need to contact them with changes or feedback, I can do so easily.
My closing outsourcing tip is to make sure you check the work of your outsource staff early on. Don’t make the mistake of waiting until they have done 20 hrs for you, and then review their work. I’m only telling you from experience, because I have had a few disasters in my time. So make sure after the first day of work, that you get them to send you what they did.
I hope these outsourcing tips for Internet Marketing were helpful!
Regards
Matt Carter
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Hey Matt,
Great outsourcing tips especially to check their work early on. Better to nip things in the bud than to find out far too late.
I’m new to outsourcing myself but recently I’ve also been using craigslist to find people. As always, you never know who you’re gonna get. I haven’t tried Odesk yet, but will definitely give that a try.
Thanks for the valuable information and for the time you’ve put into this for your readers Mark.
Bailey
Matt Carter Reply:
June 1st, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Hey Bailey
Yeah it is good to check the work early and make sure you get
them on the right track.
Thanks for commenting
Matt
I like all your mentioned tips. They all are good and worth while to go through once. You can read testimonials of their previous work as well as you can make out their authentication.
Matt Carter Reply:
June 1st, 2010 at 7:29 pm
Hey Kay
Yeah I agree, checking testimonies is a good idea
Thanks
Matt
Some great advice there Matt. I’ve been outsourcing for a while but it’s only recently that I’ve really started to outsource A LOT more with a good chunk of my business. You are absolutely spot on when you say about knowing how long it takes you to do something. I recently experienced this very thing, one of my new virtual assistants gave me her work for 8 hours, it was work which would have taken me an hour or two to do, as you can imagine I wasn’t happy. Without my experience though I never would have known that the work she gave me wasn’t 8 hours worth of work.
Thanks
Ben
Hi Matt,
Another good tip for outsourcing. Most of the repetitive work I
outsource them. I use my relative in the Philippines to do this and
they start learning the internet marketing. They are happy for
the extra money.
Hi Mat,
Thank you for your advice about outsourcing. I am only learning the internet business and have only outsourced technical problems and had completely different experiences. Would you recommend paying a bonus, if the job is done well done? Many thanks
Rosemary
Hello Matt
Am so lucky to have a your video shared with a friend.I have master using SEO quake for finding high page rank site and a do follow comments,becuz of your video. I can post the links of my customer’s easily now.And am not performing profile linking only, but also in blog commenting and forum posting .Your video is really great and i believe your strategy which i also do it.I am a provider in odesk,and am so glad that you were helping people like us to explore new techniques in SEO.Which is a big help to give satisfaction to the customers.Keep up the good work.Mabuhay!!!!:)
Thanks,
Marconie
Great advice Matt
What do you think about only hiring one person at a time ? Is that how you do it ?
Websites are doing well and I need help but I hired 4 people at once. Its been tough to figure out how to manage them especially at the same time
Hi Matt,
Great post. I have been outsourcing to the Philippines too with mixed results. I get my workers to send me an email daily outlining what they did for the day. I have found a similar problem with 1 of my guys – what can take me a few hours will take him a few days.
I’m going now to check out what Odesk has to offer
Keep Shining
Joanne
I haven’t used Odesk, but had good results from guru.com. They have a good scoring/review system to gauge experience and for larger projects you can stage payments on pre-defined deliverables (Having said that I’ve only used them for sub $100 tasks).
Thanks
Stuart
Yes Odesk is the place to go…much cheaper than freelancer. Just be careful before hiring..make ure they have work you can see first.
Hi Matt great information here keep it coming.
I have a website half setup and would like to outsourse it to get someone with experience to take it to next level and make it more proffessional with great content some affiliate links and complete an ecommerce store.
Would this be wise to trust them as I would have to give them my details and passwords as it is with a company who host and have a web builder, and would they know or like to use a strange builder they are not used too ie they might want to use dreamweaver etc which is not possible.
My first time using this sort of service so need some advice.
Thanks Tony R
Matt Carter Reply:
June 2nd, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Hey Tony
Not sure about that, I give my logins to my workers to my WordPress blogs but if it is a third party account, then maybe you need to check with them.
Keep up the good work
Thanks
Matt
Aloha Johnathan, straight forward and informative as usual. You know i have been hit up with a few of these outsource companies and Never once did they mention what you just said. Watch your budget, receiving incoming funds and make sure to have a plan before outsourcing. Thanks for sharing! Lani
Matt Carter Reply:
June 2nd, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Hey Lani
Nice to hear from you again!
Cheers
Matt
Dear Matt:
You have been a Godsend! What quality material you truly give all of us, and I agree with an earlier comment — had I found your 12 videos earlier I would have had a much firmer grasp on how it all works better much sooner!
For those of us looking to set up affiliations who have help blogs, today you mentioned Odesk, and that you are affiliated with them. What I don’t understand is how do you get paid if I were just to go to Odesk and use them. I don’t see any affiliate link on your page here, and you didn’t instruct us to “click here” anywhere. Please enlighten.
Dear Matt:
I feel silly. I now went back and saw Odesk IS the link in your text. Is that one link in your text enough? Or don’t bozos like me miss it and just go to Google? Do you feel it would be too much to say, “so that I get credit , make sure you access them through my link”? We’d all do you the service…
Matt Carter Reply:
June 2nd, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Hey Tom
To be honest I wasn’t even trying to make a sale with that ODesk link, as I don’t do that on my blog, it is all content for you guys, but I thought, I might
as well put an affiliate link because I am going to mention Odesk anyway, and they give me $50 for every successful signup with them.
All the best
Matt
Thanks for the tips about outsourcing, they make perfect sense. It may be a while yet before I am able to outsource myself.
Thanks Matt for the tips, especially the last one where I 100% would of waited for few days before review their work.
I never thought of Skype doh!
Thanks for the tips about outsourcing, great sharing here and nice post. I also recommend that you look for people in the Philippines.
Crespo.
Hi Matt,
A wonderful post yet again. Can’t thank you enough for sharing such useful tips. Being a freelancer myself, I write all my articles now and it may be quite sometime till I’m able to outsource.
Thank you for all the information.
Cheers,
Rema.
Hi Matt,
This may be out of context, but would you reveal the source of your terrific images?
Thanks, Cheers,
Rema,.
Thanks Matt, I would like to outsource but I am not there yet…
Linda
Great Tips. I’m going to outsource soon later, but so far I’m still doing everything by myself. Like you said, I must learn to do everything by myself first.
Hey Matt, right now I am learning everything before I outsource, just like you said, but I have noted down odesk, for when the days comes that I can outsource and actually afford to do it too, Sally 🙂
Thanks for the outsourcing source. I tried Elance and was not satisfied with the price structure compared to the results. Of course, I only tried it once, so it probably was my own fault. But keeping in touch with the workers is a great piece of advice.
Wayne
Hi Matt,
Thanks for your helpful advice I have investigated several oursource locations and agree Odesk seems the logical choice. I am still very new and am presently recovering from a serious ilness which will slow down my performance for a few more weeks, But from then on I am fulltime and will follow your advice avidly.
Regards
Bill
Matt, I love the quality info you offer in your 12 Part Video
Coaching Series and here as well, outsourcing can work wonders for your business when used properly. These outsourcing tips are sound and wise advice for anyone considering outsourcing. I will look into Odesk which I heard of before for some one-time projects.
Currently I have a full-time employee in the Philippines, the only place I would ever outsource to. The culture has a good work ethic and are very educated in computers. Here’s another source you may like for more full-time outsourcing work. Thanks a million. Frank
I wonder nobody mentioned about rentacoder.com. We have been doing projects for clients on RAC,Odesk,Elance but most of the time we prefer either Odesk or RAC.
Thanks Matt for the tips, especially the last one where I 100% would of waited for few days before review their work.
I never thought of Skype doh!
Thanks for the Jing tip Matt, looks like Im getting organised to outsource for sure, so time consuming all the IM bits and pieces and makes perfect sense, its also been on my mind for awhile now. Havent checked out Odesk yet, but I will! Enjoying your content as always! Cheers.
To get the outsourcing projects, mainly focus on communication, relationships & Services we provide. To have a long relationship with clients quantity with quality work plays more important. Thanks for sharing
Thanks for the great post, Matt. I am grateful for guys like you that share what you do successfully, so we can do it too.