Outsource Everything How to outsource your Internet Business

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1 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 1 Outsource Everything How to outsource your Internet Business

2 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 2 Simon Coulson s Internet Marketing Secrets Your Business 1

3 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 3 Contents Introduction How To Find An Outsourcer 3 21 Hiring People To Work For You 27 Using The Sites 28 Dealing with Problems During A Project 40 Summary 50 Resources 51 2

4 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 4 Introduction In this document we are going to focus on outsourcing, getting other people to do the work while you just live off the profit. Today my business runs on autopilot with little of my personal involvement, as I ve outsourced both within the UK and offshore. You can outsource just about everything in this business, product creation, traffic generation, websites, and fulfillment. It s wonderfully empowering to know that your business is running autonomously without you and you can go and enjoy life. In fact I ve just booked a trip out to my villa in Spain next weekend, confident that whilst there my businesses will carry on without me. I ve also been planning my summer around music festivals I want to attend without considering work commitments. I ve just come off the phone to another good friend who is also an internet marketer who has relocated to live in Thailand. This business lets you base yourself anywhere in the world. All you really need is an internet connection from time to time! In fact another IM friend has just gone to Florida for a couple of months to learn to fly his personal dream! So this document focuses on how you can grow your business faster and cheaper by leveraging the power of outsourcers who are more skilled in what needs to be done and will do it for an hourly rate considerably below that at which you value your time. Enjoy, Regards Simon Introduction 7 3

5 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 5 In this document we are going to talk about outsourcing and how you hire someone to do all the work for you. One of the key learning points in internet marketing, and it took me a little while to get this, is not to try and learn and do everything yourself. You are the marketer and the ideas person. You should be working on the next idea or next project that is going to generate you another source of income. With my first few ebooks I researched and wrote these myself, and built the websites myself. I very quickly realised that doing everything yourself for your first project or your first couple of projects is a good idea as you will learn new skills but after that, you should consider using outsourcers to do the work for you. This will allow you leverage and mean you can move your business forward at a much faster rate. SEO is a great example of this, once I learnt what worked and what needed to be done to get results I got someone else to do this for me. In previous modules we looked at the offsite part of SEO which involves building links to your website from other websites, which acts as a vote of confidence in the eyes of Google. Once I worked out what got me results, I hired people to do all this for me and I now have a dedicated person who manages the SEO for all of my websites. What I discovered is that link building can t bring you that free traffic but it can also take a lot of time. In fact, outsourcing is one the key secrets to my success online. If I tried to do everything myself I wouldn t be able to see the results as quickly. allows you to maximise your time and maximise your results bringing your more sales and more profit. I have well over 250 different websites, most of them promote a particular product or service but I have not built a website personally for years, again I outsource the design of the website to someone who is much better at doing this and who can do it much quicker. The most successful people that I have coached over the last few years have got results by following this advice and not trying to do everything themselves. Introduction 9 Yes you can do this if you want it will just take a little while to get there. The other great advantage of outsourcing is that you can get work done offshore INCREDIBLY CHEAPLY! In this document I am going to focus specifically on outsourcing, and show you what you need to look for, who to hire, where to go, what price you should be paying and what types of services are best to outsource and what ones you should be doing yourself. Let s start with the obvious question... 4

6 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 6 What Is? is basically subcontracting a particular service to a third party. It is a fantastic way to leverage other people s time and effort to do some of this work for you. or subcontracting in its more traditional sense has existed for a long time, where businesses bid on projects or take on work and if they weren t able to do this, then subcontract it out to smaller company and still make a profit. And this doesn t just apply to the building trade, solicitors will subcontract (or outsource) work to other smaller solicitors. The traditional stigma around outsourcing has also changed. It used to be looked upon in a negative light where if you were outsourcing a particular task it simply meant that you weren t up to the job. However, the modern day approach is quite different and it is now seen as an essential part of a successful project and time management. In fact for most businesses outsourcing, whether it is small or big tasks has become part of everyday occurrence. How could small businesses and startup entrepreneurs do everything themselves every day? It s just not possible. When I started in Internet Marketing, outsourcing abroad was seen as something that big companies and big organizations did where they moved whole operations and businesses overseas to reduce cost and increase profit. It is now much more popular with individuals and business owners and there are a number of websites and services that now bring people and resources together from all over the world. When online marketers and business owners refer to outsourcing today, they are normally referring to taking the work that they were going to do themselves or hire a UK company to do and then send this (outsource it) to a company or individual abroad where the cost of these services are significantly cheaper. And if you do this effectively you can still get the same quality of results. Introduction 11 However, outsourcing does not have to mean sending the work abroad, it can be about leveraging time and resources around you. For example, if you have friends or family that wouldn t be interested in Internet Marketing, but they have skills in graphic design or website design then you have the option to exchange services. in the UK Think Creatively! 5

7 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 7 Another great tip is to not forget about the local schools and colleges. We are going to look specifically at outsourcing outside of the UK in this document, as this is what has been successful for me. But, I also know a number of Internet Marketers and Local Businesses who approach local schools, colleges and universities who have students looking to gain experience. For example, if you want to get a professional looking video created for your website, then there will be plenty of students looking to build their portfolio and as a result will often work for very little as they are gaining experience. So it s about leverage and using the resources available to you. Ideally, in your business, you want to concentrate your time on creating ideas and your marketing and probably not take all your time with the nuts and bolts. Your business is probably going to grow faster and you could make more money if you spend your time working on coming up with some new ideas rather than learning how to use Photoshop! Likewise, the scary dark side, otherwise referred to as HTML coding; if you love all that stuff then by all means learn the ins and outs, but you don t need to! There are millions of people out there who are already experts in all these various fields. What I am going to show in this module is how you use the services for a couple of dollars per hour. Even things like the accounting; I did all my own bookkeeping to start with for about the first 18 months, I use to drive myself insane every quarter when I was doing a VAT return. Then I realized that really wasn t the kind of core skill that I needed to develop, the ability to do nominal ledgers and all that kind of stuff. So, I got a bookkeeper in and boy was that a good idea! The key point is don t try to do everything yourself. Basically you should just concentrate on the things that are giving you the most leverage. And, if you can get someone to do it faster, better or cheaper, then that will get the best return. Introduction 13 6

8 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 8 Why Should You Be There are a number of different reasons why companies, business owners and entrepreneurs use outsourcing abroad to grow their businesses, achieve faster results and make more money: 1. abroad has become easier and more importantly safer with the growth of websites such as where you can quickly post a job and people will bid on completing the job for you. You can review all the proposals and select the one you want to work with. The money is held by Elance until the job is complete. 2. Your business can grow rapidly as you have thousands of outsourcers at your disposal. Should you need to hire more people you can, which means your business can grow without the need to hire staff on a contractual basis. This means you can take on more clients and more projects making you more profit. 3. Your services are not restricted to just your skill set. You can hire people for whatever task you need. Therefore you can take on projects that you might not have been able to previously because you know where you can find people who can deliver what the customer or you are looking for. This means you can effectively take on any project, knowing that you are able to deliver on it. 4. You cannot do everything in your business yourself and those that see the best results in online marketing realize this fact from a very early stage. You cannot learn everything and do everything yourself there just isn t the time. But what you can learn to do is to multiply your time by hiring people that can do it better, quicker and cheaper than you can. 5. Reducing the costs that you would typically pay for the work to be done in the UK but at the same time still charging the customer the same amount of money. If a service is expensive in your part of the world, you could find a professional from another part of the world where that particular service is cheaper, which means you can save on cost and increase on profits. For me personally outsourcing is a vital ingredient of my online business because: I cannot do everything myself (and plus I got into Internet Marketing so I could get away from the 9 to 5) 7

9 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 9 As an online marketer your aim is to be working on the next idea and testing new projects. If you spend all your time trying to do every single element yourself it will take so much longer and chances are it won t be as good. A key tip is to hire people that are better than you or have a particular skill that you don t have rather than learning to do it all yourself. Let me give you an example of this. If you want to get a logo designed for yourself or for a new client you could spend hours and hours learning Photoshop or taking an online course, or the simple solution is to outsource this to someone who does this for a living and can produce a much higher quality logo than you. It also comes down to what your time is worth and how quickly you want to get results. For example, the question that I always ask when managing tasks, is: a) can this be outsourced? b) If so, whom do I outsource it to and why? If I know that I need to write 4 articles each 500 words in length then with the research involved and the writing, this could be a 2 hour job. Therefore is it worth my time to spend 2 hours writing articles if I can outsource them and get them written for 5 per article. In that case could I then complete a more important task in those 2 hours or would I be able to make more than 20 (cost if outsourced all articles) in those two hours doing something else. Even if you don t have a large budget, there are tasks that can be outsourced that will make your life easier and help get results faster. So a great tip each day is to look at your task list that you need to do and ask the question, can this task be given to someone else to free up my time to concentrate on more important tasks? If yes, then outsource! 8

10 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 10 Key Areas you should consider when outsourcing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Search Engine Optimisation is the process of getting your website higher up the natural search engine listings, so that you increase the number of targeted visitors which results in more sales and higher profits. Unlike Google Adwords, where you have to pay each time a customer clicks on your advert and visits your website, all the traffic generated from SEO is FREE traffic which you obtain from being ranked highly. No.1 ranking on Google for any given keyword obtains between 40-45% of all traffic for that search term! While you should always be aiming for the No.1 spot, there are only 10 listings on the first page and your aim should be to make the first page. (Very rarely do searchers go beyond page 2! How often do you look at the results on page 3?) Introduction 17 The offsite part of SEO, which is building links from other websites, is something that you need to understand but not something that you need to be doing. Once you know what works, outsource it to free up your time. I have lost days trying to build links to a website only later on to discover that I can get someone else to do this for me at a much cheaper rate. Article Writing Is it cost effective / time effective to be writing your own articles? As an Internet marketer this is a question you should be asking, not only about writing articles but also about every task you are undertaking. If the answer is no, then you should look to automate the process and then outsource it. As a marketer, your time would be better spent researching a market, improving your conversion rate or developing your next product / service rather than writing an article. Creating articles about your product, service or business can help drive traffic back to your website, promote your affiliate product or build valuable links back to your website from authority websites to help increase your search engine positioning. However, the problem is that writing articles can be a time consuming process, especially if you have ever experienced writers block where you spend an hour trying to write an article 9

11 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 11 without actually getting anywhere. And even once you have written the article, you then need to get it out there and submit it to various articles directories. So it s really a 2 stage process, write the article and then either add it to your website or submit it to all of the article directories. Again, this is a manual task that can easily be outsourced to professional writers, who are used to writing and can research the article, and then either send this to you directly or submit it on your behalf. PPC Advertising What is PPC Advertising? PPC also stands for Pay Per Click advertising, and it simply means that you, the advertiser, pays each time someone clicks on your advert and is directed through to your website. Introduction 19 These adverts usually appear on the right hand side of Google when you search for a phrase or term and are typically under the heading sponsored ads although this is not always obvious. One of the benefits of Pay Per Click advertising is that you only pay when a customer clicks on your advert, not when your advert is displayed. So you are only paying for those people that reach your site directly. Q. Who offers PPC Advertising? The main PPC advertisers are Google, Yahoo and Bing (MSN), however Google is the main player in this field and in the UK alone over 90% of all traffic goes through Google UK search which is why Google s PPC is the biggest and best for volume (known as Google Adwords). Google s PPC software is also more advanced than Yahoo and Bing and allows the advertiser more in terms of tracking, testing and functionality and it is often the starting point for most companies. Q. How does PPC work? First of all you create a campaign, you then create your advert that you want to be displayed and you select the keywords that you want to trigger your adverts in the search engines. You then need to set your tracking and testing features as well as your keyword variations. Q. Why use PPC advertising? Targeted Customers = Increase in Sales! If set up correctly, a PPC campaign can send targeted people to your website who are searching for a particular product or service. These targeted people are more likely to convert into paying customers. 10

12 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 12 Targeted Traffic Within Minutes! Another great benefit of using PPC advertising is that, once you become familiar with Google Adwords, you setup a campaign and start driving targeted traffic to your website within a few minutes. Once your advert has been approved and your daily budget set your adverts will start showing! This is the quickest way of driving people to your website. Introduction 21 this type of advertising means that you are able to start sending traffic to your website very quickly for your target market without having to learning the PPC system and how it works. Google Adwords does take a little bit of getting used to and you should learn about it before ploughing money into it. There are companies out there that will manage that for you and many of them work on a percentage of spend basis. They typically earn 15% or 20% of spend. So, you can get a company to manage your Adwords campaign and if your Adwords campaign budget is 1,000 a month for example, they will charge you 150 to 200 a month to manage the campaign for you. Website design Q. Why get a professional website design? When you can create one for free? Sometimes you require your own custom website designed for you. Maybe there isn t quite the right Wordpress theme for you, your business or your product. Maybe you want a website designed your way and to look exactly how you want it. Sometimes this is not possible with the free Wordpress themes. The other side is that while the free themes are great, and I still use them today, sometimes they don t quite have the professional finish and design that either establishes you as an expert in your field or makes your product or service standout from the competition. And standing out from the rest and establishing that trust with the visitor can really help your sale grow. Plus, the customer is always demanding more and they will make their mind up whether to stay or leave your site in just 7 seconds! Introduction 23 There are some markets where the customer expects a professional looking website, where investment has been made in the product or service. 11

13 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 13 How many websites have you not bought from because the website didn t seem trustworthy enough? This is the last thing that you want to happen especially if you are paying to drive traffic to your website. The 3 key steps to selling online: 1. Driving traffic to your website Traffic strategies 2. Keeping your customer on your website Website design 3. Convert that visitor into a buyer / customer Sales Process Only once you have all 3 of these in place will you maximise your return online! For this reason, whenever I create a new product, service or event, I don t design the websites myself, I invest in the services of a website designer. I simply give them the specification for what I am looking for and they work their magic. It does 2 things, it frees my time up to work on the sales letter and marketing for the new venture and results in a high quality custom website much better than I could have developed by myself. Logo Design What is a logo design and how is it different to website design? A website is a place that presents your businesses, products or services, whereas a logo design is an image or a graphic that represents your business concept as a whole. It is often what people associate with you when they talk about or refer to your business or a representative of your business. It portrays a professional image that builds a level of credibility while at the same time differing you from your competition. A professional quality logo design can stick in a customer s mind when they think about reordering or discussing the service they experienced from your company. You can use a logo on your business cards, s, letterheads, stationery, merchandise, invoices, newsletters, publications, contracts, receipts, articles, online promotion (such as twitter, Facebook and your company blog). KEY: A logo is the first thing a potential customer sees when they search online or look through a newspaper! Introduction 25 12

14 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 14 This is something that I have always outsourced, and my first logo design cost me around 300 from a designer in the UK. You can now get the same level of quality by outsourcing this abroad and significantly reduce the cost to just a few dollars. Video Promotion Here s why you should consider outsourcing all your video creation especially if you don t have the time to do it... Soon video will be 50% of all Internet traffic Google and AOL research shows 75% of respondents reported watching more video online than they did a year ago, and over half expect to watch more online video in the next year! This is a growing trend with huge potential to drive large amounts of traffic for FREE if you know how! YouTube is the No.1 video site: Currently has 2 Billion views a day. Is now the world s 3rd most visited website. Localised in 23 countries across 24 different languages. 15 minutes the average number of minutes people spend on the site each day. 24 hours of video uploaded every minute. 45 Million home page impressions every day in the US alone And it is only 7 years old! More and more corporate money is being invested into video creation and production. Why? Simply because they recognise that video is one of the biggest growing trends on the Internet and has HUGE potential to return large profits! Q. How can you use Video to grow your business or promote your product? List building spread the word about your business by directing people back to your website / squeeze page to build your list for FREE. Selling Products/ Services review your own products and show customers how they work, review affiliate products / other people s products, create a useful video for your market / niche and direct the traffic back to your affiliate link / website. Introduction 27 13

15 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 15 Driving FREE Traffic YouTube is the third most visited site in the World! Thousands of people visit YouTube every day and watch hundreds of hours of video. Take advantage of this by driving traffic back to your website! Site Awareness Videos allow you to quickly and easily establish yourself as an expert within your field and spread the word about your product or service. SEO Videos can rank highly on Google with thumbnail pictures that get higher click through rates than the normal listing! You can get No.1 rankings with Google and even dominate a whole page of listings taking all the traffic! Brand Awareness gone are the days of spending hundreds of thousands establishing a brand awareness, companies are now turning to social media sites and video sites to do this! Common Video Myths Exposed... You Don t Need: 1.To Be An Expert - Video marketing allows you to establish yourself or your company as an expert in your field in a short space on time! 2.To Look Good on Camera Customers relate to people when there is a personal touch in the video. Video is a great way to grab the customer s attention and build up your credibility and can help sell your service or product much more than a professional actor! Plus you don t have to get in front of the camera if you don t want to! 3.To Be A Technical Wiz Advances in cameras and software mean it has never been easier to record a video at home and share it across video sites like YouTube within a few hours. 4.My Niche or Topic Doesn t Lend Itself To Video Every niche lends itself to a video, whether you are promoting a product or service or are simply providing the top 10 tips for your market! Video is one of the easiest and quickest ways to get started by promoting a product or service, adding a review of a product or engaging with the visitor and telling them exactly what you want them to do. The majority of smart phones have a camera which enables you to record a video in a few minutes, upload it to YouTube and then add it to your website. 14

16 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :32 Page 16 Videos can also rank on Google for your chosen keyword or key phrase, which can bring you more free traffic, the more videos you have the more people you can send to your website. Again, if you don t have the time to create your own videos and submit them to all of the online video sites you can simply outsource this entire process. Intro duction 29 Social Media What do people mean when they refer to Social Media? Social Media is simply a different way of communicating on the Internet. It is a different type of media than we are used to. When we use the term social media we are referring more commonly to websites such as Twitter and Facebook and for business more specifically LinkedIn People join these networks and create profiles about themselves and share information, photos and videos with their friends or contacts. There are other social media networks and social bookmarking sites such as Digg and Reddit but these three are the most popular and often the starting point for marketers. Q. Why is Social Media so important? For the simple reason that the way people are communicating online is changing and marketers need to keep up with this changing trend! Social Networking websites in the UK now account for 11% of all time spent online and will just continue to grow and grow over the next few years! In the past year the average time spent on social networking sites grew from 3 hours per month to 5.5 hours. It is now one of the essential strategies, if done correctly, for building a business online and driving a large amount of traffic to your website. Just Look At These Facts % of all businesses across the world are using at least one form of Social Media and an estimated 20% now use a combination of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Blogs! 15

17 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page 17 - A third of adults post at least once a week to social sites. - 70% of bloggers are talking about brands on their blog. - 15% of bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging. - There are more than 3.5bn pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) shared each week via social network sites. - More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook. Introduction 31 - Facebook recently announced that they have now reached over 400 million users worldwide with 50% of active users logging on each day. Meaning at least 175m users every 24 hours that you can advertise to! - Twitter now has 75m user accounts and it will soon reach 50 million tweets per day. - LinkedIn has over 50m members worldwide and Flickr now hosts more than 4bn business images. Q. How are Internet marketers using social media? Social Media sites such as Facebook offer a PPC advertising model that enables you to create adverts and promote to specific segments of your market. Unlike Google PPC, with Facebook you can target your adverts by age, date of birth, location, relationship status and sex. However, these social media sites are also being used to drive free traffic to websites, build lists of people within a niche and promote relevant products to them. Social Media has a number of benefits: 1. Free Traffic can drive free traffic to your website and create valuable links from authority websites. 2. SEO Google loves social media sites, due to the interaction and fresh content that is generated by the users. It now uses activity from social media (in particular Twitter and Facebook) and your website as part of its ranking algorithm so building an online presence can help your search engine rankings! 3. Online Presence - businesses are now using social media sites to promote products and services and grow their brand awareness. People now talk about brands and products on social media sites. 16

18 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page List Building - By creating a following for your product / business or service on sites such as Twitter and Facebook you are building a list of people in your market / niche who you can promote to. 5. Promoting Products either their own products or affiliate products to their list of followers that they have built. Introduction 33 Again it comes down to what you can actually manage yourself. There are lots of different aspects to Internet Marketing, that can all help build your brand, sell products, drive traffic and essentially make you more money but trying to manage them all yourself is not always an easy task. Social media is a great example of this, and you need to put in the effort to get results. It is all about building relationships and engaging with users rather than direct selling. Google Local Submission Q. What is Google Places? Millions of people use Google every day to find places in the real world. When looking for a business, customers today tend to just Google a particular service in their local area. In fact around 40% of all searches involve local terms! Which highlights the growing trend for people to look for local businesses / services online. Gone are the days of the yellow pages! Google has launched Place Pages for more than 50 million places around the world, to help people make more informed decisions about where to go; from restaurants and hotels to dry cleaners and bike shops, as well as non-business places like museums, schools and parks. Place Pages connect people to information from the best sources across the web, displaying photos, reviews and essential facts, as well as real-time updates and offers from business owners. Q. How can it benefit local businesses? Place Pages enables a local business to be found on a map when a customer types in a term followed by a location: for example, plumber Kent. Google Maps often appear as the No.1 ranking in the search engine listings for the phrase searched, giving the local business high rankings and FREE QUALIFIED traffic! The link on the map then takes the customer to an information page about that business including the following information: 17

19 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page 19 - Business address & location. - Directions to your business. - Photos & Videos. - Opening hours. - Services provided. - Coupons. - Product offerings and more. - Plus Customer Reviews. Introduction 35 In terms of outsourcing Google places or maps (as it is more commonly known), I would recommend going through the entire process yourself the very first time so you understand what is involved and become familiar with the layout and setup. Once you are at this point and you start doing this for other businesses or websites then you know what needs to be done so you can outsource the entire process. Book-keeping When I started my online business, I did it all to begin with including book keeping, but I soon learned my business would grow a lot faster if I got an accountant to do it rather than driving myself insane with invoices and payments. You can hire a really good book keeper to work just a couple of days per month and keep your accounts up-to-date which will save you a massive headache when you come to do your end of year accounts. Writing Information Products: The first couple of information products I wrote myself and it took hours upon hours of research and writing before they were finally finished. Then I discovered outsourcing websites where you could hire freelance writers who would actually write you an ebook for around $600 or 400. The ebook will be in the region of 60 pages of A4 text in approximately 10 point font with a few illustrations, which is a typical e-book size. Again it comes back to how long you would take to write the product versus getting someone else who is a writer to do this for you. Let s say it s 50 hours work to do research and write an ebook and if it s going to cost you let s say $500 (for easy math calculation), that s $10 an hour. So, if you value your time at more than $10 or 6 an hour then get somebody else to do it. 18

20 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page 20 If you re quite happy to work for 6 an hour, then you can write it yourself. Or if you know that you can do a bit of overtime at work and earn more than 6 an hour, do a bit of overtime at work, earn more than 6 an hour and pay an outsourcer 6 an hour and keep the change! Order Taking If you ve got a 9-5 job, you can t be there to take telephone orders during the day when you start out. So, what you might want to do is get somebody to take orders for you and use their telephone number for your order taking. Introduction 37 Fulfilment I starting off selling download products and then moved on to selling physical products like, CDs and DVDs. If you are selling physical products you might want to use a fulfilment company to do the fulfilment for you too. You can outsource that also. You do not need to be burning CDs and DVDs, and going through the process of posting it every time you have an order. I use a fulfilment company that charge about 1.50 per unit to ship something for me in addition to the manufacture cost. So for around 2.50, I can get a CD or DVD duplicated and shipped to someone and I never need touch it. So if you re selling a CD or DVD for 30, then yes, if you do it all yourself, you might make an extra 1 profit, but why don t you just get somebody else to do that for you and it will free up your time to work on some more productive aspects of your business. Key Point To Take Away: The aim of this section is to highlight the main areas that you should be considering outsourcing. If you want to focus on video marketing and do this yourself but outsource the social media side as this does not interest you as much then great. The key is to get a balance between what you want to work on and what can be outsourced. The more your internet business grows over the next few months and years the more you will need to outsource projects and tasks. You might need people who can work as virtual admin assistants and deal with daily s, customer support or data entry. You might even need someone to communicate with clients or manage projects for you. The main point is to know that you are able to outsource the majority of your online businesses for nearly all your needs and hire professionals with the required skills to take on the jobs for you. 19

21 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page 21 What Not To Outsource? There are 2 main areas that you want to be doing yourself, and that is market research and testing and tracking. These are 2 core areas of my online business that I have attempted to outsource in the past but have never got the results that I have desired. Market research is really something that you should have a huge input to, you can ask someone to go and do a competition analysis of a particular market and find the competitors but I think that, as so much depends upon the market research this is something you should do yourself. Once you have your idea and want to take it to the next stage, then you can begin outsourcing different elements. But you have to be the marketer and you are best placed to understand and make this decision. Introduction 39 The other part that I do not recommend outsourcing is testing and tracking, yes you can get someone to set this up for you, but the management of this needs to be done by you. You need to be testing different sales pages or headlines and seeing if that makes a difference to sales and ultimately profit margins. You also need to be tracking all of your efforts online so you know exactly what is bringing your sales and then invest more time and money in this area. How To Find An Outsourcer 41 20

22 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page 22 How To Find An Outsourcer Over the years I have hired, trained and worked with a number of different outsourcers from a variety of different countries across the world and below I have included a list of the websites and resources for hiring an outsourcer in your Internet marketing business. Freelance Websites There are a number of online job sites where employers go looking for work to be outsourced and people go looking for work. Effectively it is a job site for people with different skills to offer their services at competitive prices to the other providers of similar services. The people looking for work bid on jobs and then if the job is awarded to them, the work begins. Below is a list of the top 9 websites that I have used for outsourcing nearly every part of my Internet Marketing business and places where you find outsourcers willing to work: 1. Elance - As the world s leading platform for online employment, Elance helps businesses hire and manage in the cloud. For businesses looking to staff-up a team on an hourly or project basis, Elance offers instant access to qualified professionals who work online and provides the tools to hire, view work as it progresses and pay for results. 2. ODesk

23 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page Guru - How T o Find An Outsourcer GetAFreelancer

24 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page PeoplePerHour - How To Fi d An Outsourcer 47 23

25 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page GetACoder ScriptLance - How To Find An Outsourcer Vwork - (formerly RentACoder) 24

26 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page 26 Although the websites list above all look very different, they all work from the same premise. Firstly, you create an account with them, then you post your job that requires outsourcing in the correct category, the outsourcers then bid on your job, you select the outsourcer you want to work with and the project begins. 9. Fiverr - Find people who will do all sorts of tasks & work for just $5. 25

27 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page 27 These are the main freelancer sites that I use. They re all global sites. They have freelancers all around the world. But particular countries you ll probably end up recruiting people from will probably be the Philippines, India, and Eastern Europe. The prices that you pay depend on the skills sets. For example, basic admin type services - people doing articles submission type stuff, costs approximately $3-4 an hour. Hiring People To Work For You 51 26

28 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page 28 Hiring People To Work For You Using sites such as Elance and Odeskresources are a great way to find people to work for you as there are always active members looking for work. Where there are other places where you can hire outsourcers from for example online forums and classified ads I prefer to use these services for a number of reasons: 1. You are able to post projects to these websites for free and therefore can get your project out to a wide audience for no marketing cost. There are options to boost your project s visibility but there is no charge for posting a basic job. (I have always just used the basic job option as there are always people looking for work the job always gets found). 2. The people on these jobs sites have created an account and registered with these companies therefore they are actively looking for work and people to employ them. 3. The majority of the sites offer a scoring system and online testing to determine the ability of the outsourcer, completing these stages is another indication that they are willing to work and stand out from others. 4. Every site has a scoring and review system (in a similar way to ebay) where previous customers can rate their experience and provide feedback on the performance of the outsourcer. This is an excellent resource in helping you to determine who should be hired for your job. Just like on ebay if the person who is selling has negative feedback and a low score you would be put off from buying from them, the same principal applies here. 5. The way in which you pay the outsourcer means you are in a much stronger position. All websites have an escrow system, which means once the job is agreed the company holds the money and it s only released once the outsourcer has completed the job and you are happy with this. The company also takes care of all disputes if something were to arise. This means you have much greater control and protection. 6. Once someone has made a bid on your project you can interview them, ask further questions either via online chat, s or phone call and ask them to provide sample work that they have done for previous clients. This is a great way to find out more about the person and get an idea of the quality of their work. Hiring People To Work For You You set the price range for your project and people then bid accordingly and it often works like an auction in reverse. For example, if you set your budget at $500, then first provider might offer $450, the second outsourcer $425, the third outsourcer $400. Effectively they are bidding against each other and that drives the price down ever further. 27

29 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page 29 Using The Sites 55 Using The Sites Here s the whole process in a nutshell... Enter a brief description of the task to be outsourced People bid for the work Rates are very cheap, particularly in developing countries Look at their feedback from previous tasks Negotiate the rate Don t pay until you are happy with the work What you need to do is write a brief description of what it is you want somebody to do, and then people bid for the work. These sites are often called reverse auction sites, because what happens is if you put a job on there, if you say something like I would like an e-book written on this subject -- someone will bid for the job, and they ll say, I ll do it for you for $1000. Someone else will say, I ll do it for $950. Someone else will say, I ll do it for $900. it s like an auction, but in reverse. All the freelancers bid against each other, so when the auction closes, what you get is the lowest price, not the highest price, because they re all trying to undercut each other. So you end up getting things done very cheaply. All of these sites have feedback scores, so make sure you look at feedback from previous tasks and check out their feedback comments as well. Also many of them have comments from people that used their services before, so you can read the comments to see if there s anything particularly good or bad. The top 2 sites in the list above are the ones I use the most and we will now explore how they work in further detail and I will take your through the process of hiring an outsource with Elance and provide you with the key points and tips that I have learnt over the last few years. This is probably one of the most well known outsourcing sites. It is very easy to set up an account on this site. There is a one-time account activation fee of $10, but once this is created you can post as many job briefs as you like, list the skill sets that you require, and then the freelancer providers will bid on your project and send you their proposals. You can learn more about any freelancer by just viewing their profile, which informs you of their work experience, ratings, feedback from prior employers and you can view their portfolio 28

30 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page 30 of work. If you find a freelance worker that you are happy with, you may want them to work for you on a continuous basis on various projects. Step 1 - Post Your Job Elance is really quick and simply to use and only takes a few minutes to get going. Once you have created an account and signed in, there are 3 simple steps to getting your job posting live. - Describe Your Job include what it is you are looking for the outsourcer to do, how you expect them to deliver the project, the time frame for the project and then select your budget and the category that it falls into e.g. web design, logo design, article writing etc. Using The Sites 59 When writing the description for your job there are a number of things, which will increase the chances of you getting the right person for the job. Make sure that what you require them to do is clear and defined how can they provide you with an accurate bid if your description is only one sentence long. 29

31 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page 31 These are the things your description should include: 1. What is the type of work involved 2. The entire work that you need them to complete 3. The time frame they have to complete the project 4. Detail any special requirements / skills or experience that your job requires 5. Detail the criteria that does not match what you are looking for (save people applying for the job who you would not consider) 6. Ask for samples of previous work completed 7. Any goals / milestones for the project and what time frame they need to completedwithin (this applies more specifically to bigger projects) Another important tip is to make sure you list your job in the correct category. Outsourcers will typically search for work via categories and if yours is in the wrong category this will be difficult for them to find. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to locate your project. Remember there are thousands of other projects on Elance. Here is an example of an outsourcing brief that I used to get an ebook written: This is just a little paragraph for an e-book. I require an e-book to be written on Property Investment in Croatia *It should be pages of A4 when printed, and around 15,000 words. It should be delivered in Microsoft Word format. This is for a work for hire agreement and *I will expect all rights to be delivered to me in respect of this work as part of your bid. I have outline contents, which I require to be followed in delivering this work. This is an easy project for anyone who knows what he or she is doing. I require the project to be started immediately on selection of bid. Please provide examples of previous work, advise expected delivery date and any other factors you feel relevant to your bid. Using The Sites 61 30

32 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page 32 KEYPOINT 1: *It should be pages of A4 when printed. You should quantify it in terms of words what you are expecting, as opposed to how many pages. I once had somebody deliver me a 50 page E-book with about 30 words per page. Because they did it in a 28 pt font and double-spaced! KEYPOINT 2: * I will expect all rights to be delivered to me in respect of this work as part of your bid. This sentence actually expresses the intellectual property rights should transfer to you as part of this project. That is to make sure that if somebody writes this project for you, it is now yours and you own the intellectual property so you can do whatever you want with it, and they can t do anything with it. You can get a Rights Assignment Form and actually get them to sign over the intellectual property rights to you: Website: KEYPOINT 3: *This is an easy project for anyone who knows what he or she is doing. I heard this originally from an American Internet Marketer and he reckons he split tested this, and by adding that sentence, he got an average of 30% lower bid price by putting that in there. He might have exaggerated these numbers. But there s probably something in it, and it doesn t do any harm to put the extra sentence in. Hiring For Fixed Project With Elance: If you choose to work on a fixed price project basis, which is what I would recommend for all Elance projects, you can establish a time frame within the project where you can review and approve the work done to date, or you can just wait until the project is completed to review and approve the work. Setting Your Budget When it comes to setting a budget on an outsourcing website you will normally be asked to specify a range from a drop down list. For example, with Elance the first available option is the price range $50 - $500 (unless you have selected the hourly rate option). Using The Sites 63 When setting a budget for your project, your aim is to find good professionals that are able to deliver exactly what you require for cheaper. The key point to remember is that whatever your budget is, you will be able to find people who are willing to work for you, it is then up to you to decide upon the one to hire. You may want to go with the cheapest or find one in between. 31

33 Quark_Layout 1 09/04/ :33 Page 33 The price that you set your budget is really dependent on the type of project that you require to be completed. For example, if you were looking for article writing or ebook writing then the lowest price would be sufficient. Whereas if you are looking at getting a computer application developed you may want to consider the next price bracket up which would be the $500 - $1000 range. Also do bear in mind that the people looking for work on these outsourcing website generally come from countries where the cost of living and wages are much cheaper than in the UK and therefore you will not expect to pay a high rate for the work. If you were uncertain with which price range to place your job into, then I would recommend selecting the lower option of the 2. You may find that people contact you and say your current budget is too low but we can do it for a little bit over. Or you could offer bonus payments for early completion. One final consideration, is the amount that you have to get the work done and what it would cost you to do it yourself, you don t want to set a budget too high where you end up paying more to outsource the work than actually do it yourself. Select your listing type: Here you just select whether you would like a paid listing or a free listing. If you want to list this for free simply select No Thanks when you get to this screen. Using The Sites 65 32