I just received an e-mail from one of the co-founders of the event David Frey, which contained an e-mail exchange from an angry subscriber calling him unpatriotic for encouraging others to outsource.

In these economic times, I know there are many people have either lost their jobs or are living in fear of losing their jobs, and the term outsourcing has largely been associated with large companies moving offshore to save on labor expenses. There have been many who consider themselves “victims” of this trend.

I have alot of empathy for them. It can be a scary thing, losing your job, your income and even your home due to the current economic conditions.

Allow me to clear up a misconception of the term outsourcing as we practice this for our Internet marketing endeavors.

Outsourcing is not strictly “offshoring,” meaning that you can delegate tasks to local workers, or U.S. providers as well. That is still outsourcing. Much of the content creation part of my business is outsourced to U.S. writers, or other providers in Canada, the U.K., or Australia.

That said, I completely agree with David on the following points as quoted from his e-mail exchange with “Joe Parks”:

1. There are a LOT of solo entrepreneurs trying to reach their goals and dreams by starting their own home based business.

They can’t afford to hire US employees. And the burdens that the government are putting on small businesses is making it even hard to turn a profit.

Outsourcing gives them an opportunity to reach success.

2. The $4 an hour you pay to someone in countries like the Phillipines is enough to allow them to lift themselves out of poverty and gives them hope for a brighter future for themselves and their families.

You can read the complete exchange at David’s blog here:
http://marketingbestpractices.com

What do you think?

P.S. By the way, you can still get all the recordings and transcripts of the calls for the launch price before it goes up by $100. Check it out here:
Outsourcing Masters Telesummit

Tags: elance, directory submission, guru, online marketing, rentacoder, Internet, autoresponder, Web design, , outsource

What! Is the “OutSourcerer” obsolete?!!

NOT!

See I’m not just outsourcing “people work” but also about AUTOMATION.

Software, macros, submitters - anything to make those grueling, repetitive tasks to build and promote our sites easier is OK in my book. Then I hire people to work the automation tools.

I came upon this very cool site via Ed Dale’s 30 Day Challenge, and it automates some very labor-intensive things. The Average Customer Is Saving “5 Hours of Precious Time Per Week.”

Click here to automate your outsourcing

Here’s some of what this software can do:

Social Bookmarking

• Traffic-Bug submits bookmarks to 43 of the top Social Bookmarking sites
• We build more bookmarks than any of our competitors – Over 200!
• We rotate IP’s and social bookmarking accounts for every single submission
• We automatically rotate titles and descriptions for every single post
• Unlike other programs, you don’t have to create any social bookmarking accounts - Traffic-Bug creates all of them!

Submitting to the RSS Directories, Search engines and Directories!

Click here to automate your outsourcing

I’ve signed up for the FREE TRIAL, and will report back soon with my results.

Check it out!

Tags: Internet, outsourcing online, article submission, software, online marketing, scripts, make Money online, rentacoder, web graphics, online

Accepting and Paying your outsourcer

Just to recap, we’ve:

• gathered our content
• selected a template
• posted our project
• evaluated our bidders
• assigned the project
• created a project description
• and sent back revisions and corrections

Now it’s time to pay the piper!

See the final product, how we pay and leave feedback for our coder, and some final thoughts on the process.

There’s several gold nuggets in the final thoughts, you don’t want to miss this!
As always, feedback is appreciated and welcomed!

Tags: , web graphics, outsource, scripts, online marketing, guru, make Money online, Internet marketing, outsourcing, programming

Flash website revisions

Our flashmaster turned in a very good first draft, about 90% perfect on his first shot! This had a lot to do with a very detailed project description (see video five).

But, alas, the only constant in life is change…and that means revisions and corrections need to be made to get that last 10%.

I read on the NASA website that for 97% of their trip, the Apollo astronauts were continually course correcting and were literally off-course 97% of the time… and they still reached their destination!

Gives you a new perspective, huh? (Even some hope!)

First I have a go at it, and then send it along to my client for any revisions in content, as well as proofreading.

See how we handled our revisions…

Tags: software, Internet, online, programming, outsourcing, elance, Internet marketing, online marketing, outsource, make Money online

Having a clear project description will go a long way towards making your project goes a lot smoother, and a lot quicker.

The project description you send to your coder is significantly more detailed than the project post for the coders to bid on.

You want to gather all the content (text, audio, images and video) and provide a roadmap for the coder to follow in creating your website.

In this 6:14 video, you’ll learn:

• how to handle time zone differences between you and your coder
• how to minimize revisions and corrections, which can delay your project
• when to use a visual layout
• how to overcome the special challenges of a flash website template

Check out the special technique I use to layout the content pages of the website, and the detailed instructions that I give to the coder.

How close to perfection will Sriframes initial attempt be?

See for yourself…

P.S. I haven’t seen anyone else using this special site layout technique. We’ll see how effective it is…

As always, any comments and feedback are appreciated!

Tags: article submission, programming, outsourcing, autoresponder, guru, ghostwriters, directory submission, online marketing, Web design, web graphics

Hiring and Assigning Your Project

To get you up to speed, it’s Day Four of the Simple
Website TemplateOutsourcing Project, where we are
outsourcing a flash website template on RentaCoder.

We’ve posted our project, evaluated the bidders, and
now it’s time to make a final selection!

Who will the winning bidder be?

What criteria are we using in our selection process?

We also go through the process of finding the escrow
account at Rentacoder, which protects both you and the
freelancer.

Find out who our winner is in the video above…

Tags: outsource, outsourcing online, , Internet marketing, software, programming, article submission, scripts, ghostwriters, web graphics

Evaluating Bidders on RenACoder.com

I know it sounds like echoes of Sarah Palin, but we’ve eliminated the overpriced and the inexperienced bidders, and now it’s time to drill down and review their work samples and portfolios.  This is the next phase of the selection process where we are going to be judging the quality of their work.

Depending on your project, you want to be on the lookout for skills that are relevant to the project you are doing.  For this current project, we are a looking for competent “flashmasters” (I think I just coined that term!) to add our content to a predesigned flash template.

Hence, the inventiveness and “Wow factor” is not as much an issue - we’ve already selected our flash site.  For someone looking for a custom-designed, this would be an important factor.

The next thing we want to take a look at is their responsiveness.  Some bidders did not include samples of their work, so I sent them a quick reply asking for samples.  Most answered right away, a good sign.  If the coder takes a day or two to get back to you, what do you think is going to happen during your project?

In this video you will learn:

• how to narrow the field From 30 To 10 In 60 Seconds
• how to evaluate the quality of the coders work
• how to evaluate skills relevant to your project
• how to test for responsiveness

Enjoy the video and as always, feedback/comments are appreciated!

Next video: “…and the winner is_______”

Tags: online marketing, web graphics, online, software, autoresponder, make Money online, programming, guru, outsource, outsourcing

Evaluating Bidders - First Draft

It’s Day 2 of my outsourcing adventure, and in the first 24 hours I’ve had about 30 outsourcers bid on my flash website project.

The bidding is getting fierce, and it’s driving the prices lower!  The prices that I’ll have to pay, that is

It’s Pakistan against India, Egypt against Romania, China against the Phillipines - I’m talking my Bid Request page on RentACoder, not the nightly news! LOL!

In Episode 2 you’ll learn:

• How to narrow the field from 30 to 10 in about 60 seconds.
• What criteria to use in making the first cut
• Why the ratings average alone is not enough to go by
• How to make sure the bidder has read your posting description
• How to detect a “canned” response, and should that disqualify them?

There are a lot of gold nuggets in this video, as I “think out loud” in evaluating the bidders and their bids.

For the most comprehensive outsource resource, check out the Ultimate Outsource Directory

Your comments are appreciated!

Tags: outsource, software, ghostwriters, programming, Internet marketing, scripts, elance, make Money online, , online

Posting the project at Rentacoder.com

Welcome to Day One of the Simple Website Template outsourcing case study!

This will be a case study done in REAL TIME, where you can watch me take a project from start to finish as I outsource it using Rentacoder.com.

This should take about a week, about 6 videos, around 10 -12 minutes in length.  Not too much of a time commitment on your part.

It may not be quite the drama of a reality show, but this will give you real insight into how to outsource a simple website, using a stock flash template.  I’ll be doing this in a “look over my shoulder” style rather than a scripted video because:

1. This is not a formal product
2. I want to give you my thought process as I was going through the outsourcing steps.
3. I can get it out faster to you, no delays for fancy editing.

I also have no idea of any difficulties I may encounter during this project, and wanted to show you how I handled them as they cropped up, (which they always seem to do!) Hopefully I won’t embarrass myself with this…

The project will be a personal website from a flash template selected from templatemonster.com.  They’ve got some beautiful templates of there, and because my client already ranks #1 for her name, the benefits of a flash site out-weigh any SEO (search engine optimization) considerations.  You’ll see the template at the end of video one.

The content has already been written and compiled, so this is strictly a “put the content in the template” kind of a project.

It doesn’t get any simpler than this…or does it?

I will try to keep the videos as short as possible, so I will edit them for maximum content out of respect for your time.

In video one, we go through the Project posting process on Rentacoder’s site, talk about the project description, and have a look at the template.

So we begin…

For the most comprehensive resource on outsourcing, check out the Ultimate Outsource Directory

Please post your comments!

Tags: autoresponder, , online, outsourcing online, Internet marketing, Web design, scripts, guru, outsourcing, programming

Tags: scripts, outsourcing, elance, software, autoresponder, guru, online, directory submission, web graphics, Web design