Hi there now for many of you who follow our blog on a regular basis you’ll know we are keen supporters of outsourcing, we use outsourcing all the time to make our own time as productive as possible, we’ve written many blogposts around the subject however many people starting out still get hung up on outsourcing and have a less than favourable experience so today we are covering some simple points to help get the best from out sourcing…

The Internet is wonderful because it puts you in touch with a worldwide workforce without you having to leave home. Outsourcing is fun and profitable but there’s a learning curve. The first few times you do it, you’re sure to screw up something.

As an experienced outsourcer, let me help make the learning curve slightly less painful and expensive by offering a few tips on setting up the job.

Do It Yourself

Before outsourcing any task to anybody, you should do it yourself at least a little bit. The reason is that if you don’t do it yourself, you won’t know what’s involved.

For example, let’s take backlinking. If you’ve done it yourself, you know about how many backlinks you can get in an hour. You’ll also be able to tell which ones are quality backlinks and which are junk. This is important in evaluating their results.

If you haven’t done it before and all you’ve got is their word and whatever results, you’re flying blind. If you can help it, only outsource tasks you’ve done before.

All the Details

No matter how many times you’ve talked about the job on Skype or chatted online about it, always send an email that covers everything in detail.

It should include a bulleted list of the exact responsibilities they have and the specs they need to know. When you’re writing it, imagine that they have short-term memory loss and they don’t remember anything from your calls or chats. Their memory is probably just fine, but you never know. Lots of virtual assistants juggle multiple jobs and it really helps them to have the specs clearly laid out.

For example, if you want them to find blogs for you to guest post on, tell them the topic, PageRank you want, required submission guidelines, whether or not they give you links in the article, etc. Try to think of everything.

The Test Run

It’s a good idea to either give them a quick job to start or have them do a portion of the job so you can check their work. The purpose is so that you can give them feedback.

Just like the detailed email, make sure that you cover everything in your feedback. Identify each point they’re doing right or wrong. If you’re clear about it, you won’t need to give them feedback again.

The Same Page

Communication is the key to successful outsourcing. Before you get started, make sure you’re on the same page with your lines of communication. For example, if you like communicating by Skype, make sure they can do that. Talk also about the times when you can reach them. You need to be able to contact your help in a timely manner.

Once you’ve outsourced a bit, it becomes much easier. Pretty soon you wonder how you ever lived without it.

Cheers

Tony

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