5 Valuable Tips I Learnt From Outsourcing Work.
Outsourcing your work saves you time and effort. This free time can be spent on more productive activities which will improve your chances of becoming a successful professional blogger and internet marketer.
When I started out in my internet marketing career, I always had to do everything myself, but as I became more successful I realised I needed to outsource some tasks, otherwise I’d be overwhelmed with my day to day tasks and never become an entrepreneur.
5 years later, I’ve had a lot of experience with outsourcing tasks and here is what I learnt.
1. Be very PICKY when you hire!
The fact is there are hundreds if not thousands of people who are suitable to do the job you want. The worst thing you can do is hire the first person that applies in a rush to get the job done.
If you’re thinking, “He seems OK, I’m sure he’ll do fine” you’re probably making the wrong decision and heading towards a car crash.
I have to be 100% satisfied with the candidate; I put a job out for the max duration of the project timeline to get the maximum possible bids so I can find the best possible candidate. Think of this as an investment, you want to hire workers for long term, if you hire a different worker each time you’re doing this completely wrong.
2. Always pay by the hour rather than per project.
When I first started out I was always worried that it would cost more to pay by the hour rather than per project, thinking that workers would slack and waste time if they’re paid by the hour, unfortunately it didn’t work out that way.
The reason being is that workers are never sure if they’ll be remunerated properly if they get paid per project, they never spent too much attention to detail in one are in case they go over their projected time and end up losing out. So they rush the job, and meet the absolute minimum criteria asked for.
Being paid hourly, it’s in the interest of the worker to not cut corners and work on the project for as long as it needs. The hourly rate never went out of control, and in many instances it was surprisingly less than budgeted. When you pay hourly, you get far better quality than paid on a per project basis.
3. Always monitor your workers, and keep an eye on QC
The second biggest mistake I made was to delegate a project and simply forget about it, this was a really bad move because; 1) the worker missed my instructions and started to derail from the task or 2) started working slower over time.
How did I solve this? Well I always get my workers to use Hyperhour. It’s a small client software that allows me to monitor them whilst they’re working, how much time they’re spending and even see screen caps of their work. So when they bill me for work done, I always know what for.
With the ability of seeing screenshots, there’s no hassle or disagreements, you have an objective proof of work done, and time spent. Plus it saves on time; because the worker doesn’t need to spend time writing up reports to send to you. I was able to log in and see what the worker was doing at any given time and see if they were on task.
It’s always important to monitor, I use Hyperhour because it’s free but there are many tools out there. If you’re successful enough and working on a large scale you may want to hire a manager to monitor the workers for you.
4. Get to know your employees, personally.
Build a relationship with your workers, understand their lifestyle, talk about your families, and build a personal bond. Remember a good worker is worth keeping and makes your job a lot easier because you don’t have to retrain new staff each time. I made a huge blunder, thinking that money was the answer to all problems. People like working for bosses who are personable and nice to work with. It’s easy to not give a damn about someone if you don’t know them.
What’s the point of retraining new staff every month, training them is very tough, and takes up a lot of resources, so you want to pay your workers fairly, and want them to want to work for you for the long term?
I found that single mothers [and even mothers with husbands/boyfriends] tend to be the best workers. Why? well they have a dependant that they need to take care of they’re not thinking about cheating you or jumping onto the career ladder, they’re going from day to day. The only down side with mums is that they’re not always available to work on demand due to have various different mother issues. The worst workers for long term was students, a lot of college students didn’t have the experience, a lot of them were only doing it as a stop gap, and many were inundated with college work to care about project work
5. Finally, treat your employees as team members.
It’s important to make the worker feel part of a team, some may be working for an agency abroad, but many will be working from their computers at home [probably, just like you], it’s easy to feel demotivated when you’re not seeing the fruits of their labour. Always relay feedback to them, give link builders feedback on traffic results, and tell them what a good job they are doing. Remember them on their birthdays or their kids’ birthdays for example. You may run into the strong boss/worker mentality in some cultures like India or Philippines, which can be tough to break away from. But always treat them like they are on an equal footing to you.
Hope you guys save money and time using my tips, and enjoy!
