 |
My First Outsourcer - You're Fired!
Well, one of the most important steps presented in the 4HWW is the automation phase. Affiliate marketing is profitable, but it is also time consuming. The goal is to free up our time and that means outsourcing.
I decided to try out my very first attempt at this. I ended up hiring a team in India for $2.50/hr to do some work for me. They started on Monday, and as of Thursday morning (after hearing the report for Wednesday’s Work), I’ve asked for a mutual end to our contract. Project Parameters: I wanted them to work 2hrs a day, Monday - Friday, for a total of 10hrs/week. I would give them 4 articles each day. I wanted them to submit all 4 articles, to 5 different directories. That gives a total of 20 submissions. But I had one important point. Each submission required a little rewriting of a few sentences to help "uniquify" the article. That was all I wanted them to do. Strike One, comes from Day one’s work. All they did was copy & paste submit. There was no editing done. It probably took them around 20-30 minutes to do. Obviously they did not read the entire project parameters. Billed: 2hrs I end up talking to them about this and explaining to them what the project stated. They said they didn’t want to do any editing and would like me to give them more articles and article directories to submit too. Basically a compromise, which I was happy to do. Day two, I wake up to find them trying to rectify the situation they screwed on day one. They tried submitting all the articles again with a little rewriting. Obviously, you can’t resubmit them, you have to go edit the ones submitted. They went and did this, none went through, due to duplicate content. Billed: 2hrs Still on day two. I send them 6 articles, and 10 directories to submit too. I assumed that they would copy & paste submit all 6 articles to all 10 directories. They submitted 2 articles at random to the 10 directories, for a total of 20 submissions. It was all copy & paste, so another 20-30mins of work. Billed: 2hrs At this point, I found it imperative to start figuring out the communication barrier that we seem to be experiencing. I asked them to explain to me what I wanted them to do. I will copy and paste the exact answer I got. So I submit these 8 articles randomly to these directories ? what about other 12 articles ? He answers it in a question. Hmmm, I never used the term random ever lol. At this point I was giving him 8 articles, because that is what I wanted done. That would be a total of 80 submissions, which is all copy & paste, which is enough time to get done in 2hrs. Anyway, I explained what I wanted. Day three, I give him the 8 articles to submit to the 10 directories. I check in toward the end of the day at a few directories. I see 8 submissions in them, so I’m thinking things went great! Well, this morning, I find out it took him 5hrs to do it and he wasn’t even fully finished. Billed: 5hrs He also gave me his total billing so far for the first three days. Remember, I wanted just 2hrs a day. He was up to 11hrs already. At this point, he’s done. It’s three strikes and you’re out. Total Bill: 11hrs I know 11hrs isn’t that big of deal. It just seemed for what I originally wanted, I was getting something I didn’t want at all and I was paying more for it. I’m definitely going to outsource again. It was great. I actually was able to cut back on a lot of work and I was really only doing about 90 minutes of work a day. Which rocks. Note to self: Fuck! Shit! Bitch! Note to self: Put in the project parameters that I want them to work 2hrs a day and 2hrs only. If they can’t finish the work, they stop at the 2hr mark and start tomorrow. There is a simple point for this; controlled hours. Even though I wanted 2hrs/day of work, I was getting a lot more because I didn’t cap it at 2hrs. If there is a language barrier where they make it a much bigger task than it really is, it is much easier to rectify if they only did 2hrs of work. Note to self: Everyday that I send them work, I should include a very step by step action list. As in "do this", than "this", like "this". The reason for this is simple. If you think you and the outsourcer have an understanding about something without actually spelling out in detail what you expect, than you don’t have an understanding. There is absolutely no unspoken understandings with outsourcers. Give them a detailed "do list" until you are sure they "get it". Note to self: Have projects setup in away where your outsourcer isn’t paid per hour. Instead they’re paid per group of required tasks. The reason for this is that you’re going to pay for value. On a per hour basis, you could be getting very little value for the money being spent (like me). If you need an example, in my case, instead of looking for someone for 2hrs a work a day, look for someone to do 4 article submissions, to 5 directories, with a little rewriting. Have them bid on doing this for 5 times in a week. This means you’re going to always get X amount of work done, for Y in dollars. I might try it that way. I might not. July 17 2008
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
|
Affiliate Marketing Xpert was created for people that want to live the Four Hour Workweek lifestyle.
Categories
|
|
|
|