When you are building your own web marketing business like the members over at the Information Markter’s Zone, it quickly becomes clear that we can’t (and shouldn’t) be doing everything ourselves.
Here are just a small list of the tasks we need to put into action early on in our internet marketing businesses…
- Website design
- Graphics work (banners, order buttons, ezine and info product covers)
- Sales page writing
- Setting up and optimizing our own blog
- Writing and developing content
- Managing back end tasks such as customer support, accounting, pre-sales, etc…
- Product research and creation
- Getting publicity
- Article writing
- Joint venture setup and training
- Web site operations (payment processing systems, shopping carts, affiliate management systems…)
- Marketing strategy
- And on, And on…
Clearly, a subset of these tasks will play into your strengths, but many will not. The ones that don’t are primary candidates for outsourcing – luckily there is a massive supply of eager, highly cost-effective freelancers and outsourcers waiting for work.
The challenge, from your perspective, is to make sure you quickly have the ability to engage this outsourcing personnel and turn them into highly productive, stress-free, win-win relationships to move your web business to the next level
10 Web Outsourcing Tips
1. Track record – look for experience, a good rating from past customers and samples of their work
2. Depending on the size of the job – I want references. If it’s under $200, I don’t bother, but anything more serious and I require references
3. If it’s writing or content development, I like to have subject matter expertise and/or experience as well as the ability to write. I’ve had non-writer freelancers develop kick-butt content for me simply because they had personal experience in the area I was looking for
4. Timeliness in their response. I always ask a few questions up-front to get a feel for how fast and well they answer my questions.
5. Ability to follow instructions. This is challenging to tell if it is your first time with them, so what I do is start with a small project, see how that goes (as a test) and then work up if they meet the criteria
6. Look at record and quality of work first, then price second. Saving a few bucks (or a few hundred) isn’t worth it if you get crap in the end or have to spend so much time babysitting them that you may as well have done it yourself the first time.
7. Realistic timelines. I want to know that they set realistic timelines given their other client load. I always question whatever timeline they give to make sure they haven’t overcommitted
8. Question them on the bid request. I write very detailed bid requests – it’s the only way to get quality work…so I make sure I ask questions to weed out bidders who automatically respond without having read the instructions
9. Consider breaking major projects into multiple smaller projects which staggers the perceived workload of the outsourcer AND allows you to limit risk by not handing the entire batch of work off at once
10. Work through recognized freelance website where there is some degree of protection for your money such as escrow, where your freelancer doesn’t get a cent until the project is finished up to your specifications and where you they have processes for discrepencies. Working these out 1 on 1 outside of a third-party mediator is painful and likely will not end up well.
Outsourcing is the key to growing a six to seven-figure online marketing business that grows fast, steady and still allows you to stay on top of the entire Enterprise instead of becoming the major obstacle standing in the way of further web business success.
