OK here’s the total honest truth.
I’m doing like 10% of the volume of business I was doing earlier this year. My affiliate income right now is PATHETIC.
Why?
Because I’m too damn busy to make money!
Does that sound completely retarded to anyone besides me?
Then I talk with guys like John Jonas, or Daniel Turner & Marc Lindsay, and hear that they work a fraction of the time that I do and make orders of magnitude more money.
Something is seriously wrong with this picture. ANd it ain’t them!
What am I doing checking on my support desk? Why am I answering simple questions about my products? Why am I checking my stats and spending even 5 minutes in Excel? Why am I doing any one of dozens of tasks that really truly do NOT have to be done by me?!??!
Part of it is being a control freak. I admit it. But this is seriously hampering my ability to make money, and there is no valid excuse for that.
I’m my own worst enemy in this regard.
I’ve started addressing this by hiring programmers (Russians in specific), and that’s worked out for me so far. See, I understand software development… I know how to speak their “language”, and with very few exceptions I’ve gotten spectacular results out of my outsourcing efforts where programmers are concerned. I happen to really like Odesk for this.
But as yet I haven’t had much luck outsourcing administrative stuff. I do finally have a couple guys helping me in my LPGen support desk (both are customers & users of the program so they truly understand how to use it) and recently I’ve begun experimenting with hiring in the Philippines.
So far, that hasn’t been as spectacular as my programmer experiences. No disasters or anything, just nothing really stellar in terms of results. Then again I’m paying them a fraction of what I pay even my “reasonably priced” Russian programmers so really, they can be less than stellar and I still get my money’s worth.
But the time has come and I need to step up my outsourcing to a whole new level. From what I’ve seen, there are two main camps really pushing hard on providing education on outsourcing and how to apply it to your internet marketing business. The Outsource Method, and ReplaceMyself. Both are excellent resources, but differ in approach and style.
Daniel & Marc are the forces behind Outsource Method. They have built quite a large company by heavily leveraging outsourcing. They’ve really refined this into a system that in my opinion applies to almost any scale of online business, from a 1-person affiliate shop, to a big corporation. Not exclusive to any one country (though they’ve recently started talking mostly about the Philippines), they provide more of a map for the do-it-yourself marketer who wants to learn the ins & outs of outsourcing, how to train the workers, etc.
These guys have a number of online businesses under their belt so they certainly aren’t newcomers to the game, and they put out good stuff and are very available for questions, etc. Hey they gotta do something with all that extra time right? 😉
ReplaceMyself is different in a few key areas. Firstly, it’s strictly focused on the Philippines, and that’s IT. John Jonas gives some pretty compelling reasons why the Philippines is the ideal place to outsource to, and explains a number of important details you need to know when navigating the waters of offshoring.
One thing I love about ReplaceMyself is that it actually provides basic training FOR YOUR OUTSOURCERS on things like link building, SEO, Adwords, mini-nets, article marketing, etc. It’s set up so that any time you don’t have specific tasks for your team to be working on, they go back to their “perpetual project” and just keep implementing the things in the training area, into your business. I can’t think of an online business that simply COULDN’T benefit from article marketing, SEO, mini nets, better PPC campaigns, etc. So to not have to train them yourself on these things, is pretty awesome.
I’ve gotten to know all these guys to various degrees this year, and actually have spent time with John Jonas in person (Daniel & Marc are in Australia and while I would LOVE to hang out with them some time, it’s not the most convenient spur-of-the-moment weekend getaway. 😉 )
They’re all passionate about what they do (does that mean they’re passionate about what they DON’T do? LOL) and absolutely practice what they preach. I recently spent 4 days with John and other than a few emails, I didn’t notice him “working” on his business at ALL during that time… and yet everything was still getting done.
I promise you that if you have any level of online business and ever think – even for a moment – that you “wear too many hats” or wish you “didn’t have to do _________”, you can benefit tremendously from either, or perhaps both, of these programs. They differ in style & approach, so check them both out and see which speaks to you.
The important thing is that you STOP DOING EVERYTHING YOURSELF! I can’t tell you how maddening it is to see my income dry up while I work on getting LPGen2 out the door. And there is NO good reason for it! I could have other people continuing to put up campaigns, test offers, etc. This ain’t rocket science folks… if you don’t begin multiplying yourself immediately, you’re going to find you get in your own way and become your own worst limitation.
Check out The Outsource Method and ReplaceMyself before any more time passes! You’ll be glad you did!
Jonathan
I couldn’t agree more. ReplaceMyself actually got me started. While I think he should just make it more of a product rather than trying to sell it as a membership. I only signed up to figure out where to hire outsourcers.
Yeah that brings up a good point I didn’t mention… ReplaceMyself is strictly a monthly membership where OutsourceMethod is a one time purchase that has a monthly option. Both are quite reasonable in my opinion if you make use of them. I started with ReplaceMyself and it really opened my eyes to the whole idea of outsourcing seriously.
Oh that brings up another important point, OutsourceMethod is going to drastically increase their price soon (they’re gonna go after corporate clients with the same basic info) so now is a really good time for anyone to pick up their product if it seems like a good fit.
Jonathan
Jonathan,
I would like to say that I’m a control freak too, but using outsourcing seems a little scary to me. I can’t even get campaigns to work for me let alone have someone else spending my money and going down twice as fast. It sounds good but not right now for me.
Mark
Philippines, $10/day – Do it!
I have two people and am looking for more.
Mark – Oh man I *SO* get what you’re saying. This has been my biggest fear with regards to outsourcing the campaign side of my business… someone who doesn’t entirely know what they’re doing, spending my money! But really what I should be doing is outsourcing OTHER things so that I can focus on the aspects that I need to retain direct control over (at least for now) and that are best suited to my skills.
My business is kinda divided into two units – the product creation side (LPGen, PPVD, KWBot, various training courses I have in the works…) and the traffic brokering side. The product creation arm is hard to outsource and retain the quality I require of myself (though with outsourced programmers I’m moving in this direction). Tutorials and manuals I insist on retaining full control of because, frankly, nobody does them to my satisfaction. 🙂 It’s the admin side of that business that I need to spend less time with… customer support, answering “FAQ” type emails, blog posts, tweets, forum monitoring, etc. etc. This is the stuff I’m starting to get more help with, and it’s definitely making a difference in my peace of mind.
My traffic brokering business is harder to let go of for the reasons already mentioned. But my plan for doing so is basically to keep control over the initial launching phase. I’ll load up the offers, build the keyword lists, and start the traffic. What I need to document THOROUGHLY so that someone can follow it, is the optimization portion. The rules aren’t THAT complicated honestly, and a friend of mine (DanM for those who know him from the PPCF forum) recently helped me really spell it out along these lines:
1) Track via subids so you can establish EPC/EPV
2) Look at high volume keywords and ensure that CPC/CPV is not higher than (EPC x .66) [or whatever margin you want to ensure]
3) Shut off anything that doesn’t fit the above requirements.
4) Use budget caps so nothing gets too out of control and have them notify you immediately if anything is ever significantly outside these parameters.
If you think about it, that’s really about all there is to it! This can be illustrated in a camtasia video and the outsourcer can be provided with a simple Excel spreadsheet with the formulas already preset. Give one outsourcer just a single traffic network and revenue network to start with, so they don’t get confused. Keep it as simple for them as possible.
The important thing here is that I retain the initial control to make sure everything is set up right, the links all work, etc. Then the outsourcer has SIMPLE rules that they either follow or don’t. You’ll know in the first day or two if they’re working out, and can decide to correct or find someone else.
This is the idea rattling around in my skull anyway… With the ultimate goal being to eventually get someone else setting up the initial campaigns… which again is not impossible to teach how to do, but I feel that one requires more of an “in person” touch, and I’d really want to be able to sit down with the person and go through it together. MAYBE I could do this via screen sharing with TeamViewer or GotoMeeting, I just haven’t tried it yet.
Charles – Rock on dude! When you think of it that way it’s pretty damn hard not to justify. If they free up just an hour each day for me to work on other things, it’s well worth $10.
Jonathan
Hi, Jonathan – I recall an email conversation with you more than a year ago, when I pointed out that you need a VA since you were answering your own customer service emails…you said you were thinking about it then…and yes, you can get great rates and good work from the Phillipines, esp for low-level traffic assistance and inexpensive graphics, BUT for what you are talking about, someone to handle your admin or do your blog posting and speak for you, I would highly recommend you hire a US-or Canada-based VA in your time zone or near, who speaks English and can write, and gets paid decently a for a few hours a week actually doing the work for you. It’s worth it. The biggest problem I see with IM do-it-yerselfers is that they are too cheap to pay anyone so they are stuck with the job themselves, for better or worse.
Good points Linda! I’ve done a couple of tests with one of my support desk guys writing the bones of a blog post on a certain subject, then I go in and tweak it with my own style, add a few tidbits here & there. It’s worked out pretty well, though hasn’t been a huge priority. Baby steps. 😉
I must say though that it feels REALLY good to not be in the support desk at all except when something needs escalation to me. I’m actually getting a few other things done. 🙂
Jonathan
Jonathan:
Can you please send me the reference of your guy at odesk?. I’m looking to develop a website based on Jooma (A content site ) and i’ve lost trust and had bad experience with E-lance
On the same note, how are the writers (Esp. E-book ) on Odesk ?
Regards
-n
Hi Naveen,
Unfortunately I can’t give my specific programmers out as I’ve got two of them and both are busy full time for me. But there are LOADS of them available on Odesk, I’ve stuck with Russians/Ukranians and have been quite happy with the results. They’re more expensive than some other countries, but I’ve found they have the more advanced skills in terms of web scraping & data mining that I need.
I haven’t tried Odesk for anything other than programmers, but I know there are lots of writers there too.
Good luck!
Jonathan
I agree with how outsourcing can really help build businesses especially how it will enhance those businesses which are still in the starting process. I actually find Replacemyself as a good resource for entrepreneurs like me because the “new” me can actually begin by letting my resources work for the business. Another thing that I would like to share is the idea I got at this website, http://www.massoutsource.com which is sent in my email and found it another interesting resource in knowing the outsourcing methods. It got free videos which are accessed through this young Australian guy’s website and for me, all videos are easy to understand.
More power to outsourcing!