This site is dedicated to helping small business and entrepreneurs make the most of internet based freelance and outsource service providers. It was created to share information and skills that will make you more successful in your dealings with ‘freelancers’, ‘outsourcers’, ‘contractors’, or ‘external service providers’, or ‘my guys in India’.
Here you’ll find How To’s, tools, templates, sanity checks and advice to make your next project a success. Read on to discover how outsourcing can recession proof your business and give you a competitive edge.
This blog is starting to be indexed by google!
Over the weekend, the comment spam bots visited to inform me of the good news. 200+ spam comments later, I’ve finally gotten around to installing the recatchpa-comment plugin :). Sorry for the inconvenience, but all new comments will require you to complete the little catchpa thing. Just type the letters as they appear into the field provided.
Goodbye spam!
Hrmmm...next time cut the blue wire
My blog has blown a fuse.
Sorry for the ugliness.. I’m working on it now. I’ve called an expert… lets see how quickly they can respond! Should be an article in there somewhere… outsourcing during and emergency..
My apologies, it will be fixed as soon as possible!
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Update, all fixed and under control. If you notice any further trouble please let me know. That way I can panic with the knowledge that somoneone other then me noticed 
This article discusses how outsourcing can dramatically reduce the cost of launching your startup, sometimes by up to 90%.
So you’re thinking of starting a business. Chances are that you’ve got your business plan (even if that only means a few scribbled notes) and you want tp open your doors and start making money. Right now.
Visual representation of purchasing power
If you’re like me and 99% of entrepreneurs out there, the first thing on your mind is ‘how am I going to get this all done’… followed by a glance at your bank balance, and the thought that another $100k would be nice
But you don’t have it, and you don’t want to keep your day job and save for the next 10 years! So now it’s time to ‘bootstrap’ and cut some corners (Jules Edit: alternatively send your partner out to get a permanent job so she can support you and your business!) and see how far you can stretch your coin. Cash is king as they say, and you need to preserve it. Read the rest of this entry
This article discusses one of the major problems encountered by inexperienced entrepreneurs in using international freelancers- project turn around time.
Many entrepreneur’s first and only freelance experience ends with them feeling deeply disappointed by either the speed or the quality of the work. They hear about guys you can hire for $4/hr, and rush off and splash some cash on the next big thing. Like many of the internet pot-o-gold stories, it turns out to be less successful then the flier suggested so they return to lurk in forums with their stories of woe.
Sometimes projects are so slow!
I am all for hiring freelancers in developing nations… but…
It can be very, very, time consuming. What you save in $$$ you need to invest in time. There is no way around it… at least not that I’ve found. Be prepared to invest a lot of time on the first few projects. You can’t leave them on autopilot, they will crash. With practice you’ll get faster, better results, but it will never be the same as buying services from your shop down the street. Read the rest of this entry
Welcome to a shiny new blog about making the most of outsourcing/freelance services over the web. I’ve been talking about getting this together for over 12 months now, and I’ve finally taken the first few steps.
This blog is primarily targeted at small business users of these services, not providers (as I am not a provider I can’t offer much in this regard). I’m going to cover a pretty wide variety of topics, but in a nut shell I’ll be including:
The first articles to go up will be on the basic concepts and implications (as I see them) of using outsourcing as a business tool. Then I will start to delve more deeply into common issues such as management, value, quality, culture differences etc.
I am aiming to post fresh articles everyday. A bit of a slog with no readers, but hopefully I’ll survive the solitude I appreciate feedback, so if you have any questions or comments please leave them on the blog or shoot me an email. I hope to reach a stage where I can engage readers like you in dialogue. As anyone who has a blog knows these early stages are like talking to yourself, entertaining at first but there’s only so much silence you can take without going a bit loopy
Thanks for reading, more to come!
