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Welcome to Part II of how to use customer feedback to select a freelancer. This article covers how to analyse and vet customer comments, as well as how to do a simple web background check.

This article is part of a series on How to Select a Great Freelancer Online.

You can find Part 1 here.

Read the recent positive comments

Don’t just take an average rating as your guide, jump in and read customer comments. In particular, find jobs that sound like yours and see what customers had to say. Were they ecstatic or just so-so? Check the English quality in the posts, if you find recurring grammatical errors, or strangely recurring comments. Not everyone is an English major, but sometimes these little things can help you identify falsified comments, or at least suspect ones.

Customer’s Seem to Have a Positive Review Bias

Be aware that customers are often coerced, begged, cajoled by their freelancer to leave favourable comments. The freelancer may also try and use their personal relationship with the customer as leverage to ensure that ‘minor issues’ are left out of reviews. Some flippant examples…

“Look how hard we worked for you, it COST ME money to finish your work!”

“Hugh my friend, it has been an honour to work with you. I will leave excellent feedback for you. I would be privileged if you would do the same!

Why mention this? Are they bad people for trying to sway your grade? No… it’s just business. A bit of a gentle squeeze can add a few points to their average rating, and a few extra dollars in their pocket.

The point I want to make is that glossy reviews are more the norm than the exception. Average providers with charismatic ‘front men’ will have very similar high positive ratings, to technically excellent providers. You need to look very closely to see the difference.

An average quality freelancer will provide a worse experience then an excellent one; but they’ll do a better job convincing you that there were good reasons why you had trouble! The fact that there is a positive bias in customer reviews is another reason why outsourcers with bad ratings should generally be avoided. Read the rest of this entry

This post is the first of a series on How to Select a Great Freelancer Online. It specifically discusses how to use past customer feedback and work histories to ‘read between the lines’ and reveal a freelancer’s real performance. You can find the index for the series and the first article here.

Part 1 of How to use customer feedback/ratings covers:

• How to use the average feedback rating (or score) to weed out under-performers
• How to assess past work performance and determine a freelancer’s credibility
• How to avoid being Scammed

Part II of How to use customer feedback/ratings (find it here) covers:

• How to analyse customer comments, what they mean, and reading between the lines
• How to do a background check on your potential outsourcer

So, On With Part 1. Customer Feedback, Past History = Future Performance?

The only way to verify someone’s past performance and identity online is by reviewing their customer feedback and interaction within outsourcing websites. All freelance/online outsource sites have customer feedback because it’s extremely useful for filtering out the trash (scammers, fly-by-nighters, psychos etc.). When using feedback and ratings it’s essential to remember that it isn’t perfect. As any investor will sorely tell you, past history is no guarantee of future performance! Add to this the fact that feedback histories can be gamed/manipulated, you’re left with an information source which is only useful if it’s used with care.

How to analyse customer feedback:

All feedback is not created equal, some reviews should be given more weight then others, and there are hidden stories in the data. Here are a few things to look for to keep you safe. Read the rest of this entry

This article follows on from ‘Why you should consider outsourcing – PART 1’ which you can find here. It discusses how outsourcing can offer your business a low cost, low risk avenue for achieving scale and labour efficiencies.

Nobody makes their own toilet paper.

It’s cheap, it’s commoditised, it requires a multi-million dollar infrastructure investment to make it, and you have to sell tonnes of it to cover your costs. Why would you want to go to all that trouble when you can pick it up at the supermarket for a few cents a wipe. If someone told you that you should make it yourself to save a few bucks on the cost of a roll at the supermarket, you’d think they were nuts right?

Have a think about what services you or your business consumes.

Are they commoditised? Are you consuming your limited infrastructure (office/house space, IT equipment, phone lines etc.) to produce goods or services that someone else could do more cheaply, because they have a volume, skills or infrastructure advantage that you don’t. If it’s done on a computer, or requires a phone line there’s a very good chance that you can achieve efficiency savings just by outsourcing it.

I know of dozens of business owners and entrepreneurs that stubbornly make their own toilet paper. Here are a couple of examples:

• a mechanic that made his own website. Looks terrible, puts an unprofessional face on the business and doesn’t generate income (as any business site should)… but he did save a few bucks by making it himself… or so he thinks. He bills his customer’s around $70/hr for labour, but values his personal time at $0/hr? Can’t help but think that given his long work hours, it represents several evenings that would have been better spent with the kids!
• a medium sized manufacturer who has created their own labels and packaging. Looks pretty cheap, and they wonder why they have problems convincing customers to pay a premium for their goods;
• a plumber that runs his own web marketing campaign. Does a good job… but the grunt work could be more effectively done by someone else for pocket change. He could be free to bill more hours or spend his off time relaxing instead of working.

Consider:

• Why pay someone $50 to do something when it can be done faster and better for $5? Even $3?
• Why spend hours of your personal time and energy on a task that someone else can do cheaper and better than you, and requires only a fraction of your attention?

If your business is profitable, you have even more reason to consider outsourcing. Once you’ve started to make money, it’s time to stop valuing your time at $0,  and start focussing on the essential activities that only you can do. How can you better spend your time to make more money, help more people, or have more spare time (or whatever your particular goal is). Chances are you have better things to do then spend 4 hours on something you aren’t skilled at, aren’t paid for, and causes you to put off work you’ll have to catchup on.

Now, obviously it’s a little more involved then just saying ‘I’ll get someone to do it cheap’ but the above points are at the core of why you should consider use of freelancers within your business. If someone can do it cheaper and better then you, it would be crazy to do it yourself right?

So my question then is, are you making your own toilet paper? Read the rest of this entry

This started out as 1 article, but started to get a bit on the long side, so for your convenience I’ve split it into two parts. Part 1 discusses purchasing power, whilst Part 2 discusses scale and efficiency advantages.

Successful outsourcing creates LEVERAGE and UNLOCKS your time so that you can focus on the things important to you.

Off load the junk, low value activities or the things that you don’t have the skills or resources to do efficiently. Doing this frees you to apply more resources (time/money) to the important activities within your business. And that means increased profit.

In this article I’m going to discuss the leverage advantages of using freelance providers. What do I mean by leverage? I’m talking about Purchasing Power + Scale + Efficiency. I’ll discuss these in the context of outsourcing below:

Purchasing Power: You’re actually a lot wealthier than you think…

If you’re reading this from the US, UK, Australia, Canada or any one of the first world nations your local currency has a lot of purchasing power. If you’ve ever travelled overseas you’ll know what I mean, $60 a night for 5 star accommodation, meals and drinks? You won’t find that at home!

Buying locally with your local currency means you only achieve 1 to 1 relationship; your dollar is worth the same to you as the guy that you’re giving it to. But shop overseas and you can achieve 1 to 20 ratio (or more), because your currency is worth more (relatively speaking) to the guy you’re giving it to. I’m not an economist, so I’m not going to try and get into the details of this effect, but to summarise; it works because of the relative wealth and economic stability of your country compared to that of another. Wages, living costs, food, standards of living tend to be proportionately lower in the less wealthy nation, and this has a direct impact on the cost/value of labour (what people will charge for their time and skills). For example, it costs less to put a roof over your head and food in your stomach in India, so the minimum price you can afford to charge for your time is less. Makes sense right? Read the rest of this entry

This blog is intended for people considering or curious about outsourcing (freelancing) within their business. It is primarily targeted at web based outsourcing, but will touch on other business, entreprenurial and project management issues. I aim to provide material that will support small to medium projects with budgets ranging $50 to $100k. This blog is not for large corporate/government projects with bloated governance structures, it is about being lean and getting the work done quickly, reliably and at the lowest possible cost.

About Me

My name is Hugh, and I am writing from Australia. I’ve been regularly using freelancer’s from a diverse range of nations including India, Pakistan, Croatia, Russia, Indonesia, Serbia, and China for around 3 years in my own business activities. I’ve started this blog because of the numerous requests and discussions I’ve had with both business people and professionals curious about using freelance or outsourced service providers, particularly those based overseas.

I have a background in business analysis and have worked for both large government agencies and small businesses. I have qualifications in ITIL and PRINCE2 methodologies… which will flavour a lot of my posts. I am passionate about process and profitability improvement for small business, because I know so many owners and entrepreneurs that work too hard for the money they earn. I hope that this blog can help a few entrepreneurs out there to make more money with less time and effort, by working ‘smarter’ not harder (horribly clichéd I know )

I’ve also lost a lot of money on failed projects over the years, so I hope that my bad experiences will help you have good ones. And like any good entrepreneur I’m hoping to leverage my experience to turn an eventual profit

My aim is 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’m still getting everything setup, so it should all start to take form over the next month or so.

All the best,

Hugh