OutsourceSurvival.com

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

I accidently skipped over this, so a quick rewind to define outsourcing. I decided to outsource this to Wikipedia, you can see their definition below:

“Outsourcing is subcontracting a process, such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company. The decision to outsource is often made in the interest of lowering firm or making better use of time and energy costs, redirecting or conserving energy directed at the competencies of a particular business, or to make more efficient use of land, labor, capital, (information) technology and resources. Outsourcing became part of the business lexicon during the 1980s. It is essentially a division of labour.” www.wikipedia.org

A little too convoluted to be useful for our purposes but a thorough definition I think you’ll agree… it would make a lovely quote in an MBA essay or if we were putting together a textbook…

This is part of the problem with understanding outsourcing for small business. A great deal of the popular media still describes it in terms of its government or corporate function. It’s all very 1990s It conjures images of 10 000 page service agreements, teams of lawyers negotiating the smallest details of who’s responsible for what, where, when and how much. 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

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:

• how to use web-based freelancers within your business;
• project management (with an outsourcing twist);
• process oriented business improvement, including strategies for efficiency and automation of activity;
• profitability improvement for small business (including recession proofing);
• entrepreneurship and small business issues.

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!