Your First Outsource Job - Managing Your Project

Once you’ve selected your winning bidder, you usually need to escrow your payment (put it in escrow on the bidding site, to be released to the winner upon your ok), assign the project to the bidder, and finalize communications, and project acceptance.

Managing an outsourced project is not for the weak or the timorous. You need to be firm, or you WILL get walked all over - if not the first time, then soon!

Make it clear in your final discussions what your expectations for communications are, how you expect to be contacted, and what the final format should be.

Setting Initial Expectations

For a series of articles, I would go with something along the lines of:

1. I want rough drafts of 2 articles within 24 hours. I will provide feedback within 24 hours.
2. I expect daily emails telling me of the ongoing progress.
3. I can be reached via Instant Messaging during the hours: xx:xx - xx:xx
4. I expect the final version to be grammatically correct, and in simple ascii text.

When you review the articles, don’t be lenient! Anything you don’t like, bring it up. If it doesn’t have a high enough keyword density, let them know. If the title is bad, let them know. The truth is, at the end, I’ll likely do a final edit on all of them, but I want the ones I receive to be as clean as possible.

If the freelancer misses a deadline, or doesn’t give you a progress report, call them on it immediately! Let them know that these terms are not negotiable, and if they don’t meet your requirements, you will cancel the project, or score them low. Usually telling them that you will not give them a “10″ rating, if they miss the deadlines or meeting requirements again, will straighten them right up.

Let me reiterate, this is how I would handle a small project. For large projects, and for my full time freelancers, I use a project management tool like basecamp, goplan, or project pier (for the do-it-yourselfer).

That’s a lot more overhead than you need for a project like this.

Final Acceptance

When the work appears complete, review it carefully before agreeing that it is done. If you want changes made, say it now! Also, you should check to verify that the work is original, and not re-released PLR articles, or copied text. For this I highly suggest signing up for Copyscape Premium.  For a nickel a search ($.05) you can cut and paste your articles, and search the internet for copies.

If you do find the work is copied, let them know, and warn them that you will not only score them low, but you will tell WHY you scored them low. There should be no question about what was expected, if you followed the directions in Step 1 and Step 2.

Once the work is complete to your satisfaction, you can release the money, and whenever possible, rate the freelancer with a perfect score. Anything less will build up animosity and make it hard for you to get anything fixed in the future. Of course if there were serious problems with the project, you can score them lower.

The freelancer will usually also get a chance to rate you. As you might guess, if you rate them poorly, you might find the same coming back to you. It’s not as critical, of course, for buyers, but it could matter in the long run, if you have a string of bad reviews from good freelancers.

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve completed your first outsourced task! Congratulations.

Now go out there and make some money.

Your First Outsource Job - Selecting a Freelancer

Let me make it very clear. The better the clarity of your job offer, the more likely people will bid on it.  I’m not saying you have to give all the details, but you need to create a very concrete requirement.

Look at it from the viewpoint of the freelancer. They are usually going to bid based on how much effort it takes them to do the job. If it’s not possible to accurately gauge the effort required, there’s no way to create a decent bid.

If you’ve followed the directions from part I in this series, you should have a pretty solid job offer. With a solid offer, you will receive plenty of bids. I’d say that on average, for the last year, I’ve been getting over 50 bids for most of my projects. Some highly technical ones get as few as 8-10. Some of the easiest get will over 100. Asking to get some articles written will most likely bag you 40-60 bids.

So You’ve Got Your Bids

Now, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff? Most of the freelancer bid sites have similar information. For the purpose of explanation, we’ll use getafreelancer, my favorite for this type of work.

The following graphic will show you some of the information you’ll receive with each bid.

• A) Name of the Bidder. Clicking on this link will bring you to the bidder’s profile, which contains lots of valuable information about the bidder.
• B) The Bid for your project. This is what they claim they will do the project for. Read the small print. Sometimes, in a case like this one where we’re asking for several articles, they may list the ‘per article’ price. Price is important but not the only important element
• C) Provider Rating. At all the bidding sites, the freelancers are give rating reviews after projects. They consider this the most important result of a project. They depend on getting perfect reviews. Just a few lower scores can put them out of contention for some business. This is the strongest thing you can hold against them, if they don’t do what you want, and it’s a good indicator of past success. Obviously, a high number of reviews indicates many successful projects. In this case, we’re looking at a very successful freelancer - lots of business, lots of good reviews.
• D) The Bid Comment. It is very common for them to leave just a bit of information here, and put most of the feedback in the “Personal Message” on the Personal Message Board (PMB). That way the messages can’t be read by the other bidders.
• E) Links to the Personal Message Board (PMB) where you can carry on a dialog with this bidder.
• F) The bidder’s estimate on how long it will take to do the job. Take this with a grain of salt. Delays from comments, responses, evaluations, etc, are never taken into account.
• G) Time of Bid. When they placed this bid.
• H) Note Space. A place for you to place a personal note, nobody but you can see, about this bid.
• I) Bid Management. Several ways of disqualifying bids are available in the perform actions area.

Different Types of Bidders

If you have a quantity of bids, and now understand what the bid looks like, and what the bid information means, you can start evaluating the bids.

In general, the bids will come from 6 types of bidders.

1. Spammers. These guys don’t even read the details, they throw a bid out on everything. One way to combat this is to place a distinctive comment in your project requirement. For example: “Please write the words “Read and Understood” at the beginning of your response to indicate you have read and understood the requirements. Bids without these words will be ignored.” If you get a low-ball bid that says something like, “Hello, let’s get going, thanks!” I’d probably run.
2. Newbies. These bidders have no previous experience (or very little). Their bid prices may be all over the place. Again, for the most part, at this point you are better off ignoring this. If neither of you have much experience at this, you’re more likely to have issues. With a few jobs under your belt, you may want to go mining here as well.
3. Low Experience, Low Prices. There are bidders out there who do a good job and are looking to grow their business. They are willing to charge below market prices to build up their experience, and to create new business relationships. They are the most likely to be influenced by the aspect of future business. I will consider some of their offers.
4. High Experience, High Prices. These guys have been there and done that. You can review their work, and see the capability. They are often ‘teams’ and sometimes will present the work of one team member, and put a different on on the job. I’ll sometimes choose these if I know the rep of the bidder, and need exceptional work, fast.
5. High Experience, Low Prices. Yep, it happens. Lots of experience, low-to-reasonable price. Many times they’ve either done the job before, or have enough expertise that it’s very easy for them. Also, different areas have different per hour rates. US may be more expensive than India, but the Phillipines may be much cheaper than India. Obviously this is the sweet spot for our bid analysis.
6. Low Experience, High Price. Unless you’re just a good samaritan, or a sucker, why would you go there?

Making Your Choice

Personally, I like to look at the most experienced, high rated bidders, take the top 10-20% for example, and look at the best prices being bid by them. I’ll verify from their past history that this is their main area of expertise. I’ll then mark anything more expensive than the one or two I pick out, “not interested.”

Next I’ll go to my remaining bidders, and look for those that have some experience, (at least 4-5) and find the best prices among these.

If the price difference is negligible, I’ll go with the most experienced, and start the final discussion before assigning the project. If there is a big difference, I may go with the cheaper one, or, quite often, I’ll do both! If the cheaper one is 1/3 of the price of the more expensive one, I’ll sometimes offer them the same contract, just for them. I can build up a stable of inexpensive freelancers this way, who will likely be loyal to me, if I gave them business when they were starting out. With articles, graphics, simple things, it’s quite reasonable to create two projects. Assign the current one to the high-bidder, and create a new one, with ‘closed’ bidding, and offer it to the cheaper one at the previously bid price.

At this point I know what I want done, and I know who I want to do it, and how much I should pay.

Next, it’s time to finalize details. Make sure you have multiple ways to contact them. Review their previous work. Make it clear how many sample you need for things like graphics. Determine a payment schedule. Make it clear when a project is finished. Get all this agreed to BEFORE you finally assign the task.

NEXT: Managing Your Outsourced Task

Your First Outsource Job - Getting Started

If you’ve been thinking about outsourcing, my suggestion to you is JUST DO IT.

So in three easy steps, we’re going to get you off your duff, and outsourcing. This project should cost under $30, and will deliver 20 articles about the subject of your choice.

Step 1, the basics of where to go and what to say.

Take some trivial job. I like to start my students with something easy like creating 10 articles about a subject they are interested in.

I then encourage them to head over to Scriptlance or GetAFreelancer, and create a simple job description. It should go something like this:

Title: Need 10 Articles Written

1. Articles in number - 10
2. Words - minimum 400-600
3. Original - no copy/paste work
4. Quality good, but grammatically perfect and readable
5. Deadline - 3-4 days

Subject and additional information will be delivered to selected freelancer

There are some standard statements I like to put at the end of creative writing tasks. These are:

• Payment with Paypal or (Scriptlance/Getafreelancer) escrow only
• Please give me a deadline you can hold or I WILL cancel the product
• I work with (MSN/Yahoo/Gmail) and expect that you can as well
• Do not plagiarize - results will be tested with Copyscape
• All spam messages will be reported
• Do not post if you can not do it for the price

You should get plenty of interest, and the fees should be under $20.00. Under $10.00 would not be unlikely.One of the reasons I’m suggesting Scriptlance and GetAFreelancer instead of eLance or NeedAnArticle is because of  the very low cost of this project. eLance has a $50 minimum; let’s avoid that while we’re still warming up.

At both Scriptlance and GetAFreelancer, you’ll be required to setup an account. Don’t worry about being a “Gold” buyer or anything like that to start with. Once you’ve setup the account, and put in some basic information, you can “fund” the account. For starters, I’d put $40 in the account, transferred from Paypal.  Later when you’ve selected your freelancer, you can ‘escrow’ the money, earmarking it for the freelancer you’re working with, to be delivered when you’re satisfied with their work. Also, once we’ve selected the freelancer, we can go into some basic details such as keyword frequency and location, title requirements, delivery, and more.

It’s worth mentioning that for larger projects, such as 100 articles, I would typically have the articles delivered 10 at a time, and pay as you go. This will ensure you don’t get 50 crap articles dropped in your lap at the end. If there are any issues you can catch them early.  With just 20 articles, it’s probably not worth the effort.

For this job, I’d make the duration, short, no more than two days. You should be able to get all the interest you need by then. They’ll know what is expected of them, and should be able to bid accurately. Some people have a lot of issues with what day you present jobs, and at what time. I don’t really care for something this size.

If you’ve followed these steps, you are well on your way to becoming an outsourcing expert. Really!

NEXT: Selecting your Freelancer, and getting them started

Roboform2go - The USB ‘killer app’?

I admit it, I have dozens of USB pen drives, thumb drives, whatever you want to call them.

I get them organized, then forget what I have on them. I have highly specialized ones (like the IronKey) and lots of small generic ones. They can be found in the bottom of my laptop bag, or scattered around my desk. None of them really have any particular value - until now.

Once I moved Roboform onto a 4GB USB, with Roboform2go, I found I always wanted that one USB with me. Anybody who has taken the minimal effort to get Roboform up and running knows just how valuable this program is. I’m a big fan of open-source, but there’s nothing out there that can hold a candle to this program. For $40, I could put it on my USB stick and take it anywhere I go. But a USB that I just HAD to have, that only had Roboform2Go on it, seemed like a waste.

So I added Portable Apps (which I’d played with many times before), and placed some of my other favorite tools on the same USB.

I have Portable Apps on a few different USBs. The idea of running Mozilla, or Thunderbird from a USB if I don’t have to, gives me hives. With Roboform2Go, and Del.Iciou.us to handle all my bookmarking, I can work with any browser anywhere, for most basic stuff. I still left Mozilla portable on the USB, for the rare occasion that I might actually need it.

I used the open-source Password Safe for all the passwords that Roboform2Go doesn’t keep for me. I put Action Outline on there as a simple, easy to use action item list, which I’m currently trying to use with David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Action Outline is a great little list manager that I’ve used for years. I paid the $30 bucks back then, I think it’s around $40 now for the pro version with unlimited lists. There’s a free program called Task Coach, which has been made portable, and does much of the same. But I’m happy with my existing program.

I also installed the Notepad++ Portable version, from the Portable Apps site. It drives me crazy not to have a decent text editor. I also need a spell checker, so I grabbed the Aspell spell checker which is easily integrated with Notepad++. I probably should have made the effort to use a more up-to-date spell checker, like Hunspell, but this was quick and easy.

I next added Skype, and made it portable using the directions from Gruups.com. There are a lot of discussions about how to make Skype portable out there. This is about as basic as it gets and works great.

Finally I added 7-zip portable for those occasions when I’m on a machine that is so crippled it can’t unzip/unrar/untar etc.

I found a nice little free Autorun utility, called AutoRunPRO, that will let you start more than one program when you first stick the USB in your computer. I can start Roboform, Password Safe, Portable Apps, and Action Outline. It works great.

Everything together take less than 200MB on my 4GB stick. This is the real deal. I’m addicted, I don’t go anywhere without it!

If you haven’t tried making your life portable - you might want to give it a try.

Why I switched to Hostgator

I’ve had virtual servers for about as long as they’ve been around. I remember being excited about a $99 virtual server back in the day. After a series of moves, I ended up on GoDaddy a few years back.

Mostly it was convenience. The price was better than I was paying, and I had 50+ domains registered there. I was migrating all my domains to GoDaddy, their domain management was great, and their prices pretty darn good.

Then one day I had issues with my email. Nothing worked. My Qmail daemon was crashing. Calling support was less than useless. If I hadn’t called at least I would have saved the 20 minutes. They knew NOTHING about their virtual servers.

That’s ok, I’m a techie. Nose to the grindstone and all that, and a couple of days later (arrgh!) I had email again.

Then I found out that my server level was no longer being supported. Admittedly my version of Redhat was getting a little long in the tooth. So I used the PLESK control panel to back up all my websites, since everything would get wiped. I updated to the latest OS, and went to install my sites again. Oops. Turns out that the new version of PLESK they had installed with the new Linux version, couldn’t understand the old saves. That’s right. The restore was NOT BACKWARD COMPATIBLE.

That’s ok, I’m a real weenie. Research, investigate, and learn how to do the manual extractions and uploads. A week later, they’re all back up. A lot of repetition there.

A few weeks ago I was helping a friend setup their domain and webhosting. I asked around and did a little online research and narrowed my choices for their hosting down to three. Startlogic, HostMonster, and Hostgator. While investigating the three, I made a decision.

Time to move off of GoDaddy, and move to Hostgator.

1. I was tired of PLESK. Everyone in my community uses cPanel
2. I needed unlimited domains, or at least 100+
3. I wanted SSL/SSH.
4. I was desperate for decent support - Hostgator appears to be among the best.
5. I needed excellent backup/restore service
6. I needed excellent transfer service
7. Cheap would be good
8. “Green” is nice (doing my part for the environment)

I still use GoDaddy for all my domain registration and management. They have successfully helped me pickup domains after they expired, and their managment tools are top rate. The recent bonuses of free ‘private’ registration with many of the domain purchases is a great bonus.

But for my domain hosting, I’ve picked up the cheaper, more powerful, and better supported HostGator.

If you’re interested in moving to a better web host - you could do a lot worse than HostGator. I’m not sure you could do a whole lot better. And when the ball drops, and things go bad, one of the best support teams in the business is good to have on your side.

If you’re interested… Here’s their link again.

HostGator - Better Hosting, Better Support

By the way, they have a couple of specials going right now - I’m not sure for how long. Enter promo code “FREETRIAL” to get the first month for $.01. If you’re going to prepay for several months, use promo code “GREEN” which gets you 20% off.

Chrome losing it’s Shine

There are a lot of things I LOVE about Google Chrome. It loads SO fast, it’s speed with Javascript is unparalleled. It’s clean simple interface for me is gorgeous (I hate seeing a browser with 8 different toolbars, all I can think of is malware gone awry.)

But I’m using it less and less.

It keeps leaving me hanging.

• I’ll visit a website, and cant’ see the video (Hello, Mozilla)
• I’ll make an online purchase and get locked up on the “Thank You” page (twice last night!)
• I’ll visit a webpage, and all the graphics are off kilter.

Chrome is not alone - I’ve been using Flock for a while, and I’ve been having issues there. I work with the Internet Marketing crowd, and I’m amazed with how much of their stuff works on nothing but Internet Explorer. Which is bad for me - on one of my PCs I don’t even HAVE IE.

I’m not abandoning Chrome yet, but it can’t be my standard browser for now. Heck, while writing my Wordpress blog, I have problems uploading multimedia with the internal editor. Having to drop out to Filezilla for each graphic is not idea.

For me, Chrome was the pretty girl from afar, but when you got up close, and got to know her, the old girlfriend looked a lot nicer all of a sudden. She was always there for you, dependable, knowing how you like to do things, and you can dress her up nicely (with themes). Chrome is sexy, but flaky, and in this case familiarity may not breed contempt, but it does breed a little disappointment.

Embedded Flash Audio Player

Is it possible to find a really nice, elegant embedded flash audio player, cheap?

If you’re using Wordpress, it is. And it’s better than cheap - it’s free!

That’s from 1 Pixel Out, who provides a free, simple Wordpress Plugin that makes it possible to embed an audio player in your blog posts with one line, like this:

[audio:your_mp3_file.mp3]

You can also modify the color and behaviour using run time options. Adding audio to your blog has never been this easy!

Combine this with Audacity, the incredibly powerful open-source audio editor and recorder, and any microphone, and you have no excuse to leave your blog so one-dimensional.

Essential Steps to Starting a New Internet Marketing Program

At the World Internet Summit, I purchased Tracy Repchuk’s Quantum Leap Profits program.

If you were to check out my Testimonial, on her blog, you’ll see that was exactly what I went there for. But starting a new program like this is a little daunting. I received 3 lessons and 7 emails today.

The only problem is - my plate isn’t quite clear yet. I’d love to dedicate nearly 100% of my attention to the process, but I have two other projects, which still have some outsourcing work going on, and I want to get done and out of the way.

In addition, my office space wasn’t as organized as I’d like, so I spent another couple of hours getting it more organized. For a little insight into all my distractions, you can watch the following little video (ok, maybe not so little).

Starting with a clean organized workspace is so important to this kind of effort. Having a dozen different side projects hanging over you when you’re trying to kick-off a MAJOR new effort, is just setting yourself up for failure.

So, in my case, I’m spending the next few days, getting the organizing out of the way, and clearing out some projects which just need a little TLC to be out of the way, and putting dollars in my pocket.

I’ll still work on all the lessons, and I do have one advantage - the lessons assume that it’s possible you are a complete newbie. In my case, I think I have the domain purchasing, hosting and setup thing under control. Pretty much the same for the initial research, although I’m VERY interested to learn any new techniques and ideas there.

Back to class…

WIS - After The Fact

Two more days out of the way. The show is over. For me it was an unmitigated success.

Breakfast and hanging out with Tracy was everything I hoped for. Her attitude of absorbing all the information available is contagious. Discussions about where to take my current projects and what to concentrate on had me spending about three hours revisiting my short term and long term goals, and putting together a very agressive 3 month plan.

I’m not going to go over all the content, but I have to point out a few speakers and products that were just amazing.

Marc Harty and Jeff Crilley’s talk about Press Releases completely turned me around about this powerful weapon. I’ve done almost nothing in this area. That will be changing. Jeff is local, and has a monthly meetup - color me there.

Matt Bacak might have been the least polished presenter. Just goes to show that content trumps style. He is such a motivational story, so successful and so willing to share the way. His Rainmaker program seems incredible. I guarantee I will be looking for this program when I get past the next hectic few months.

Michael Koenig rolled out his Traffic Geyser to the audience early on the last day. This was another great big WOW. The unsolicited testimonials by the other speakers, including Adam Ginsberg, telling how they use the product woke me up to the power of this one. For Video marketing, I can’t imagine a better product. Front page of google, in days. The one MUST HAVE product here.

Speaking of Adam Ginsberg, his ebay workshop had the crowds going. Make money fast. Get online, making money tonight. I’ve done the ebay thing for years, and made some decent money at it, but his techniques for working the big ticket items was life-changing for several people there. Again, it was so close to getting me to lose my focus - I had to remind myself - three months. Nothing else for the next three months but my one BIG project. His product came in a large colorful box, and seeing all the boxes sitting in front of people around me had me feeling like I was being left out. My neighbor is a big eBay player. I’m going to try to talk her into getting into this program.

I didn’t win the Internet Challenge. I didn’t get the $24,000+ check. But I’m not sweating it. I think I got enough out of this to clear about 4 times that much in the next few months. Wish me luck.

So how good was the World Internet Summit, and my experience with Tracy?

I have two pretty Big Hairy Audacious goals. I’m going to reward myself for achieving them.

Goal #1 Reward: I’ll be going on the Internet Marketing Cruise in January with Tracy and a host of others.

Goal #2 Reward: The World Internet Summit again, in Australia.

You can draw your own conclusion.

WiS Day 2 in Dallas

The first day of the World Internet Summit was geared towards newbies. A lot of the basics of making money on the internet. The content for me this day was a little underwhelming.

Seeing the speakers, on the otherhand, was a real treat. This was my first live event, and listening to Tom Hua, Brett McFall, Stephen Pierce, and Sean Roach was enlightening. These guys are good. I’ve done a lot of public speaking, in front of some decent sized crowds, but I wouldn’t want to be competing with these pros at the moment.

Steven Pierce was a great kickoff to the event. He has a terrific, dynamic presence on stage, and the chops to back up this talk on the basic of Internet money making. He had the crowd going.

Tom Hua got up next and gave us his incredible story, including the 17 months of internet marketing failure before his HUGE success. Mostly a motivation speech, but a lot of fun to listen to, and to get your entrepreneurial juices flowing.

Brett McFall finally gave us a little meat, with his Internet ABC’s lecture. Pretty familiar stuff if you’ve been online long, but great for a room full of newbies. It seemed like 1 in 3 of the people here fit in that category.

Sean Roach introduced us to his big program - the GotAccess platform - a Web 3.0, yes “3″, which is a fascinating platform for membership in particular. It is the basis of the Internet Challenge they hold, where they put together a money generating campaign on the spot, and on the final day the distribute all the money earned to one lucky winner chosen at random. This time, it’s actually two separate campaigns.

Day 2
Day 2 was a different story. Lots of meat from fascinating speakers, right from the beginning. Brett McFall kicked off the day, getting everyone into the mood. Then Tracy came out and presented her program to Start, Grow and Build your Business in 4 weeks. I had spoken to her the day before, and was at the counter picking up her program half-way into the lecture. Once she said she’d be working with us on marketing our programs, with email communications directly to her, I knew it was the contact I was looking for. Someone who’d “Been There, Done That,” who had sat in the same audience just a little over a year earlier - that was exactly what I wanted.

Chatting with her afterwards was terrific. We had a nice group who’d all bought into the program, and we’ll be meeting her for breakfast tomorrow, for a Q&A and some good networking. We’re already talking about a JV, and finding a way to get my 1000+ new visitors each day at my BuncoRules.com website, into my database. My current opt-in campaign via a newsletter is ok, but she’s convinced we can increase my opt-in rate nearly 10 fold by doing it right. That’s just what I’ve needed.

I also found a couple of ‘Ed-Heads’ here from the 30 Day Challenge, and it was nice to talk with them and bounce around our feeling and opinions about the speakers and their programs.

Bill Walsh presented his program on developing Residual Income which is also in my plans. But for now, I’m content to stick with the one program with Tracy, keep my focus laser sharp for now.

Nikhil Parekh talked about his method for making over 3 million dollars through affiliate commissions. He was another successful alumni of the WIS, with Stephen Pierce as his Mentor. Two years, and a multi-million dollar success? Wow. His program also gave a huge amount of access to him, including Skype and unlimited emails. He’s new to the speaker circuit and looking to build success stories of his own students. If I didn’t already have a product and plan in place, I don’t see how I could have resisted his offer.

I was sorry to miss Sean Roach’s follow-up on the Internet Challenge process, but it is Halloween, and I had promised my daughter to take her trick-or-treating. Family first.

A great day though. The show is a 150% success for me. Far more than I hoped for, and the networking with local Netpreneurs was absolutely priceless.