Outsourced My Life

Things have been going Great with my oDesk virtual assistant.  She’s been great at completing all the projects I’ve given her.   Here is a list of the projects she’s worked on:

• Compile a list of potential sponsors for one of my community sites and rank them based on criteria such as “Are they advertising on Google?”   “Do they have a forum / community section of their site?” etc.  Organize all the information including contact pages, phone numbers, etc.
• Copy all the content (80 pages), page by page, from one of my static sites into WordPress
• Compile a list of content submissions from my community and rank them based on my criteria
• Search my forum for information on a topic and collect all the content into a page with links back to the post so I could quickly write a content page from the information.
• Take the very static pages (180) from a site I purchased and remove the static head / foot information and insert a php header and footer.
• For a new forum I had her do a Google search for key terms and look for popular forums in my niche.  I had her review and compile a list of the forum categories and sort by popularity.  This really helped me determine which categories to setup on my new forum.

I’m so happy I found this provider!  While I feel I’m just scratching the surface on what I can do with outsourcing I’ve got the feeling that if I can duplicate this with all the other diverse skill areas of my life then I’ll be in a super productive spot!

After weeks of reviewing different companies and coming to the conclusion that I just don’t have the volume of work to employ any specific providers (virtual assistant, developer, designer, etc.) full or even part time I realized I needed a different option.   I wanted to move away from project based systems I’ve used in the past like RentACoder and move to more of an hourly based system.  I remember reading about a company called oDesk that specialized in hourly providers.  For the most part they are very similar to elance and rentacoder:  providers, buyers, ratings, etc.   The key differentiator (other than hourly workers) is their “Work Diary”.  This will sound very “big brother” but the provider has an app that runs on their local system while the provider is “clocked in”.  This app tracks # of mouse clicks and keyboard strokes… but the kicker is that the app takes a screenshot of the provider’s desktop at random intervals every 10 minutes!   This sounds pretty scary to many freelancers that like the freedom to work where they want on what they want when they want.  That said, it is music to the ears of buyers that are scared to hire someone across the world and never know if the person is really working during the billed hours.   oDesk says it isn’t very different than having your manager sitting in the cube next to you… watching every move you make.   I tend to agree.

I’ve posted a few different “jobs” and have interviewed quite a few providers over the past month.  My success rate has been all over the map.   

My first venture into oDesk land was to find someone who could do basic web design / updating for me.   Keep in mind I was specifically looking for people that could work CHEAP!  You are suppose to interview providers which is a pretty time consuming and difficult process.   I found it easier to hire 5 providers for 2 hours to work on the exact same task and see how they performed.   Did they work hard to understand the project?  Did they ask good questions for clarification?  Did they over promise and under deliver?   Many just took the project and tried to work on it without asking any questions resulting in some very interesting results.  Others replied that they needed more time and some didn’t reply at all.   A couple did come through with okay results and they would work for basic tasks but I’d probably have to move up the pay scale to get decent results.

My second job was where I found a diamond provider!   This project was listed as a virtual assistant.  Again I replied to about 4 providers giving them the same task.  I asked each to search the internet for companies that were competitors and/or complimentary to my most popular site and find out who was advertising with them and where they were advertising.  This would provide me with a list of companies to contact for advertising / sponsorship opportunities.   Of the 5 applicants 2 were women in the US, two were in India (man and woman) and the third was in Pakistan.   I gave them all 3 hours to compile as large a list as possible.   After I reviewed the results I was surprised and excited to discover the best results were from the woman in India who also happened to be on the least expensive side of the scale.

As mentioned earlier I just don’t have enough to give a virtual assistant full time work.  Fortunately my new VA is happy to work from project to project as many (up to 20) or as few hours a week as I need.

 
One of the companies I’ve been working with in www.BPOVIA.com in China.   The founder, James, is a great guy and was very prompt and professional with his communications with me.   I’m still trying to get a feel for what I want done and how much time my projects will take, but I had a very important project that I’ve been putting off for years.  Basically my grandfather wrote a book that was typed.   About 150 copies were made back in the 1980’s and no soft copy exists.   My task was to convert the hard copy to a soft copy.

The book was 500 pages (250 double sided) that could be scanned then read with OCR relatively easily.  The problems were someone had to scan and OCR the pages BUT also do all the corrections for words that couldn’t be read.   James quoted me a price that was extremely competitive with other companies locally and even other companies abroad.   I unbound the book, sent him the loose pages, and within a week I had a 4 mb PDF soft copy of my Grandfather’s book!

Other than a few problems sending payment to China via PayPal the whole process couldn’t have gone better.   Kudo’s to BPOVIA and team for a job well done.

Now, to continue on my quest to find the perfect virtual assistant!

Going into this journey of how I would outsource my life I’ve learned some valuable lessons.   I’m kicking myself for not coming to these conclusions sooner… even before embarking on a search for a virtual assistant:

1. I don’t have enough projects for a basic skill level “virtual assistant” to fill 40 hours a week.   I discovered I don’t even have enough work to necessitate a 20 hours a week contract.  This pretty much eliminates working with some of the “big” outsourcing companies.
2. The things that keep me busy as a solo entrepreneur are pretty diverse and range from the virtual assistant type items (filtering spam, replying to basic email queries, research, etc.)  to the higher level skilled items (website design, script installation, forum administration, conflict resolution, etc.)   This being the case I’m finding it hard to outsource as much of my life as I’d like to.
3. I had the crazy notion that if the going rate for a Virtual Assistant with basic skills was $4 - $5 an hour that I could find someone for a few more $ with a bit more skill to do all the VA stuff AND a little bit of web design, forum admin, etc.   Well, I realized that not very many international outsource providers have the diverse skill set that many of us entrepreneurs have.   Also, you can’t expect someone with higher level skills (example website design) to enjoy, or even be wiling to do the day to day stuff a VA will do.
4. Posting for, and interviewing an assistant, getting them setup / trained, and then managing them is a lot of work!   I made the mistake of interviewing too many people from too many companies for too many different types of jobs all at the same time.  It got to the point that I was spending all my free time trying to remember who I had already talked to about what and when.

Bottom line:  I need to take a step back and regroup.   I now know that I’m not ready for a full time virtual assistant (though I wish I was).  The dream of finding someone that would work for $7.00 an hour that would do everything from sifting through my mail to website design was a crazy dream.    But fret not my internet friend, I’m still on the path to an outsourced life, but I think a lot of the things I outsource will be on a project by project basis which will be farmed out to people with very specific skill sets.

This will be a bit of a flashback post because my experience with RAC (www.rentacoder.com) goes back WAY before I ever thought of starting this blog.  Well, I felt it was very important to list a few of my experiences with this company that got me on the track to real outsourcing.

First RAC Project - Convert site from ASP to PHP:
I had a site I created in college which was programmed in ASP with (ugh) an MS Access DB as the backend.  The site was growing quickly and I desperately needed someone to convert it to something more scalable.   I understood the importance of a LAMP environment so I knew PHP / MySQL were the way to go.   I posted my project, received bids and hired a programmer in Texas.   After a week or two of little work and less communication I asked RAC admin to kill the relationship with the provider and re-list my project.  They graciously agreed and my project was back on the list.  Same process as before and this time I hired a programmer from somewhere in Eastern Europe.   Long story short, I had to micro manage him quite a bit and I ended up doing 90% of the QA, but at the end of the day he got it all done at an amazingly good price.

At this point I was hooked.   I realized I’d need to put in quite a bit of my own sweat equity, but that I could get stuff programmed and created quickly and inexpensively!

Second RAC Project - Develop Customer / Project Management Portal:
I was working for a very tiny startup at this point.  No funding, bootstrapped.  We needed an application built to go along with our services business.  I mentioned my RAC experience to the CEO and told him we could get it done cheap.   He not only agreed to do it, but we even experimented to hedge our bets.  We hired 2 different programmers in 2 different countries to create the exact same product.    Each was paid in full for their independent work and we were left with 2 interpretations of what we wanted.  Both were similar and functional and we had our pick of which one we liked best.   We ended up with an application that was 99% of what we wanted, a completely separate backup application “just in case” and we got both of them completed for 1/4 of the price it would have cost to have someone in-house program just one.

Third RAC Project - Create a Social Networking Site:
Social networks?   Sure I’ll make one too.   The niche is my church and had a lot of potential.    Instead of posting a project on RAC I decided to search RAC for “Friendster clone” and similar terms (yes, I’m dating myself by the fact I was trying to clone Friendster instead of MySpace or Facebook).  I found a few projects posted on RAC for this very term and a few were completed.   I emailed a few of the developers directly (note:  many developers use the save username in many places and you can often do some sleuthing for their email address) and one of them got back to me.   He lives in Bulgaria and owned the rights to the social networking script he developed.   For a couple hundred dollars he not only gave me a copy of the site but he also did a ton of customization and new programming!    This has by far been my best experience with any outsourcing to date.  

To this day I continue to use this coder for multiple projects and, for the most part, continue to pay him through RentACoder.  I hope that some day I’ll have enough work to employ this guy full time.

In general I’m realizing with outsourcing there is the trade off between cost and the need for micromanaging / project management.   You can pay a fraction of going rates in the US but you’ll have to be extra diligent in writing out every single requirement and following up (read babysitting) like crazy.   On the other hand you can hire someone who has project management experience and tons of project history behind them, but their rates will be proportionately higher.

Here are the Outsourcing  companies I’m reviewing for my voyage into hiring a Virtual Assistant:

• Brickwork India (India)
• YMII (India)
• www.GetFriday.com (offshoot of YMII in India)
• www.CatchFriday.com (Philippines)
• www.taskseveryday.com (India)
• www.hitechexport.com (India)
• www.bpovia.com (China)

“Step 3… A is for automation” begins the 4th track in my audio book “The 4 Hour Work Week“. 

 To my utter surprise… only a few days after reading the article “My Outsourced Life” I started hearing the EXACT SAME article being read to me through my speakers!  I was shocked at the amazing coincidence.  I hadn’t even expected that this book had anything to do with outsourcing, let alone outsourcing to India!?

 My outsourcing juices are really flowing now.  Ferriss makes an excellent point in this chapter… paraphrasing, he says that the steps of going through the process of initiating a relationship with a virtual assistant is more valuable than the instant benefits of the work they perform.  The learning and experience related with the process… getting one’s feet wet is what counts.   It is here and now that I commit to at least testing a virtual assistant relationship.  I will also document the process of How I Outsourced My Life!

12/30/07 Update:  The more exposure I get to Tim Ferriss and his philosophy the more I am impressed and excited.   I’ve been devouring everything I can get my hands on as it relates to his DEAL principles.   A great summary of some of the concepts I really like can be found here: http://manisheriar.com/blog/my-life-may-have-just-been-changed

Today I did some browsing on the net for companies and information on outsourcing and came across an article called “My Outsourced Life” by A. J. Jacobs.   Wonderful article that ties hand in hand with what I learned reading “The World Is Flat.”

Even though the article was mostly focused on personal assistant, almost secretarial tasks, I started to get a few ideas about how I could leverage a virtual assistant to do a bunch of my busy work.

Two companies are mentioned in the article that I’m going to look into:  Brickwork India and YMII (Your Man In India).

Now that I’ve finished World Is Flat I need some new listenings.  I searched CALIFA and find a book on tape called “The 4 Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferriss.   Sounded interesting so I downloaded it and started listening.  I’m only about an hour into it and so far not totally impressed.  It seems that the author is a bit “over the top” about only checking email once a week.   That may sound appealing to some, but not at all interesting to me.  The tonality of the book also seems a bit “Tony Robbins” for my taste, but that could also be the style of the person reading the book.  People love the book so I’m going to stick with it.

Finished the book - really impressed - fired up for outsourcing - nuff said!