If you’re new to business, you may not have heard of the term outsourcing: to give to someone else the task you are to accomplish.
This post is written in order to help you outsource your tasks. This is a small “how-to” guide that will allow you to look for people that can accomplish task for you. Since communication is sometimes difficult and can lead to unwanted results, this guide will aim to prevent you from making various errors beginners do when they first start outsourcing.
For this article, we’ll be using elance.com
To get started, go and signup and account. You’ll have to pay a 10$ “account setup” which will be refunded after a week. This is in order for elance to make sure you are 18 years old and that you will use the system correctly.
When that is done, we can start creating “projects”. In MyELance, Buyer Activity, you’ll find Post new project.
You’re then presented a list of fields to fill. For our first project, we’ll be looking for a virtual assistant (an assistant that can do tasks for us online, such as researches, write email, find prices, etc).
(defaults are in italics)
Posting Title: Virtual Assistant (or whatever you may want to write)
Category: Admin Support
Subcategory: Virtual Assistant
Work Type: Hourly
Budget: (Depends on you, I generally go for under 500$)
Who Can Bid:All Elance providers
Response Deadline: Bidding closes in 14 days
Sealed Bids?: Sealed, proposals are hidden from other providers.
Work Location: Work can be done anywhere.
Use Escrow: Yes, I want to use Elance Escrow service (FREE) for my project.
Now, for the bigger part of the submission, the Work Description. This is where you ask for specific aspects. This is the place where it’s possible for you to fall into the “not descriptive enough” which leads to many bids which aren’t responding to your needs. This mean additionnal filtering which we want to avoid as much as possible.
To help you, use bullet points. What you want, and don’t want. Here’s a list of things you may want to consider talking about.
- Must speak/write in a specific language
- When must the person be available for you (all day, night, morning)
- How you’ll communicate your tasks (phone, email, messenger)
- What type of knowledge and education you are looking for (be as specific as possible)
- What are the task you’ll have them perform
- How much are you willing to pay them
- State that there will be a trial period (and how long you’ll be testing them (2-6 hours))
- How long you expect to work with them
- How much job do you expect to give them (in term of hours)
- What are the period there will be work involved (if you’re looking for seasonal help)
With this list filled up, you are sure to target quite specific needs. The idea here is to make sure that our listing only attracts people that are willing to do a job under condition you’ve listed.
More often than not, people will post on elance with vague description. They’ll be getting a dozen of bids (that may sound good), but most bidders will offer too high prices or will not fulfill specific needs you have because they didn’t know you where expecting it. Remember, in conversation, the explicit is always known by both parties, not the implicit.
With that in mind, I wish you good luck in outsourcing your work, may it be for ghost writing, online researching or for web designing.
7 ways to create new content
1. Do a brainstorm
Throw any ideas you have on a paper, don’t judge them, let your imagination flow. When you’ll be done, you can take the time to review each and every idea you had and decide whether or not they are worth writing about.
2. Comment about articles you’ve read
If you’ve read something that interest you on another blog or in a book, you can write a post about it making sure you reference the blog or the book (this will help you get found by people looking for reviews).
3. Do a rewrite of an article you’ve read
Take this article for example. Say you don’t agree with one of those point, you could take the point that you don’t feel is good and write it in another form or simply write something else. People are always looking for options and maybe your idea could interest some of them.
4. Explain terms or techniques or whatever needs explanation
When you’re in a field that is quite complex, more than often, terms needs to be explained. You can also add examples to your explanation in order to increase your visitor understanding. The more visual, auditory and kinestetic you can add to your presentation, the better.
5. Write tutorials
You might know how to do certain things, let say a recipe. How about writing how to make that special recipe? Many are looking for “how to” guides. It’s not a mystery why the serie of “for dummies” books have been working so well, it’s because they’ve wrote about many various subjects and did their best to turn them into simple how to tutorials you follow and learn from.
6. Answer questions
When you go on the internet, you’re generally looking for answers or just to spend some time. If you have the opportunity to know the answer to questions many people are asking themselves, answer them. They might have technical problems (problems with their computer, softwares, etc), or it might be social problems (confidence, fears, etc). Those answers might also be answers you’ve been looking for yourself and have found the answer to.
7. Write short X ways to do X
It’s amazing how much people eat those. They’re efficient because they are generally short, they go straight to the point and are easy to read. When people are going through your blog or website, they generally don’t have much time to spend on reading long and boring posts, especially if you’re not going straight to the point. This will get them leaving pretty soon even though your content may be really valuable.