How To Outsource More Successfully And Avoid Losing Money

If you think about outsourcing a small or a larger chunk of your business, you may be worried about what happens when outsourcing goes wrong. After all, I’m sure you’ve heard horror stories about large amounts of money that had been lost by people who attempted to outsource, how things don’t work out the way they planned. That’s certainly possible but by taking some simple precautions, you can make sure that you don’t turn out to be one of the hard luck stories.  You can make sure that you end up with a good result at the end of the outsourcing process.

The first thing to do is choose the worker for your outsourcing project very carefully. There’s nothing worse than choosing somebody you think might be good but they turn out to be unreliable to not deliver the project or if you pay them by the hour, they tend to take much longer than you otherwise have stated.

The good thing is, most online sites have feedback profiles and you can see how previous clients of outsourcing worker rated them. Go ahead and look at these carefully. Read the wording. If you notice that a large amount of clients have refused to rate the worker, this could be an indicator that what they’re delivering isn’t that good but the outsourcer simply didn’t want to leave that written on their profile.

Look for somebody with good feedback. Even if you’re outsourcing directly to someone you know, always ask for samples or details of previous people they’ve worked with. This will help you to make sure that you get a good worker who will complete things over a reasonable time period.

The second part of ensuring that you don’t lose money when outsourcing is to be very careful about exactly what instructions you provide to your worker. After all, if you mess this up then your outsourcing worker may well deliver a good solution but it may not be the solution you want. That certainly wouldn’t be their fault and you probably realize that it would be your fault for providing bad instructions. So make your breakdown as clear as possible.

If you try to hire somebody for long term work, you might consider shooting a quick video showing you working on a task or talking about exactly what you want back. This can pay dividends in the long run particularly if you think you may be able to reuse the video with a different worker if the first one doesn’t work out as well as you might have hoped. Always make sure you’ve given a good breakdown of what’s required.

On top of that, you can protect yourself completely by not paying the worker directly. Instead, use a third party service to handle the money. A sensible way to do this is as follows.

Find an escrow service and before you start using the worker, pay the money directly into them on the condition it will be released to the worker if their solution meets the standards that you’ve set out. This is a good deal for both of you and the worker. For you, it ensures that you will get the work you asked for otherwise, you won’t pay anything. For the worker, they know they will definitely get paid because the money has already left your account. It’s a win-win situation. There’s one good benefit in using contractor sides and many of these already have a built-in escrow service.

Having said that, how do you find a third party? Even if you use a third party, this can guarantee you good results and it’s well worth considering especially when you’ve not been using a worker for very long or they’re new to you. With all things considered, there’s no reason why you should lose money when outsourcing.

A project may occasionally go bad for reasons outside your control and you’re more likely to have hit by a delay rather than a financial loss. If you make sure you hire somebody with good feedback to produce your solution for you, if you make sure you give a clear breakdown of the requirements for your particular needs, and if you use escrow to hold the money until the work is completed, you can make sure that you don’t get a rum deal. This will give you more money to invest in your outsourcing successfully in the future.