When you're looking to outsource anything online, whether as simple as collecting data for an administrative task, or as complex as having sales copy written, it's important to structure this in a manner than provides you with value for money.
One of the largest challenges is to decide what kind of pay regime is most appropriate? You want to be thinking about the way which is financially most appropriate for you.
You can often think about this as being based around the size of the job. I like to classify these as either small jobs or large jobs. I might be quite happy to group several small jobs together. However, for a large job, I might want to try and split that into several smaller jobs in order to distribute the work and get the task completed faster.
There is then the option of paying for the job upon completion, or instead paying on an hourly rate based on the amount of time that your worker spends on the job. Personally, I prefer to pay by the job, since I don’t usually have enough work to keep someone in continual employment. However, you may find that you can get better rates paying longer term and based on the hours worked.
Three Examples Of Outsourcing Types
Consider three examples. You may have a very small one off job, you may have a much larger job potentially going on for several weeks or you may just want to take somebody on to work continually for you through a whole series of jobs. What is the best way to go about this? Which one is appropriate for you?
If a job is fairly small then this could be a good way to get started with outsourcing. It's a fairly low risk strategy. The most you can lose is this low amount of money which you’ve decided to invest in this project. It also means this is going to be manageable project for you. You only need to watch somebody for a period of hours or possibly days in order to get your results back. This may not be physically watching, it's more likely to be to get occasional reports via email, Instant Messenger or through a contractor site. Small jobs can be a great way of getting started in outsourcing for a very low risk.
Often you may have a very large job you need completed. This has potential problems of its own. You need the work completed but how do you decide how long this will take? If the time squarely being quoted and cost being quoted are both realistic, you need to insist on regular reports back from your worker at least once a day to find out how well they're getting on with this large job.
If it's very important the same person completes all the work then a large job can be appropriate but there may be a third alternative. This alternative is to pay them by the hour. If you're confident that the worker is going to be efficient, then hourly pay can be better than a set price for larger job.
If however, there's a danger of overrunning then hourly pay may not be appropriate as your project could end up costing substantially more than you planned. That's one of the big problems with pay by hour. You never know exactly how much you'll be billed at the end. If you have some on-going work that is not won the project, for instance secretarial work then maybe pay by the hour is appropriate. You can just use this work as and when you need.
You should also consider using a larger number of workers and spreading the work between them. This gives you a level of fall-back in the business in case something goes wrong with your sole worker.
Overall Decisions
Overall, you need to make a careful decision about how you should pay your worker, what kind of jobs you should outsource. Small jobs can be a good way of getting started in outsourcing and as you move to larger jobs, you may consider paying by the hour in order to get the best out of your worker. If you can monitor their screen and see that they are working, this can be effective. You may also decide just for a large job done is several smaller ones when it's appropriate in order to spread the load and get back the results in the end. These are all difficult decisions which need to be taken carefully because both financial and quality implications of the overall outsourcing.
Personally, I almost always use the small job method for my outsourcing. Where I find a worker who I like and get on with, I'm likely to encourage them to apply for future small jobs as and when I have the work and as and when they're needed. But, if you're growing your business, or have long-term projects, one of the other ousourcing payments may be more appropriate.
Over To You…
What is your preferred method of payment for outsourcing the work that you need to support your Internet Marketing business? Is it to split work into small jobs, priced individually? Is it to pay for larger jobs, again priced individually? Or, do you just prefer to hire a single worker and pay by the hour?
Just use the Comment box below to leave your thoughts.