Outsourcing

Would you like to make money while other people do all the work for you? Well, you can! While this may seem too good to be true, it's not. Outsourcing has been around since the 1980s and here's how you could benefit from it.

21. Desember 2024 by WebMoneyGuy / Free Business Advice

Fiverr is probably your best choice if you want to sell your service or do freelance work online.

This large digital marketplace is perfect for freelancers. From this site you can outsource almost any digital product or service you can think of.

Getting started is easy and cheap.

Instead of us explaining, just go to the site and explore:

Click here to get started with Fiverr for free

Read on if you have never heard about freelancing and outsourcing before, and would like to know how you can benefit from it (for example by lowering costs or make more efficient use of your time and energy). Furthermore, we'll provide you with tons of resources and services to help you outsource your work.

Freelance Services

Fiverr, as we've already have mentioned, is great for selling your freelance services.
AndCo is a must for freelancers. Use it and you'll spend more time doing what you love (thus, probably making more money too!). They will handle the paperwork, proposals, payments and whatnot. No more headaches in freelancing with this service, it's one of the best value-for-money in the freelance-space, really.
Fiver for Business is a game changer, one of the best ideas ever for freelancers who want to achieve more by working in teams. Perfect for start ups, business owners, teams of any kind and a highly recommended service. This is one amazing collaboration tool, really useful for organizing and managing projects, communication, deliveries, and budgeting. Best is, everything can be done from just one dashboard, and it makes everything just so much easier. Your day will become a different world once you start using this service, but don't take our word for it, just try them as it's free and there are paid versions as well, you'll probably want those as the small price will be paid back multiple times over in extra business.

The Definition of Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is a term for subcontracting processes.

Basically what this means is that you pay a third-party company or individual to do your work, where "work" could be anything from product design and pruduct manufacturing to assisting in research, helping with answering the phone, etc.

There are almost no limits of what you could outsource. Any part of your business could be outsourced. The key question to ask is: What benefits will I get from outsourcing this particular process of my business? It's a smart decition to outsource when the benefits outweights whatever prize (labor, capital, technology and resources) you would have to pay.

Reasons to Outsource

Here are the main reasons to why you would want to do outsourcing:

Lower costs: Bacause it can be done cheaper by others than by doing it yourself.
Save time: Because others can do it faster than you.
Compentence: Because you can't do it, or other can do it better than you. Get access to operational expertise and knowledge.
Priority: Because you want to use your time and resources differently and allocate more time to other tasks. Makes it possible to concentrate on core functions
Flexibility: Make it easy to adapt to different circumstances.
Delegration of dependancy: Make internal systems less dependent.
Geographical issues: Your customers may be in a different time zone, speak a different language etc.
Arbitrage: Bacause you can make money directly from outsourcing by outsourcing all parts of the work involved.
Laziness: Because you lack of desire of doing it yourself.
Luxury and Wealth: Because you can.

This was not intended as a complete list as there are many other reasons to outsource. Most important though is usually lowering costs and saving time. The services below may help you to achieve this.

Case Study: How Fiverr Works

There's many services out there that will help you to succeed with outsourcing.

Fiverr is the best site when it comes to selling your services and products online, and also it is withouth doubt a great choice if you are searching for freelance jobs online. Just browse the site and you will get tons of ideas in minutes.

STEP ONE: Search or Post For Work

First thing you need to do as an Elance user searching for work is to either (1) search for a service provider so that you can connect with them via phone, IM or email. OR, you may post your project and then receive proposals from qualified providers within hours

STEP TWO: Select Your Service Provider

After you have a list of providers, begin to review the proposals, and browse the providers work experience, skills, portfolio, customer feedback and ratings. Then decide which of them you're going to choose.

STEP THREE: Manage the Work

You can manage work through Elance by collaborating through private message board and manageing the work by setting milestones for your providers.

STEP FOUR: Pay the Provider

Once the work has been finished it's time to pay the privider, but don't do so unless you are satisfied with the work. Elance will handle the payment for you.

Elance is one of the biggest services for outsourcing on the web today, but there's many other great services you could use (See next paragraph).

Outsourcing & Freelance Tools And Services

Below is the most important tools and services to help you outsource your work.

Services to explore:

Full-time employees

Virtual Assistants

Writing Services

Voice-overs

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Outsourcing and Ethics

Outsourcing helps you drive cost down and become more profitable. It's almost too good to be true, but it's not. When outsourcing works as it should, the only possible drawback would be the ethic concerns. When people from the western world outsource work to India and China and some other asian countries they only pay a fraction of the costs compared to what they would have to pay to outsource the same work in their own country. Because of that they're able to reap huge profits from this type of outsourcing, while the workers who actually produce the products and services does not make a lot of money from our point of view.

However, the value of one U.S. dollar in the United States is not the same as one U.S. dollar in China, just as the value of one euro in Europe is not identical as the value of one euro in India. When done properly, everyone wins in outsourcing. As the outsourcer you simply exploit currency differences to make a profit. At the same time you create work and a source of income for others, while lowering cost for your customers. Everyone wins.

Ethical outsourcing can be easily summed up by the ethic of reciprocity (or "The Golden Rule"). This fundamental moral principle states that you should "treat others as you would like to be treated."

Outsourcing Your Life

A lot can be said about "outsourcing your life". Bussy people in the western world use virtual assistants, often from India or China, to help them with daily tasks like finding phone numbers, sending greeting cards, help them remember stuff, order products, write articles, research, travel plannner, etc.

If you're interested in how to outsource your life, we'd recommend you read The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferrisss. It's far from a perfect book, but it'll give you a lot of inspiration on how to use virtual assistants and how to outsource your life.

Finding the Right People For the Job

To learn the art of outsourcing takes time and practice. Use the services mentioned on this page, or simply find your workers through internet forums. However, outsourcing is not that difficult to handle. Once you've found an individual or a company to handle whatever you choose to outsource, make sure you treat them well and never let them go. The most difficult part in outsourcing is finding someone to handle the work you give them that delivers exactly what you want and that lives up to your expectations. Some eastern people and companies are really worth their weight in gold, and it's your job to find them.

If I could recommend just one book on the art of outsourcing, it would be The World Is Flat by the New York Times "Foreign Affairs" columist Thomas L. Friedman. I should probably warn you though: The book is a brick, and it's not one that you take all in in one sitting.

Everyone that have the posibillity to exploit global pricing can benefit from outsourcing. Most likely, that includes YOU.

Worldsourcing

While outsourcing aims to lower costs for the outsourcer, worldsourcing (still just mere buzzword) aim to add value for the customer. I didn't plan to write a lot about worldsourcing, but here's a short video that'll introduce you to the concept: CNN video about Worldsourcing.