Advantages and Disadvantages of
Outsourcing on Top Freelance Sites

It's in the best interest of any business to know the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing on the top freelance sites if the company's goal is to reduce costs and hire skilled freelancers. As an example, internet marketing for just one website may include a variety of jobs, from email marketing to web site development. Handing over your business to a total stranger, though, can come with some risks. It may free up your time to do more and get more done, but you need to start slowly and develop a relationship which you can trust before you hand over the keys to your own kingdom.

The Advantages of Outsourcing to a Freelance Company

Outsourcing on the top freelance sites works because of the difference in wages that you just pay someone else versus the worth of your time to do the exact same task. If you've figured out that it is possible to make $60 to $120 an hour marketing online, and the task you're trying to finish on a daily basis, like answering customer emails, could be outsourced for $8/hr, you stand to profit hugely from that arrangement. In general, however, you get what you pay for, and you can expect that if you want English proficiency to be an integral part of the job requirement, that the wage will increase.

It's not only a question of economics, nevertheless; it's also the way it is best utilized and a question of your time. You truly don't want to spend your time focusing on the nitty-gritty, dreary, and persistent aspect of your websites when those don't contribute to the bottom line. You would like your time going towards creating income with all the time which you have available.

The Disadvantages of Outsourcing to a Freelance Company

One of the greatest threats to outsourcing is that the job doesn't get done to your satisfaction. Prior to outsourcing, you should review job boards on the top freelance sites, or get customer reviews to get an idea of the quality of work before hiring them full or part-time. You need to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing to each worker based on their skill set and your projects need. Keep tight control of what you allow others to obtain and have a back door key that may lock your operation up if the need arise.

Research and Find Freelancers Online

As a way to estimate the level of trustworthiness of your planned freelancers, it's better to start with an introductory period. There is bound to be piles of work available for the correct individual, but when you initially start out, flooding them with work and deadlines can cause major havoc, especially if you haven't confirmed that they can complete the job. If this introductory period does not work out, then have a backup worker in place. At some point, you will discover someone harmonious who can also do the task for with the price you desire. It simply may take a little time to locate that individual.

To start, determine what you need to outsource and then write down the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing for each task. You can outsource website design as well as maintenance. You can outsource content creation or you may simply need someone to answer e-mails or phone calls. Whatever your needs, make a list of all tasks that need to be completed and identify how you'll gauge the time that's spent on each project. Also determine how much you're prepared to budget for the job. Once you establish the basic job functions and the pay then you can start to recruit qualified candidates.

Depending on your requirements, you can post the job to a variety of job boards and on the top freelance sites online. If you're searching for virtual assistants, designers, or developers then sites such as freelancer.com and upwork.com have plenty of qualified candidates. Each site enables you to review the online profiles of professional who offer their services and it allow you to post a job.

Contact Them with Job Details

Once you understand the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing then you can find freelances online using the top freelance sites. Send private job requests to people who you think are qualified and see if they are interested in your project. Let them know that if the job is done well, then it might lead to more work. For a writer, provide writer guidelines. For a designer, provide clear instructions and samples of designs that you like. For a programmer, provide a requirements document that includes the full scope of work. Continue to send them more work to see how they do for a few months. If they do well, then hire them as independent contractors.

There are many online websites that deal with outsourcing and offshore outsourcing. People from all around the world attempt to bid on jobs that are posted within these websites and can put a profile up, so you aren't just restricted to individuals in your own nation. Fees and rules often differ between sites, so read the terms of use policy and jot down the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing on each site. For each job site, determine if you want to join and use their services or if you want to reach out to freelancers by targeting folks who actually don't have a profile, but reveal some skill online in other areas.

The Top Freelance Sites

The most popular outsourcing companies are Freelancer.com, Upwork.com and Fiverr.com. They all offer different kinds of freelancers but they are by far the top freelance sites on the internet. If you need someone who does programming, for instance, you're able to get him/her at Freelancer.com. Programmers will be offered by other sites too, however, they may not be as highly specialized. You can locate them by Googling “virtual assistants.” Many virtual assistants do internet marketing, data entry, editing and plenty more.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Outsourcing
  Top Freelance Sites Have Different Fees

Knowing the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing will be extremely important when reviewing the fees associated with the outsourcing companies. In general, it's free for most people who are looking for work to look for jobs. In some cases, even posting a job online is free too. However, even the top freelance sites offer memberships at different levels that let you bid on different jobs. The sites take their fees off of each job as a percentage of the total cost of the job. Your bid may or may not include the fees to the site for their commission, and you need to be sure when you set a bid range that you take that into account. Even if you bid a specific price, it doesn't mean you'll get it. Freelancers will bid on how much it will take to complete your job, and then you can choose to award someone the job on the basis of his/her bid from all of the respondents. It's not always the best thing to hire the cheapest bidder. There are other factors involved that should be considered as well.

Find Freelancers Online and Review Their Ratings

Websites will post comments on freelancers to provide you with some indication on whether or not they will perform. Be sure to check out what other people have to say about them before awarding a bid. You might find that someone with an extremely low bid has terrible ratings as well. You want to check to see how long they've been on this board and whether they are a new profile or not. Freelancers with a longer and better track record will work better than those with questionable things in their ratings.

Website Outsourcing Examples

As a serious Internet marketer and Business, you most likely have more than one site, one social networking profile, and one project going on at any given time. Online, you can set up websites very quickly, but managing them can quickly become unwieldy. You don't want to spend too much of your time trying to get backlinks, writing and posting blog posts, optimizing content for SEO, or keeping track of online problems and outages. In addition, you might not want to take the time to learn HTML and a host of other Web languages, and someone else may already have taken the time to learn all of that. All you would have to do is to hire them to manage the sites for you.

Advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing website development

Website Development Outsourcing Benefits

• Hiring is simplified when it comes to finding individuals with different skill sets such as writing, designing, maintaining and marketing your website.
• You only pay for the hours someone works on your project rather than full-time.
• The cost of hiring online is 25% lower than paying employee fees for writers and designers.
• Eliminated retainers and commission. You can pay a set fee for a set period of time.

Web Development Outsourcing Disadvantages

• The Language Barrier – If you are outsourcing offshore then they may not understand your directions or write well in English.
• Freelancers typically work on multiple projects at the same time so they may have time constraints.
• Outsourced websites may be cheaper, but that means they may be of a lower quality.
• Outsourcing companies could claim copyright and sell your product elsewhere without you knowing it.
• You’ll have less control over your website security and sensitive company information.
• Business becomes impersonal – you may never meet your freelancer face-to-face.
• Full time staff may fear being laid off which decreases employee morale.

Hire Skilled Freelancers for Link Building

One of the top techniques for getting a higher Page Rank (PR) on Google that puts you higher on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) is to just get a lot of non reciprocal incoming links going to your site. You can do this by paying sites to post your links, adding comments to popular blogs and news areas, and listing yourself in directories. All that takes time, and it's a job that is best left to someone who is getting paid far less than you are. Outsource link building during the times when things are slow.

Advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing link building

Link Building Outsourcing Benefits

• Increase brand awareness at a faster rate.
• If the outsourcing company has existing link building software then you don't have to purchase any.

Link Building Outsourcing Disadvantages

• The outsourcing company can use blackhat link building tactics that could get your website penalized.

Hire Skilled Freelancers for Website Development

This is one area where it really pays to get help. If you don't know how to set up a blog, add a membership area, or just plain update an HTML page, you can't even get started with Internet marketing! While you're learning some of those skills, you're wasting valuable time! Outsource the website development to someone else. Just find a site that you like and then list the features that you want. Give them an idea of your color scheme or choose one from the templates that they offer you to view. Once the site is done, make sure everything is in your name, from the domain name to the administrative contacts. In fact, if you don't want to go through the development phase, just look up Internet marketing forums to find people who are offering websites for sale that are already in working order! It saves tons of time, and you can have them customized quite easily.

Hire Skilled Freelancers for Content Creation

Content creation outsourcing isn't just useful for maintaining fresh content on your site. It has many applications, including creating unique eBooks or videos to market as your own products. Too many people make the mistake of trying to save money by creating their own content online. It comes off as amateurish and can actually turn people off instead of exciting them about your website. It can also take you much more time to churn out a 100-page eBook than it would take an experienced ghostwriter.

Advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing content creation

• Content Creation Outsourcing Benefits
  • Save Money On Employee Benefits, Seasonal work, And Specific Projects.
  • Save Time With Fast Turnaround And Multitasking.
  • Take Advantage Of Others’ Expertise.
  • Strengthen Your Content Marketing Strategy by posting more often.
• Content Creation Outsourcing Disadvantages
  • It can take some time to find the best writers for your needs.
  • There may be a language barrier.
  • You need to constantly verify that the content is unique.

Hire Skilled Freelancers for Blog Posts

Blogs are expected to be updated frequently, but often, Internet marketers just don't have the time. Yet, a blog is an essential link between high-traffic areas that don't allow you to post commercial links and the links on your blog that go directly to your products, services, and other websites. It's important to keep those blog posts coming and to keep your audience engaged. You can set up batches of blog posts in groups of 30 or 40 to farm out to freelance writers that you hire online through outsourcing boards. Get them done the month ahead of time, and you’ll know that you’ll have something new and interesting to add to the site on a daily basis. Get some SEO done on them, and your site will be search-engine friendly too.

Hire Skilled Freelancers for E-Newsletters

Many websites offer newsletters. They can be a way to entice people to sign up and to register to your site. It can be a way to keep everyone who visits updated with the news of the industry that your business is in and what's happening for your business. They can include helpful tips, discount coupons, and promotional features for your customers.

Hire Skilled Freelancers for E-Books and Reports

Include freebie offers that send out reports to people who are looking for information on various topics that are related to your marketing niche. You can offer these freebie offers to them in exchange for their signing up to your email list. Thus, the reports serve to get people into the mouth of your sales funnel.

EBooks, on the other hand, can be marketed in a value package or by themselves. They are an info product that is instantly delivered; many people will purchase an eBook that's of interest to them. They can help bring in more income and provide your customers with more in-depth information than a simple report can provide. Whereas the reports might be free, your eBooks are going to be for sale or be included in a value package as a free bonus that includes multiple types of content for sale.

Hire Skilled Freelancers to Expand Your Video Content Creation

Did you consider putting up a YouTube video, but know nothing about video production? What about getting together a CD or a print book? The more formats you offer online, the wider the audience you will reach with your informational products. In many cases, you will hire people to create content to generate “buzz” for your site and product offerings. In other cases, you are going to have content generated to create income. Once you buy the rights to some piece of content, it's yours forever, and you can do with it as you please unless the rights you bought were limited. Here's a few ways in which you can outsource content.

Advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing video content creation

• Video Content Creation Outsourcing Benefits
  • Save Money On Equipment costs
  • Save time by outsourcing video film making, editing, script writing and options such as motion graphics
• Content Creation Outsourcing Disadvantages
  • Project delays
  • Communication problems – Not delivering based on requirements
  • Video editing, changes or updates to your video may not be possible within the original budget

Hire Skilled Freelancers to Sponsor a YouTube Channel

Browse through YouTube to see channels that might match your business niche. You can sponsor any channel and offer them a monthly payment for mentioning your site in their videos and for posting links back to your site. Now, you don't even have to know how to put together a video. You just have to find someone who already does that and pay them to promote your site.

Hire Skilled Freelancers to Publish Training and Courses

You can even hire people to help you set up online workshops and courses in video format or audio format, while you keep the publishing rights. That way, you can market the material as your own and make money off of it too.

Hire Skilled Freelancers to Write Your Sales Copy

Successful Internet marketing starts with sales copy. You can get people to create effective sales pages, sales promotions, email ads, and back-end offers. There is software that can help you do that as well, which is a form of outsourcing, but you do it with technology and not with people. You can set up your sales copy way ahead of time and get it lined up to roll out long before it's time to do so.

Hire Skilled Freelancers to Create Custom Images

Included in newsletters, eBooks, sales pages, and websites are spaces for images. You can outsource graphic design via fiverr.com and get custom-made logos, banners, buttons, and even photography for your site. Images play an integral role in triggering the emotions of a viewer; putting up an image can help you look more professional and help you sell your products and services better too.

Advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing graphic design

• Graphic Design Outsourcing Benefits
  • Save money one graphic design software
  • Instant access to create talent with a fresh perspective
  • You can focus on other areas of your business
  • Graphic designers like to use their work in portfolios which can mean more exposure for your business and bran
• Graphic Design Outsourcing Disadvantages
  • Project delays since graphic designers tend to work on multiple projects
  • Communication problems – Not delivering based on requirements
  • No personal relationship since you may never meet face to face

Hire Skilled Freelancers to Create Email Marketing Campaigns

You are going to develop several email campaigns for each website. They will include tiered lists of people who belong to different demographics, typically separated into income levels. You are going to want to offer these people an opportunity to purchase your products and services at regular intervals by sending out an email to them.

Incorporate Automated Processes First

Before you go out and hire someone to manually send out all of these emails, take a look at a better way. You can hire a service like AWeber.com that will automate your email campaigns in a way that makes it cost-effective. It will feel like you've hired a team of Internet marketing assistants and not like you’ve just signed up for an email auto responding service. For a very low fee, you can start to automate all of your contact lists and email campaigns. After that's all done, you can set up guidelines of items you want brought to your attention and those that can keep on running indefinitely. At that point, you can hire a virtual assistant to keep track of things going on in your email campaigns and to add and remove products and email addresses as you request.

Find Freelancers Online for Virtual Assistants and Email Management

Virtual assistants are very good with dealing with emails and phone calls. They excel at these simple tasks and can really open up your day for more important things. You can get a virtual assistant to screen calls, look up emails from customers online, and add them to auto-responder lists when necessary. You can set up business processes that only bring the most important problems to your attention, while the rest of the day-to-day correspondence and email campaigns are handled by your virtual assistant.

You can have them handle your own incoming email too as you start to network with many people online. You can set up different email addresses, have them go in and read each email every day, and trash the spam email or report it. They should learn how to deal with customers and how to relay information to them as a customer service representative for the basic questions and answers that people may have.

Once they go through your email, you can have them forward the most urgent pieces to another email address so that you won't be overloaded with all kinds of issues that keep you from performing at your peak. You can then call your assistant every day at noon or whenever you want and go over the tasks, issues, and escalated problems that might remain undone or that need your immediate attention. This is one way to manage the time you spend on your email, both with private and with business email campaigns.

Find Freelancers Online to Outsource Social Networking Tasks

Every online business should have several social networking profiles up to gain more exposure. Unfortunately, it takes time to post social networking profiles and then to target users to either befriend or follow. When you have a new release of a product or service, you will also want to notify all of your social networking friends. You will post status updates, network with other people online, and read emails on each of these sites to see who's in your network and what you can do for them, and vice-versa. Sounds exhausting, doesn't it? Well, it's actually very fun, but as a focused business owner, it can take too much time out of your day that can be used to generate income somewhere else. That's why you have several choices to outsource this. One, you can get automation software that does much of the posting, befriending, and following, but someone still has to check in once in a while to see how that's working out. Two, you hire a personal assistant to track the results of your automated campaign and also to tweak it. If they can't figure out how to make it work to create more interest in your profiles, your only other option, and it's a good one, is to hire a social media guru or company and outsource that function too.

Software Tools To Automate Your Processes

For automating Twitter, there are a ton of products that can do the job, including Buffer and Hootesuite.com. Some make you pay monthly installments, while others have you pay once and download to use. You have to set up and schedule posts; this way, you can have a list of promotions and just get someone else to add them in, or you can choose to do them yourself. Then, the problem arises of how you can also post them to other social networking sites, such as Facebook, at the same time? You'll have to get involved with other tools that are free, like Ping.fm, to start posting things to all of your social network sites at once.

Find Freelancers Online to do Social Posting

Instead of scheduling tweets and Facebook updates, you can have that be part of the tasks that you assign to your personal assistant. Not only will he/she have great fun at his/her job, but you'll be gaining valuable exposure for your products and services. You do need to have a list of links that you want to promote, and he/she should use a URL shortener so that the assistant can track the efficiency of his or her work and can modify it. Once he/she gets the hang of setting up profiles, managing social network accounts, and posting status updates, you will be able to put your attention elsewhere, but can still track the effectiveness of this activity through the URL shortener statistics.

Find Freelancers Online who are Social Media Experts

It's a lot easier to find qualified social media experts than you think. There are companies out there that can set up profiles, write articles, generate buzz, and track the effectiveness of your social media campaigns. They probably even do SEO too. Just be sure to go with someone who has proven results. Take a look at how many followers they've managed to generate on Twitter. See how many friends they have on Facebook. Ask them what types of techniques they plan on using and what results you can expect.

Check Out Their Online Credentials

Check out their online credentials long before you hire them. What are other people saying about them? Do they have more than 200 friends on Facebook? Any serious marketer should have at least 2,000 followers on Twitter, and that is a very conservative number. The company should employ a good plan to help you get exposure online, including the types of tools they plan on using, whether you'll need to license them later on, and how many followers they expect you to have in a given month.

Use Targeted Campaigns

It's not all about the numbers, but also about the quality of the people befriending or following you. If your niche is all about motorcycles, do you want people on your list who can't stand them or have nothing to do with motorcycles? Probably not. It's a waste of time just to pick up followers or friends who aren't going to be interested in buying your products if that's why you’re on these sites in the first place. Any social media guru will have techniques to grab targeted followers as the majority of your audience.

Find Freelancers Online to Monetize Your Accounts

There's no reason why you can't find ways to make income with your social networking sites. The social media gurus have done it, and they should be able to provide information and products that will do the same for you. You may have to buy things from them to promote and may have to join memberships, but this should pay you back when you create a whole new income stream from these sites, and you're not even posting to them yourself. Once you have a couple thousand followers on Twitter, you should start seeing streams of traffic coming back through each tweet you send out. It should be easier to update people and to promote your products, and much of that you won't have to do yourself if you just hire the right social media expert to get you started.

Outsource Analytics

Everything you do online should be easily traced and reported. When you run several affiliate campaigns, you will generate reports on each one as to what products are doing best and why. You can have that information compiled into reports that tell you exactly what’s going on with your sites. What you want to do as the manager of all of these online enterprises is to have all of the necessary analytics of all of your online actions so you can tweak the system here and there to create better exposure and gain more profits. You can hire experts to do that or have your personal assistant gather that information for you, and you can try and review it. Either way, it's best to outsource some part of this function of Internet marketing.

Find Freelancers Online to Setup Analytics

You should be tracking traffic, conversions, and marketing efficiency and having monthly reports to look at that give you a bird's eye view of your online performance. Some of these statistics show up in different places, such as in the Control Panel of your website, with each one holding their own unique statistics. Affiliate program performance is going to be available within the network that is offering those links. If you are a member of multiple affiliate networks, those stats will be all over the Web too. Have a way to centralize all of your information so that when it comes time to look at it, it will make sense, and you will know what's working and what isn't.

Start Testing the Top Freelance Sites

Hire companies to analyze your Web performance and to give you advice on how to make it more profitable. Hire companies that know how to implement split testing in your advertising so that they can provide feedback on what types of advertising are working on your site and what types aren't. Keep track of the links that have gone out in your email campaigns, your newsletter, your social networking activities, and your eBooks. Which ones are generating income? Which are generating views or click-throughs? Track that information, get rid of under performing products and ads, and replace them with something new. Repeat promotions that were really successful, unless they were limited time offers or limited quantity offers.

Know When To Delegate and Don't Be Afraid to Partner with Outsourcing Companies

Overall, don't be afraid to delegate tasks that may prove to overbearing and time consuming. After reviewing the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing you should realize that cost of outsourcing a particular function can quickly pay you back in additional time to generate marketing campaigns that directly add to your income revenue streams. By taking the time to network with people who have talents other than your own, you learn at a much quicker pace, and you get up to speed faster. You don't just build one website; when you outsource, you start to build a business empire. Just be sure to keep all of your taxes and file requirements up-to-date and in order.