Outsourcing Work You Consider Trade Secrets?

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  • woj
    <&(©¿©)&>
    • Jul 2002
    • 47880

    #51
    50........
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    Comment

    • Hustlin Entertainment
      So Fucking Banned
      • May 2002
      • 2326

      #52
      Originally posted by WiredGuy
      I'm looking for opinions from people who have outsourced in the past. A lot of the repetitive work that I've considered outsourcing I'd consider a trade secret (keyword filtering, keyword list generation). Anyways, from the internal scripts I have here onsite, we generate hundreds of thousands of keyword suggestions and the repetitive portion of the work involves manually going through the keywords and determining if they are relevant to the niche / market being targetted. Once this list is filtered, I consider the final list a very valuable resource or trade secret.

      In the past I have hired students to do this, but for some smaller niches, the market size is not worth the cost of hiring locally but it is for outsourced operations. I'm wondering what are your thoughts on outsourcing a resource that you consider valuable should it fall into the hands of competitors? Also bear in mind the persons working on this would have to be very proficient in English.

      Thanks everyone.
      WG
      WG have you ever considered cutting pieces of the project,and splitting them among different outsourcing companies and have someone you trust compile it....If it's something like a programming project this can be done easily..

      Comment

      • WiredGuy
        Pounding Googlebot
        • Aug 2002
        • 34515

        #53
        Originally posted by NetRodent
        You'd be asking for trouble outsourcing this sort of work, especially if its through an agency. Of course, if its a small niche, it might be worth the risk.

        You can mitigate some of the risk by dividing the keyword list for a niche over several workers. You're also less likely to get screwed if you hire low end data entry types and mislead them somewhat about the nature of the work.

        For example, don't tell them you want them to clean a list, rather you want it to be categorized. Tell them you're working on a thesaurus project.

        Now those are good examples. The categorizing one I don't like so much because I think that would take more time than just approving/denying. If you don't mind me asking, did you guys have an inhouse person manage your list's QA or was it up to each PPC / campaign manager to deal with it?
        WG
        I play with Google.

        Comment

        • WiredGuy
          Pounding Googlebot
          • Aug 2002
          • 34515

          #54
          Originally posted by slapass
          2 weeks from now all of the outsourcers on here will be selling key word lists. That is how they work. So no need to give them the keys to making a good one.
          Do you do your keyword filtering yourself slapass?
          WG
          I play with Google.

          Comment

          • WiredGuy
            Pounding Googlebot
            • Aug 2002
            • 34515

            #55
            Originally posted by BoNgHiTtA
            I dont really like you, and most the shit you have said about anything remotely SEO is BS in my opinion, but heres a tip.

            Spread the work around. Then no one knows too much.
            1) Perhaps that's intentional given that I don't want more competition.
            2) It would need to be spread amongst multiple outsourcing firms if this route is actually used, otherwise its rather simple to just merge the portions together from different staffers.
            WG
            I play with Google.

            Comment

            • WiredGuy
              Pounding Googlebot
              • Aug 2002
              • 34515

              #56
              Originally posted by Hustlin Entertainment
              WG have you ever considered cutting pieces of the project,and splitting them among different outsourcing companies and have someone you trust compile it....If it's something like a programming project this can be done easily..
              It's a possibility I'm considering.
              WG
              I play with Google.

              Comment

              • Slacker
                Confirmed User
                • Feb 2003
                • 331

                #57
                Originally posted by jayeff
                Isn't it a paradox that you consider the list too valuable to risk it being exposed, but not valuable enough to pay someone you can trust to prepare it? Sometimes you have to think beyond saving a few dollars just because superficially the nature of the work is such that you could...

                In fact in this case, if you weren't so focused on dollars per hour, you might get someone better educated who could get through the list faster and more accurately.
                Hit the nail on the head...I like the way jayeff thinks.

                But what do I know.

                Comment

                • Ninja Scripts
                  Confirmed User
                  • Jul 2005
                  • 1032

                  #58
                  Been robbed, will never do it again. NDA won't help shit when they are on another continent.

                  Comment

                  • WiredGuy
                    Pounding Googlebot
                    • Aug 2002
                    • 34515

                    #59
                    Originally posted by Ninja Scripts
                    Been robbed, will never do it again. NDA won't help shit when they are on another continent.
                    Was this for something SEO related or something else you had a bad experience with?
                    WG
                    I play with Google.

                    Comment

                    • cherrylula
                      lol
                      • Jan 2002
                      • 15969

                      #60
                      Originally posted by Raven
                      Some of our staff is outsourced from all over the world...but not SEO..WG...not SEO.
                      Seriously. Already as it is this thread has some nice SEO knowledge in it.

                      Comment

                      • teleblade69
                        Confirmed User
                        • Nov 2003
                        • 1063

                        #61
                        SEO is all about knowledge and reading and testing some shit out ;)

                        but there is some good SEO info in this thread

                        Comment

                        • DarkJedi
                          No Refunds Issued.
                          • Feb 2001
                          • 28301

                          #62
                          WG is a black hat

                          Comment

                          • Ninja Scripts
                            Confirmed User
                            • Jul 2005
                            • 1032

                            #63
                            Originally posted by WiredGuy
                            Was this for something SEO related or something else you had a bad experience with?
                            WG
                            Wasn't SEO, was a traffic source we were working with.

                            Comment

                            • cherrylula
                              lol
                              • Jan 2002
                              • 15969

                              #64
                              but hey maybe you should just ask someone here to do the work, since you already explained it all and stuff.

                              Comment

                              • Linguist
                                Confirmed User
                                • Apr 2004
                                • 1706

                                #65
                                Have you considered hiring a first/second year english/history student for a few hours a week?
                                They'd present minimum competition and would be glad to work a few hours a week for 10 bucks an hour - pizza money goes long way when one's a student.. you're in a prime location for that too.

                                I'd never use an outsourcing company for this though, too risky.
                                315-310

                                Comment

                                • Brujah
                                  Beer Money Baron
                                  • Jan 2001
                                  • 22157

                                  #66
                                  Originally posted by WiredGuy
                                  In the past I have hired students to do this, but for some smaller niches, the market size is not worth the cost of hiring locally but it is for outsourced operations.
                                  WG
                                  If it's that valuable, you just answered your own question. That means it IS WORTH THE COST.

                                  Comment

                                  • Brujah
                                    Beer Money Baron
                                    • Jan 2001
                                    • 22157

                                    #67
                                    Originally posted by jayeff
                                    Isn't it a paradox that you consider the list too valuable to risk it being exposed, but not valuable enough to pay someone you can trust to prepare it? Sometimes you have to think beyond saving a few dollars just because superficially the nature of the work is such that you could...

                                    In fact in this case, if you weren't so focused on dollars per hour, you might get someone better educated who could get through the list faster and more accurately.
                                    Oops, same thought process I had.

                                    Comment

                                    • WiredGuy
                                      Pounding Googlebot
                                      • Aug 2002
                                      • 34515

                                      #68
                                      Originally posted by DarkJedi
                                      WG is a black hat
                                      I wear many hats.
                                      WG
                                      I play with Google.

                                      Comment

                                      • Rui
                                        web
                                        • Dec 2001
                                        • 9533

                                        #69
                                        Originally posted by WiredGuy
                                        1) Perhaps that's intentional given that I don't want more competition.
                                        2) It would need to be spread amongst multiple outsourcing firms if this route is actually used, otherwise its rather simple to just merge the portions together from different staffers.
                                        WG
                                        so basicly you admit what you say here is justo t alieanate the other people and in the same time expect truthfull advices...talk about double standarts

                                        Comment

                                        • WiredGuy
                                          Pounding Googlebot
                                          • Aug 2002
                                          • 34515

                                          #70
                                          Originally posted by Rui
                                          so basicly you admit what you say here is justo t alieanate the other people and in the same time expect truthfull advices...talk about double standarts
                                          I'm not sure what bong is referring to exactly, but I meant it in a humouristic way, such as the quote in my signature.
                                          WG
                                          I play with Google.

                                          Comment

                                          • NetRodent
                                            Confirmed User
                                            • Jan 2002
                                            • 3985

                                            #71
                                            Originally posted by WiredGuy
                                            Now those are good examples. The categorizing one I don't like so much because I think that would take more time than just approving/denying. If you don't mind me asking, did you guys have an inhouse person manage your list's QA or was it up to each PPC / campaign manager to deal with it?
                                            WG
                                            Initially we didn't really care. The only filtering we did was to remove obviously child-related words from the list. When we started none of the ppc's checked for relevancy, which was how we ended up with such gems as "Gaza Strip" (strip club related) and "Legal Briefs" (underwear related). The philosophy of the time was that irrelevant listings wouldn't be cost effective and would fall out on their own accord. Most of the PPCs would take and list anything we gave them. Overture would do a cursory review but I think the size of our keyword lists intimdated the editors. I don't know for a fact but I'm pretty sure Overture's authorized adult keyword list was in response to some of our shenanegans.

                                            Eventually the ppcs figured out that relevancy couldn't be achieved by bid alone, and started setting various guidelines. Overture in particularly got quite harsh with us and if they found more than a few inappropriate words would just reject the whole submission. It was tedious and time consuming but cleaning the keyword lists really wasn't that bad. We had various people in our company do it, sometimes even having all office categorization parties. Usually it fell to the new person to do this since nobody else wanted to do it, and we figured it was a good way to increase their vocabulary. Getting to explain the word 'bukkake' was always a treat.

                                            These days we're a bit more cooperative with the search engines so the relevancy checking is sort of shared between our campaign managers and the search engine's people. We also don't harvest keywords in the same way we once did so there isn't too much garbage in our lists.
                                            "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
                                            --H.L. Mencken

                                            Comment

                                            • NetRodent
                                              Confirmed User
                                              • Jan 2002
                                              • 3985

                                              #72
                                              Since I got a bit nostalgic writing that last post, I decided to poke around in some of my old files. I guess there won't be much harm in releasing this "trade secret" now.

                                              adult
                                              porn
                                              porno
                                              sex
                                              smut
                                              breasts
                                              tits
                                              bobs
                                              ass
                                              arse
                                              hahahaha
                                              pussy
                                              cock
                                              dick
                                              fuck
                                              suck
                                              cum
                                              sperm
                                              semen

                                              The was the original keyword list that we thought up, to prime our GoTo and Altavista keyword harvesters. After we finished running these words through AV/GoTo and feeding the results back into AV/GoTo it turned into a list of about 100k phrases of which about 25k were adult related and made semi-sense. I hope nobody copies our technique.
                                              Last edited by NetRodent; 08-30-2005, 02:34 PM.
                                              "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
                                              --H.L. Mencken

                                              Comment

                                              • Gottis
                                                Confirmed User
                                                • May 2004
                                                • 1746

                                                #73
                                                I love the smell of SE spam in the morning
                                                Hit me up for ABC link trades - icq 7583011

                                                Comment

                                                • Tam
                                                  Rude Bitch
                                                  • Jan 2001
                                                  • 8534

                                                  #74
                                                  There are those of us who run outsourcing companies that value the clients far more than the clients trade secrets. It would NOT be in the best interest of the outsourcing company to take the things they are doing for one client and use it for another client, simply because things like this always get back and when they do, you have lost not only one but TWO clients. Losing long term business isn't near worth it to me in my opinion. To anyone that would abuse this, they aren't serious about what they do and shouldn't be in business anyway, much less in a matter such as this.

                                                  This is how I think anything should be though, it should just be a given that there is a measure of confidentiality, whether it is for outsourcing companies, designers, mainstream, porn or any other business, it should be held at a standard that shows respect for BOTH parties involved.
                                                  Get in Touch on Telegram if you need a hardworker - (since 1999) - All About Me!

                                                  Comment

                                                  • WiredGuy
                                                    Pounding Googlebot
                                                    • Aug 2002
                                                    • 34515

                                                    #75
                                                    Originally posted by NetRodent
                                                    Initially we didn't really care. The only filtering we did was to remove obviously child-related words from the list. When we started none of the ppc's checked for relevancy, which was how we ended up with such gems as "Gaza Strip" (strip club related) and "Legal Briefs" (underwear related). The philosophy of the time was that irrelevant listings wouldn't be cost effective and would fall out on their own accord. Most of the PPCs would take and list anything we gave them. Overture would do a cursory review but I think the size of our keyword lists intimdated the editors. I don't know for a fact but I'm pretty sure Overture's authorized adult keyword list was in response to some of our shenanegans.

                                                    Eventually the ppcs figured out that relevancy couldn't be achieved by bid alone, and started setting various guidelines. Overture in particularly got quite harsh with us and if they found more than a few inappropriate words would just reject the whole submission. It was tedious and time consuming but cleaning the keyword lists really wasn't that bad. We had various people in our company do it, sometimes even having all office categorization parties. Usually it fell to the new person to do this since nobody else wanted to do it, and we figured it was a good way to increase their vocabulary. Getting to explain the word 'bukkake' was always a treat.

                                                    These days we're a bit more cooperative with the search engines so the relevancy checking is sort of shared between our campaign managers and the search engine's people. We also don't harvest keywords in the same way we once did so there isn't too much garbage in our lists.

                                                    He he, Chuck told me about the gaza strip example. That one was rather funny, seeing your sites coming up for that listing. And as I recall, yes, Overture used your initial lists as their master adult lists because of the sheer size. Although OV's editors have become inches away of being nazi's, their quality sure has increased. One thing I did like about doing the keyword research myself though was the vocabulary, learning tons of new words I would have never thought of. Hell, it was an accident I discovered what hentai was and now it makes up a nice percentage of media buys.

                                                    Thanks Brian
                                                    WG
                                                    I play with Google.

                                                    Comment

                                                    • WiredGuy
                                                      Pounding Googlebot
                                                      • Aug 2002
                                                      • 34515

                                                      #76
                                                      Originally posted by NetRodent
                                                      Since I got a bit nostalgic writing that last post, I decided to poke around in some of my old files. I guess there won't be much harm in releasing this "trade secret" now.

                                                      adult
                                                      porn
                                                      porno
                                                      sex
                                                      smut
                                                      breasts
                                                      tits
                                                      bobs
                                                      ass
                                                      arse
                                                      hahahaha
                                                      pussy
                                                      cock
                                                      dick
                                                      fuck
                                                      suck
                                                      cum
                                                      sperm
                                                      semen

                                                      The was the original keyword list that we thought up, to prime our GoTo and Altavista keyword harvesters. After we finished running these words through AV/GoTo and feeding the results back into AV/GoTo it turned into a list of about 100k phrases of which about 25k were adult related and made semi-sense. I hope nobody copies our technique.

                                                      Similiar strategy here, going from a handful of seed basewords and then exploding into hundreds of thousands of keywords. Its the manual labour of removing those useless keywords that's the time consuming part. I'm surprised you kept over 25% of your initial phrases though, I typically keept 5-7%.
                                                      WG
                                                      I play with Google.

                                                      Comment

                                                      • NetRodent
                                                        Confirmed User
                                                        • Jan 2002
                                                        • 3985

                                                        #77
                                                        I was glossing over some of the details. Our first havest which was based on the list above found about 100k phrases which certainly didn't yield 25k cleaned words. 25k was our peak adult list, we didn't achieve that until a year or two later.
                                                        "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
                                                        --H.L. Mencken

                                                        Comment

                                                        • rebel23
                                                          Confirmed User
                                                          • Dec 2002
                                                          • 817

                                                          #78
                                                          fgrep -v microsoft inputfile | fgrep -v yahoo | (... more bad keys ...) > outputfile

                                                          that will help you clean your list quicker
                                                          Last edited by rebel23; 08-30-2005, 04:45 PM.
                                                          ICQ: 37378183

                                                          Comment

                                                          • WiredGuy
                                                            Pounding Googlebot
                                                            • Aug 2002
                                                            • 34515

                                                            #79
                                                            Originally posted by rebel23
                                                            fgrep -v microsoft inputfile | fgrep -v yahoo | (... more bad keys ...) > outputfile

                                                            that will help you clean your list quicker

                                                            I already have white and black lists that are run against many regexp's to help automate some of these steps, but there's no replacement for the human brain to evaluate if something is relevant or not.
                                                            WG
                                                            I play with Google.

                                                            Comment

                                                            • Nysus
                                                              Confirmed User
                                                              • Aug 2001
                                                              • 7817

                                                              #80
                                                              Originally posted by DarkJedi
                                                              WG is a black hat
                                                              I must say it's impossible to know how he functions simply because of anything he's said so far.

                                                              Matt
                                                              What name is pr0 / Untouched Markets using these days? Untouched Markets - pr0 - Refund My Money Now

                                                              Someone owes me $2,000 because they didn't do any work that was paid for *pointing at pr0 / William / UntouchedMarkets*

                                                              See http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?p=16744521 and for more detailed see http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=948645

                                                              Comment

                                                              • Nysus
                                                                Confirmed User
                                                                • Aug 2001
                                                                • 7817

                                                                #81
                                                                Originally posted by WiredGuy
                                                                Similiar strategy here, going from a handful of seed basewords and then exploding into hundreds of thousands of keywords. Its the manual labour of removing those useless keywords that's the time consuming part. I'm surprised you kept over 25% of your initial phrases though, I typically keept 5-7%.
                                                                WG
                                                                I definitely understand and agree with your concerns of outsourcing; I have the same. It's a lot of work ...

                                                                Oh, and I don't think keept is a word.

                                                                Matt
                                                                What name is pr0 / Untouched Markets using these days? Untouched Markets - pr0 - Refund My Money Now

                                                                Someone owes me $2,000 because they didn't do any work that was paid for *pointing at pr0 / William / UntouchedMarkets*

                                                                See http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?p=16744521 and for more detailed see http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=948645

                                                                Comment

                                                                • RogerV
                                                                  Banned!
                                                                  • Jul 2002
                                                                  • 12591

                                                                  #82
                                                                  Originally posted by WiredGuy
                                                                  I'm looking for opinions from people who have outsourced in the past. A lot of the repetitive work that I've considered outsourcing I'd consider a trade secret (keyword filtering, keyword list generation). Anyways, from the internal scripts I have here onsite, we generate hundreds of thousands of keyword suggestions and the repetitive portion of the work involves manually going through the keywords and determining if they are relevant to the niche / market being targetted. Once this list is filtered, I consider the final list a very valuable resource or trade secret.

                                                                  In the past I have hired students to do this, but for some smaller niches, the market size is not worth the cost of hiring locally but it is for outsourced operations. I'm wondering what are your thoughts on outsourcing a resource that you consider valuable should it fall into the hands of competitors? Also bear in mind the persons working on this would have to be very proficient in English.

                                                                  Thanks everyone.
                                                                  WG
                                                                  Be carefull or everyone will be saying there is no money in SEO

                                                                  Comment

                                                                  • Nysus
                                                                    Confirmed User
                                                                    • Aug 2001
                                                                    • 7817

                                                                    #83
                                                                    Originally posted by RogerV
                                                                    Be carefull or everyone will be saying there is no money in SEO
                                                                    There truly isn't for most people; just following the white logic Neo.

                                                                    Matt
                                                                    What name is pr0 / Untouched Markets using these days? Untouched Markets - pr0 - Refund My Money Now

                                                                    Someone owes me $2,000 because they didn't do any work that was paid for *pointing at pr0 / William / UntouchedMarkets*

                                                                    See http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?p=16744521 and for more detailed see http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=948645

                                                                    Comment

                                                                    • Matt Collins
                                                                      Confirmed User
                                                                      • May 2005
                                                                      • 1060

                                                                      #84
                                                                      The question seems to come down to should you outsource it to a college student or to an outsourcing company. Either way, you are outsourcing the work, so no matter the option, you will have certain risks.

                                                                      I personally think the outsourcing company works best because of more natural barriers to entering as competition (though none are a major obstacle) such as language, connectivity, skills, etc.

                                                                      Of course, the cost savings may make it easier to have multiple people doing different tasks. I personally trust Rick and iWebmasters. However, there is no way to eliminate risk in any business endeavor (there's your free legal advice!)

                                                                      Just my

                                                                      Matt
                                                                      Check out Globally Translated!-Translate your sites and join the global economy!

                                                                      MattLaw -The law firm for webmasters and site owners!

                                                                      ICQ: 254-829-586 Who is this Matt guy? Check out the Ambush Interview

                                                                      Comment

                                                                      • Nysus
                                                                        Confirmed User
                                                                        • Aug 2001
                                                                        • 7817

                                                                        #85
                                                                        IWebmasters is still based somewhere, in the Philipines specifically, and they have managers, and even the emloyees have access to the lists / copies of them. I had a bad number of ordeals with outsourcing, and now I just don't trust it because of how much I thought I knew the person in question and trusted them; maybe I'm just unlucky though.

                                                                        I am doing everything critical to myself, and I actually hope anyone who knows what they're doing do the same; so there's less actual competition, and if there's a top 5 SEOs that join up ... can do a lot with that much. <- WiredGuy - Do you understand what I mean?

                                                                        Matt

                                                                        Originally posted by Matt Collins
                                                                        The question seems to come down to should you outsource it to a college student or to an outsourcing company. Either way, you are outsourcing the work, so no matter the option, you will have certain risks.

                                                                        I personally think the outsourcing company works best because of more natural barriers to entering as competition (though none are a major obstacle) such as language, connectivity, skills, etc.

                                                                        Of course, the cost savings may make it easier to have multiple people doing different tasks. I personally trust Rick and iWebmasters. However, there is no way to eliminate risk in any business endeavor (there's your free legal advice!)

                                                                        Just my

                                                                        Matt
                                                                        What name is pr0 / Untouched Markets using these days? Untouched Markets - pr0 - Refund My Money Now

                                                                        Someone owes me $2,000 because they didn't do any work that was paid for *pointing at pr0 / William / UntouchedMarkets*

                                                                        See http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?p=16744521 and for more detailed see http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=948645

                                                                        Comment

                                                                        • Nysus
                                                                          Confirmed User
                                                                          • Aug 2001
                                                                          • 7817

                                                                          #86
                                                                          Originally posted by cutetwink
                                                                          Outsourcing is good for basic design, submitting, and other bullshit. For something like this you would have to double check their work losing you more time and money. You remember what happen with topbucks and their outsourced gallery descriptions.
                                                                          It's not even about double-checking the work, they could do a good job, because they want the best list possible for themselves as well ... they want to profit / benefit from the information you provide them.. not all, but honestly no way to know who.

                                                                          Matt
                                                                          What name is pr0 / Untouched Markets using these days? Untouched Markets - pr0 - Refund My Money Now

                                                                          Someone owes me $2,000 because they didn't do any work that was paid for *pointing at pr0 / William / UntouchedMarkets*

                                                                          See http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?p=16744521 and for more detailed see http://www.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=948645

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