My thoughts on Outsourcing. - GoFuckYourself.com

eroswebmaster · 04-04-2005, 11:22 AM

Arriving back from the Forum I caught Lensman's thread on using outsourced designers and thought I'd share my opinion and I do have a bit of experience in that field.
Let me first start off by defining for the purposes of my topic here outsourced labor as those who are offshore and who's labor costs are much lower. People out of the Philippines, Argentina etc, because in all truthfullness if you hired me as a designer you were outsourcing but that's not where the issue is.

I noticed last year the outsourcing trend and in all honesty it did affect my business as I'm sure it did affect others.
It didn't hurt repeat business, but it did slow down new business to some degree.
I would bid on jobs only to be told so and so outsourcing could do it for 1/3 even 1/4 of what I was charging.
So I started to look for ways to cut costs and stay competitive.

At the time my company consisted of myself and Thomas. Since most of my business was in the bulk gallery market I hired an outsource company to crop thumbs and insert content. This would have saved us time, increase our output allowing us to lower our costs slightly.
However the outcome was less than desirable and we had to redo the entire first order and I was given a refund.

I was then introduced to a gentleman here in Vegas who was from the Philippines. He had employees here in Los Angeles and a full design and programming shop in the Philippines.
I sent him some test orders I created based on orders that we saw with regularity and the work came back late but I was impressed with the quality.
So we partnered up and started taking orders.
That's when I noticed as everyone else has is consistency is one of your biggest issues when it comes to dealing with outsourced labor.
I spent the next 6 months along with Thomas and Brian training and attempting to work out an operations plan that alleviated some of these problems and things finally started to gel.

Most clients were happy, in fact almost all were. The ones who were not we rebuilt their orders until they were.
This was costly and in fact I lost a lot of money due to these "minor issues."

Long story short....
Here is what I learned.
In the beginning we were not really concerned with outsourcing competing against us when it came to quality. They still cannot. I have seen a lot of programs who use outsourced labor and I can spot it and the issues a mile away.

It requires intensive micromanagement. You can't just shoot out an order walk away and expect it to be done 100% to your satisfaction. It requires a lot of quality control management which is why I had 2 production managers who's jobs were to do nothing but put orders together and inspect them, even then we're only human and mistakes get by.

It requires a lot of time. You cannot just hand over 100 galleries to 10 guys who have never built a gallery before or have had limited gallery experience and expect to get it back in a few days and be ready to go. Even after months of training due to each order having it's own specs these guys still had trouble making sure they followed them correctly.
Now if your order stays the same day in and day out this might be a bit easier for you to deal with, however there will still be training time.

It requires trust. And this is one of the most important issues IMO.
You contact a company and they provide you a "designer."
What is a designer? That may be someone who has been trained in how to use photoshop but that doesn't necessarily they have any real time experience in either mainstream or adult design. But for the purposes of our discussion I can almost guarantee you they have ZERO training in adult design.
So you are now left to train them. Nothing stops the company from then taking that trained designer and moving them to a new department and using them for their own sites, or whatever and claiming they left leaving you to train yet another designer.
If you think this is not happening or has not happened just ask around and you'll find many webmasters who have their designers or programmers just disappear after 6 weeks only to have to start over.

You are also giving these designers inside information on your future business plans, and more importantly the owners who own the outsourcing company inside information.

Another important issue. You cannot teach someone how to sell. They either know how to do it or they don't.
Adult design is much different than doing mainstream design in that most of these guys are used to building the standard corporat identity site.
There is a method to the madness when it comes to paysites tours, galleries, banners etc and that is something you can't always teach.

Other issues include language barriers of course, time differences.

In the end for us it failed, not for lack of trying but there were other issues...however for the most part it was all of these issues that led us down that road.

If you plan on using outsourcing good luck I wish nothing but the best for you, however have an out as you will need it.

You will save some money in the short term, but in the end it could end up costing you more in terms of conversions, quality, loss of trust from your affiliates so before you make that step you might want to consider whether saving $10-$15 per gallery design is really worth it. In the end it just may not be.

alan-l · 04-04-2005, 12:06 PM

there are two sides -or more- to everything, when I read your side I read "Outsourcing is OK as long as I'm your middleman". Personally, I think outsourcing is great... if you find the right source. We trust in somebody who's doing 100% of our promo work and then some galleries promoting other sponsors. I know I can leave this guy and his team alone, but I don't. They've minor language glitches I can live with, but still I prefer the glitches to be solved. Never had a problem like Lens had and I chose to pay them a little more with one condition: they work for us and nobody else in adult. Period.

I agree the adult outsourcing companies are crap, most of them if not all (talking design wise). I tried 2 of them before my current solution, one of them the one Lens used. But not because of the reasons you mentioned, but because they were just a bunch of people doing million tasks a day, the result is poor, non creative, lousy jobs put in a way I could tell they just wanted to finish it and run away to their homes. In other words: over explotation. I'm very happy saving 25%, why the hell would I need to save 50% when I know that in exchange my business will be hurt? That's the way the outsourcing company management works, and that's why it's just a matter of time when are they going to disappear, as we have seen.

Sometimes, Capitalism 101 has to be merged with Common Sense 101

Just my 2 euros

Arousal Design · 04-04-2005, 12:08 PM

I think outsourcing companies should be left to pure grunt work... the less creativity that is needed the better.

They can be very valuable for that.

But I wouldn't leave it up to someone making next to nothing to be the creative spark that drives my sales.

Fletch XXX · 04-04-2005, 12:11 PM

People constantly underestimate the value of a good and reputable designer.

good post eros.

eroswebmaster · 04-04-2005, 12:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alan-l

there are two sides -or more- to everything, when I read your side I read "Outsourcing is OK as long as I'm your middleman".

No you misread my intentions. I no longer do design work so it's not an issue.
My post is a warning to all those who want to use outsourcing and think it's as easy as sending someone $900...there's much more to it than that...a hell of alot more.

CDSmith · 04-04-2005, 12:23 PM

Good post, very informative.

the Shemp · 04-04-2005, 12:30 PM

a method of quality control and product acceptance is required. too many people get on the outsourcing bandwagon.....they see the initial benefit, but not the pitfall..

Lizy · 04-04-2005, 12:55 PM

Eros,

You're 100% right. We have 100+ people now in our facilities. Some are managed by us, others are micro managed by our clients remotely.
Some fail, for others it work. The ones that fail are the ones that opt for the $900 solution and neglect to micro manage.

->

BradShaw · 04-04-2005, 12:57 PM

Outsource chimp work, not rocket science work. I have a few cheap azns and I am very happy. It is all about managing them and staying on top of them.

Why pay someone $30k a year in Dallas to make galleries, when I can hire someone overseas for $8k a year?

enter » · 04-04-2005, 01:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BradShaw

Outsource chimp work, not rocket science work. I have a few cheap azns and I am very happy. It is all about managing them and staying on top of them.

Why pay someone $30k a year in Dallas to make galleries, when I can hire someone overseas for $8k a year?

You think making galleries is chimp work? I'd bet my left nut your $8K galleries aren't a tenth as profitable as they could be if you paid a qualified designer to make them.

Great post eros

alan-l · 04-04-2005, 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eroswebmaster

No you misread my intentions. I no longer do design work so it's not an issue.
My post is a warning to all those who want to use outsourcing and think it's as easy as sending someone $900...there's much more to it than that...a hell of alot more.

sorry bout that then

alan-l · 04-04-2005, 05:15 PM

anyway, I can see the only ones pointing fingers against outsourcing are the designers, which I understand. But Brad made a point. I dunno shit about art or technical knowledge, if my cost/benefit proportion is better with a given system, I'll use it no matter what. We had galleries made by almost any single designer in this board, the so called "good", the azn, the chimps and the chumps, we're no idiots at all, and what we lack about art or photoshop we know about numbers. Our best move until today is a tightly managed outsourcing solution by people with years in this biz. No one from US or Europe got even closer to the results we already have, reason why we got these guys as exclusive and we don't say a word about them. And that's one of the main points against these azn outsourcing people, it's IMPOSSIBLE to work for everybody at all times in an explotation system. I don't give a flying fuck what you wanna do, I know my moves, guess you know yours. I'm not defending xxxoutsourcing, very far from that since I throw some money to garbage with them, but the US designers witch hunt, even tho it's reasonable from their point of view, is quite stupid "walletwise". A solution for them? Dunno, maybe move to Manila

Raven · 04-04-2005, 05:40 PM

It was great to have finally met you, eroswebmaster.....and I can understand many of your points, especially about micromanaging. A client of mine had two...a designer and a programmer...just two..and the time spent training them was intensive. A year later and they are now well in line and very useful...but, after six months, I know I was questioning whether or not it was worth it.....for my client, with much patience, it did work out and still does.....but, I cannot fathom having to do this with an entire team, unless I am on location....

04-04-2005, 11:22 AM	#1
eroswebmaster March 1st, 2003 Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Seat 4 @ Venetian Poker Room Posts: 20,295	My thoughts on Outsourcing. Arriving back from the Forum I caught Lensman's thread on using outsourced designers and thought I'd share my opinion and I do have a bit of experience in that field. Let me first start off by defining for the purposes of my topic here outsourced labor as those who are offshore and who's labor costs are much lower. People out of the Philippines, Argentina etc, because in all truthfullness if you hired me as a designer you were outsourcing but that's not where the issue is. I noticed last year the outsourcing trend and in all honesty it did affect my business as I'm sure it did affect others. It didn't hurt repeat business, but it did slow down new business to some degree. I would bid on jobs only to be told so and so outsourcing could do it for 1/3 even 1/4 of what I was charging. So I started to look for ways to cut costs and stay competitive. At the time my company consisted of myself and Thomas. Since most of my business was in the bulk gallery market I hired an outsource company to crop thumbs and insert content. This would have saved us time, increase our output allowing us to lower our costs slightly. However the outcome was less than desirable and we had to redo the entire first order and I was given a refund. I was then introduced to a gentleman here in Vegas who was from the Philippines. He had employees here in Los Angeles and a full design and programming shop in the Philippines. I sent him some test orders I created based on orders that we saw with regularity and the work came back late but I was impressed with the quality. So we partnered up and started taking orders. That's when I noticed as everyone else has is consistency is one of your biggest issues when it comes to dealing with outsourced labor. I spent the next 6 months along with Thomas and Brian training and attempting to work out an operations plan that alleviated some of these problems and things finally started to gel. Most clients were happy, in fact almost all were. The ones who were not we rebuilt their orders until they were. This was costly and in fact I lost a lot of money due to these "minor issues." Long story short.... Here is what I learned. In the beginning we were not really concerned with outsourcing competing against us when it came to quality. They still cannot. I have seen a lot of programs who use outsourced labor and I can spot it and the issues a mile away. It requires intensive micromanagement. You can't just shoot out an order walk away and expect it to be done 100% to your satisfaction. It requires a lot of quality control management which is why I had 2 production managers who's jobs were to do nothing but put orders together and inspect them, even then we're only human and mistakes get by. It requires a lot of time. You cannot just hand over 100 galleries to 10 guys who have never built a gallery before or have had limited gallery experience and expect to get it back in a few days and be ready to go. Even after months of training due to each order having it's own specs these guys still had trouble making sure they followed them correctly. Now if your order stays the same day in and day out this might be a bit easier for you to deal with, however there will still be training time. It requires trust. And this is one of the most important issues IMO. You contact a company and they provide you a "designer." What is a designer? That may be someone who has been trained in how to use photoshop but that doesn't necessarily they have any real time experience in either mainstream or adult design. But for the purposes of our discussion I can almost guarantee you they have ZERO training in adult design. So you are now left to train them. Nothing stops the company from then taking that trained designer and moving them to a new department and using them for their own sites, or whatever and claiming they left leaving you to train yet another designer. If you think this is not happening or has not happened just ask around and you'll find many webmasters who have their designers or programmers just disappear after 6 weeks only to have to start over. You are also giving these designers inside information on your future business plans, and more importantly the owners who own the outsourcing company inside information. Another important issue. You cannot teach someone how to sell. They either know how to do it or they don't. Adult design is much different than doing mainstream design in that most of these guys are used to building the standard corporat identity site. There is a method to the madness when it comes to paysites tours, galleries, banners etc and that is something you can't always teach. Other issues include language barriers of course, time differences. In the end for us it failed, not for lack of trying but there were other issues...however for the most part it was all of these issues that led us down that road. If you plan on using outsourcing good luck I wish nothing but the best for you, however have an out as you will need it. You will save some money in the short term, but in the end it could end up costing you more in terms of conversions, quality, loss of trust from your affiliates so before you make that step you might want to consider whether saving $10-$15 per gallery design is really worth it. In the end it just may not be. __________________ For rent - ICQ 127-027-910 Click here for more details Last edited by eroswebmaster; 04-04-2005 at 11:24 AM..

04-04-2005, 12:08 PM	#3
Arousal Design Confirmed User Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Connecticut. Posts: 1,358	I think outsourcing companies should be left to pure grunt work... the less creativity that is needed the better. They can be very valuable for that. But I wouldn't leave it up to someone making next to nothing to be the creative spark that drives my sales. __________________ Make Major Bank With Major Personality - NaughtyBank! Featuring NaughtyAllie and NaughtyJulie!

04-04-2005, 12:11 PM	#4
Fletch XXX GFY HALL OF FAME DAMMIT!!! Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: that 504 Posts: 60,840	People constantly underestimate the value of a good and reputable designer. good post eros. __________________ Want an Android App for your tube, membership, or free site? Need banners or promo material? Hit us up (ICQ Fletch: 148841377) or email me fletchxxx at gmail.com - recent work - About me

04-04-2005, 12:23 PM	#6
CDSmith Too lazy to set a custom title Industry Role: Join Date: May 2001 Location: My network is hosted at TECHIEMEDIA.net ...Wait, you meant where am I located at? Oh... okay, I'm in Winnipeg, Canada. Oops. :) Posts: 51,460	Good post, very informative. __________________ *Promote Wildmatch, ImLive, Sexier.com, and more!!* ALWAYS THE HIGHEST PAYOUTS: Big Bux/ImLive SIGNUP ON NOW!!! Put some PUSSYCA$H in your pocket. ICQ me at: 31024634

04-04-2005, 12:30 PM	#7
the Shemp congrats to the winners Industry Role: Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Echo Beach Posts: 10,891	a method of quality control and product acceptance is required. too many people get on the outsourcing bandwagon.....they see the initial benefit, but not the pitfall.. __________________ i use Vacares...so should you Submit your picture galleries to my site...Outlaw TGP

04-04-2005, 12:06 PM	#2
alan-l Confirmed User Join Date: May 2003 Location: look behind you Posts: 2,477	there are two sides -or more- to everything, when I read your side I read "Outsourcing is OK as long as I'm your middleman". Personally, I think outsourcing is great... if you find the right source. We trust in somebody who's doing 100% of our promo work and then some galleries promoting other sponsors. I know I can leave this guy and his team alone, but I don't. They've minor language glitches I can live with, but still I prefer the glitches to be solved. Never had a problem like Lens had and I chose to pay them a little more with one condition: they work for us and nobody else in adult. Period. I agree the adult outsourcing companies are crap, most of them if not all (talking design wise). I tried 2 of them before my current solution, one of them the one Lens used. But not because of the reasons you mentioned, but because they were just a bunch of people doing million tasks a day, the result is poor, non creative, lousy jobs put in a way I could tell they just wanted to finish it and run away to their homes. In other words: over explotation. I'm very happy saving 25%, why the hell would I need to save 50% when I know that in exchange my business will be hurt? That's the way the outsourcing company management works, and that's why it's just a matter of time when are they going to disappear, as we have seen. Sometimes, Capitalism 101 has to be merged with Common Sense 101 Just my 2 euros

04-04-2005, 12:55 PM	#8
Lizy Confirmed User Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 321	Eros, You're 100% right. We have 100+ people now in our facilities. Some are managed by us, others are micro managed by our clients remotely. Some fail, for others it work. The ones that fail are the ones that opt for the $900 solution and neglect to micro manage. -> __________________ Project Management

04-04-2005, 12:57 PM	#9
BradShaw Confirmed User Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: KB's trailer Posts: 7,840	Outsource chimp work, not rocket science work. I have a few cheap azns and I am very happy. It is all about managing them and staying on top of them. Why pay someone $30k a year in Dallas to make galleries, when I can hire someone overseas for $8k a year? __________________ Sig too big http://www.gofuckyourself.com/gfy_faqs.html Want to use a large banner in your sig??? Contact Eric about getting on as an advertiser - eric AT adult.com

04-04-2005, 05:15 PM	#12
alan-l Confirmed User Join Date: May 2003 Location: look behind you Posts: 2,477	anyway, I can see the only ones pointing fingers against outsourcing are the designers, which I understand. But Brad made a point. I dunno shit about art or technical knowledge, if my cost/benefit proportion is better with a given system, I'll use it no matter what. We had galleries made by almost any single designer in this board, the so called "good", the azn, the chimps and the chumps, we're no idiots at all, and what we lack about art or photoshop we know about numbers. Our best move until today is a tightly managed outsourcing solution by people with years in this biz. No one from US or Europe got even closer to the results we already have, reason why we got these guys as exclusive and we don't say a word about them. And that's one of the main points against these azn outsourcing people, it's IMPOSSIBLE to work for everybody at all times in an explotation system. I don't give a flying fuck what you wanna do, I know my moves, guess you know yours. I'm not defending xxxoutsourcing, very far from that since I throw some money to garbage with them, but the US designers witch hunt, even tho it's reasonable from their point of view, is quite stupid "walletwise". A solution for them? Dunno, maybe move to Manila

04-04-2005, 05:40 PM	#13
Raven Confirmed User Industry Role: Join Date: Jul 2001 Posts: 6,874	It was great to have finally met you, eroswebmaster.....and I can understand many of your points, especially about micromanaging. A client of mine had two...a designer and a programmer...just two..and the time spent training them was intensive. A year later and they are now well in line and very useful...but, after six months, I know I was questioning whether or not it was worth it.....for my client, with much patience, it did work out and still does.....but, I cannot fathom having to do this with an entire team, unless I am on location.... __________________ Raven ~RETIRED~