Have you ever outsourced before?
 

I'm curious as to how many people have outsourced services before?
Be it a designer to get some landing pages or banners made, maybe a programmer to help build a site or possibly a customer support company to handle incoming inquiries and concerns?

There are so many attributes to outsourcing and I'm wondering just how many of you have considered it, have actually outsourced and what your experience has been?

I'm interested to see the responses be it positive or negative so lay them on me pretty please.

I have been using outsourced labor for five plus years now and it is working great. Check out Upwork (and Fivrrr for smaller jobs). Personally I use (and trust) workers in The Philippines more than workers in India plus they tend to be a little less expensive. I use them for video editing, video uploading and some simple design tasks.

Note: These workers tend to do only what you ask for so you need to be specific and check on their work. Sometimes their internet goes down due to bad storms. But if you communicate well over ICQ or Skype and know exactly what you need done the savings in time is well worth it alone.

Oh - and how much do I pay them? $2.00 an hour and that's OVER paying them. Ignore the applicants hourly minimums they have on their profiles. :)

Good luck! And ICQ me anytime for more info if you ever need it.

Hasn't every one outsourced at one time or another?

The whole affiliate-model is in fact just outsourcing, in case you dident notice

Yes...... Hi Kiwi ;)

My experience years ago has been largely negative. this was circa 2009 when it was somewhat hip to use outsourcing in Phillipines, I figure the market changed ever since.

Anyway this is the recap:

The staff was:

- an editor (to edit trailers, episodes)
- a designer (basic stuff, mainly banners and some landers)
- writer (to provide some descriptions)

The cooperation was on a recurring monthly basis, but eventually had to terminate it within 3 months.

The writer services were not at the level as promised, and no suitable substitute offered - terminated after a month.

When it came to video work it has been quite slow and difficult to establish rapport, the staff didn't check the work afterwards properly and it appeared there are more people working on the same task as the output was inconsistent. Also terminated after a month or two.

The designer was initially the only person that was easy to deal with and provided fine work, but after some time we were informed that he's "sick" and won't be able to work on our tasks again.

Got a replacement that was not easy to deal with at all, the quality was bad and communication difficult, so this was also terminated shortly after the replacement.

Even this was supposed to be a somewhat "managed" service the amount of constant back and forth didn't make it worthwhile to continue. Even had to claim some extra hours from them as a compensation for work that was completely unusable.

Would only outsource again if based on solid, personal recommendation.

Most of the stuff done on FO (as far as running the site) is outsourced.

I've also outsourced designers and developers for different projects.

Outside of those diamonds in the coal that you find, expect to get what you pay for. Pay peanuts and you will get monkeys.

Also, never, ever, ever, pay everything up front. It's reasonable for a designer or developer to want something up front, but unless you know the person doing it all upfront invites problems (most of the time).

Some GFY fake nics are outsourced foreigners :thumbsup

This response will probably disappear like the previous exchanges with KiwiGirl. But, whatever. Everyone outsources. Or at least many do.

Never let a Filipino write English for you. LOL


What was the original response? (Drama?)

I rather pay full price to make sure its done right

I've always outsourced the design, I get a PSD and slice it then code it with HTML5.
lmk if you ever need that..xo