Outsourcing Part 1
- Comments: 11
One of the hottest topics I am reading about right now is outsourcing. Outsourcing everything.
Christine from CreateBusinessGrowth.com wrote an article on this topic called “Outsource Your Life and Free Yourself.” I am in the middle of developing an application for a new company we have. In order to do this we have been looking at five separate companies who will build it for us. I will talk more about each company in a follow up post after we have selected what company we are going with.
In a two part series I will detail exactly what I have learned from the experience.
In this first part I will talk about everything we have learned before we write the check.
-First of all, you need to know what you want. This is just a stating point. What you want and what can be done are often two separate things.
-After determining what you want, you will need to separate your features into what you absolutely must have to be successful and what can be left off until later. You want to do this because money often becomes an issue. This will enable you to get a bare bones estimate if necessary.
-At this point it is almost impossible to figure out what your break even is, so the next step is to find developers and figure out exactly how much your project is going to cost.
-Do a search for web developers. Research in depth 10 of them and choose 5 to move forward with. This will ensure or at least leverage you against these companies from trying to take advantage of you.
-Before calling or emailing the companies make sure you have a complete feature list put together as well as a great description of the final product. What happened to us is that with each company that we contacted, we learned a lot from each one. Therefore the interaction got easier with each contact.
-Make sure you take note of how well the interaction is with each contact. The company who ‘gets’ the concept the most may end up being the company you choose to develop the final product.
That’s all for now. I will follow up with a second post as soon as we are well into the development stage.
What has your experience been like?
I have not had a good time of outsourcing.
I hire programmers and designers to do things for me (create new sites/features) and I find myself baby sitting them
That is why I have now partnered up with someone that does what i cant and i do what he cant. Its a good partnership
Josh, another great post — but check the title’s spelling.
Wow! Thanks Eric! Spaced that one…
I’ve been thinking about this topic since the post came out, and I’m still reluctant to jump on the outsourcing bandwagon — despite needing some quality work done.
Any solid sites you can recommend for finding quality tech and app development outsourcing? I’ve got a bad taste in my month with the normal scriptlance, elance, etc.
Outsourcing is a big part of making money on the web, there’s only so much you can do yourself. By outsourcing your design work, content writing and even your promoting you will have more time to work on other projects and more time to relax and enjoy life.
It’s also practical. I can use photoshop and I can design a website from scratch using html, css and php. However, I am not an expert in any of these areas therefore I have found myself increasingly outsourcing this work the last 2 or 3 years as my coding and design skills cannot project the professional image I want to convey.
Colin/Eric - I’ve had some bad luck with programmers in the past myself (I’ve been pretty lucky with designers). Unfortunately, its a case of trial and error. I’m not a huge fan of elance, many of the companies are not professional or as hardworking as they make out. Which is a shame because I know that there are a lot of fantastic companies who get sales through that site.
Around 5 years ago I use to make a lot of money buying and selling domains and websites and I was active in a big domain community. Myself and another member there split the cash in a unique domain script which we got a coder from elance to design. A year later I found out that the coder had sold that script to a turnkey script site and the script had been downloaded thousands of times around the web. A kick in the teeth because we had paid close to a thousand for the script and were selling it for $xx (cant remember the exact price). My emails to the coder did not get any replies. A harsh lesson.
Again, its guys like this who give other programmers and designers a bad name. My advice, if you find a good coder or designer who gives good after sales support and provides a product at a fair price, stick with them and develop a good relationship with them. I used the same guy for banners for about 3 years and always got a good service, perhaps because he knew I would use him again.
One of the best ways to find someone for outsourcing your work is referrals eg. I would have no problem recommending Infinx after seeing the work they did for John Chows blog (plus his confirmation of good support etc).
Good post Josh - I’m looking forward to seeing how you get on with this
I have been questioning about the effectiveness of outsourcing web work to third party especially on the web where everybody seems anonymous… Is it really effective to outsource it to someone on the web to help you? I wanna see how you guys work around with this too…
Thanks Kevin! I am looking forward to posting on bloggingtips.com!
I just make sure you go to a reputable company and not an individual unless you were referred to them. Thanks for the comment Charles!
Quite true too… You’re welcome!
[...] Mullineaux - Outsourcing Part One Short, but to the point tips for anyone looking to outsource - I’m eagerly anticipating Part [...]
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