Outsourcing

[supahoopsa]

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I dont often post on this forum although I read it most days and have had a few questions answered in the past so though it was time to give something back - or at least try to - after all I have 6 years experience of running commerical web sites and now make a very good living out of it.

With all the talk in the media about UK Companies moving their call centres to India I thought I would share my experiences of outsourcing work to other countries.

I have used a site called Elance for the last 3-4 years to find people to run various projects for me ranging from designing a logo for a web site, to link collection to writing articles to designing a whole site to server administration. I have run at least 30 such projects and on the whole have been very satisfied with the results. The people doing the work tend to be in India or Eastern Europe where costs and wages are so much lower than UK.

For the last 18 months I have been "employing" a company in India to do various bits of work for me, they do between 100 and 300 hours month at an hourly rate of $4-$5

Example of their work - I had a dating site, with a good domain name but limited traffic which was only earning a few dollars a month. Last April I got the guys in India to totally redesign the site, turn it into a dating site directory (which included setting up the software) going out and find as many reciprocal links as they could, checking/approving new links and generally promoting the site. Now in January 2004, 9 months later, the site earns me $1000pm from GoogleAdSense alone, plus at least $2000pm from dating affiliate sites. We now have 350+ Google links are No 1 in Google for dozens of different search terms in UK Dating market. I reckon by April the site could be worth $5000pm.

All this has been created by employing someone to do the "donkey work". All I do is the overseeing and planning what needs to be done each month. I pay them around $800pm on average and they are currently doing work on about 3-4 different sites such as the one mentioned above.

Whilst I am generally against UK companies outsourcing to UK, if it means putting a British person out of a job, I don't feel what I am doing is wrong because, there is no way I could afford to pay someone in this country. To get a good person, I would need to pay in the region of £10ph before I've even started thinking about NI and all the other stuff that goes with employing people.

So to all of you out there who don't have enough hours in the day its well worth considering outsourcing some of the "donkey work" you have to do whilst you concentrate on the planning and ideas. You need to be careful that you find a good supplier and what jobs you give them to do. For example if you want some articles written make sure that their English is excellent because it may not be their first language, for most stuff like design and link collection its not an issue.

Would love to hear comments and your own experiences with outsourcing.

David Hayden

[Ballswinger]

I was going to employ my brother but I think you may have answered all my needs - he's only family !!

Cheers
Andrew

[lowndsy]

I've just completed my first rentacoder.com experience and it is really useful to have tlent like that just there for you tap into at a good price.

[Aquanuke]

I posted some work on rentacoder by the time i'd got any applications, id done the project myself

[FleaPit]

From my experience it can be very hit and miss. Depending on the complexity of the project, programming and scripting required, it may be cheap but I have had a couple of dodos! But if you find a good programmer then they can come in handy especially if you have stretched yourself and want extra help at a reasonable price.

[Keith Mander]

Thanks for sharing this information David.

I currently hire a student to help with my projects and pay £8/hour which I consider good value considering his skills. However, I may look into outsourcing other work such as SEO and content writing.

Thanks again.

[bazza1603]

Hi,

Can I recommend the services of http://www.webintegrated.net/ based in India that I came across via Elance.

Service was really good. The project was delivied ontime and I am more than happy to recommend his services.

He took half the payment when he started and the rest when I was happy with the payment.

Please PM me if you want any questions answering.

Best regards

Barry

[Shane]

I have had a couple of experiences with rentacoder and scriptlance all bad

I picked a coder based in asia and got a 3 week mess around the first time, I swore I woulnd't do it again but fell for a rated guy who was even more useless.

I swore it again and still picked another for a different project..
that was the last time (and last straw lol) won't be using any asia based coders ever again.

I wants em local where I can pop down in the car and physically choke in person !

Personal recommendations go a long way when it comes to outsourcing don't fall for rated coders just on the strength of their ratings and never ever ever part with cash up front, at the very most pay in stages as my guys went from leg shaggin terrier keen to snoozing red setters overnight when paid part way through a project.

[1st Stop]

I use a really good company in india who have designed some good sites!

*Remember*

They have got to trust that you will pay them once the work is completed so i would always do a 33% split of the fee.

33% on Start (Before they start the project)

33% On their server (when you have seen the stuff running bug free on their server.)

34% On complete Installation on your server.

Using this method gives all those involved peace of mind and helps restore faith in overseas programmers.

[mediswab]

apparently outsourcing all our work to india is good for our economy

i think this is a good practice

Hopefully as the Indians pick up the idea about affiliate marketing, they will start creating sites for themselves and be able to cut out the middlemen

[NaturalInstinct]

Originally posted by mediswab
apparently outsourcing all our work to india is good for our economy

i think this is a good practice

Hopefully as the Indians pick up the idea about affiliate marketing, they will start creating sites for themselves and be able to cut out the middlemen

heh! he's right you know. without sounding too "daily mail" where is all this call centre and web design outsourcing to india going to stop ? how long until your spose/family/friend loses their job because i's gone to somebody cheaper in India ?

WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

[Mogga]

Are we any better than the gangmasters who abuse people for cocklepicking if we also abuse cheap labour?

[Luke]

Mogga everything is cheaper in those countries - the wage you pay is relative to the cost of living there, $6 an hour might not sound much here but in India or Moldova that's a lot of money.

Paying children $6 a day to make footballs is slave labour and utterly immoral - paying someone $6 an hour to build websites is not.

And the nice thing about India is it is full of very well educated, intelligent and capable people with an excellent work ethic.

[stevey]

In their economy an hourly rate of $4-$5 is a fair wage. Now if we paid them that amount if they lived under our economy that would be different.

stevey

[Green2K]

I hope that was said with tongue in cheek Mogga

I really don't think you can compare the legitimate outsourcing of IT work to degree educated professionals in India, to a bunch of illegal immigrants paid illegally, collecting cockles on a dangerous beach to fund the lifestyle of a bunch of Essex guys driving Subarus!



Green2K