Outsourcing

Tips on Outsourcing

1. Interview questions. If they spend the time to answer your questions
2. References. Ask for references. Some sites will not allow it
3. Read ratings and comments.
   1. See if there are repeats. This shows that they can
   2. See the # of reviews
   3. Reviews can also be deceiving -some programmers will do wahtever it takes to get a positive review
   4. Read the ratings to find what type of clients they have worked with. Find the ratings for the clients.
4. Response time: Look at how quickly they respond back to you. This is the courting stage so they should have a quick response rate.
5. Ask if they will be working on other projects while working on this one? Better to have a full time dedication a lot faster than bits and pieces. How to read into it, if someone is overly static that means they are happy. If the rating is 10/10 but the comment is normal that means they didn’t do a great job. Look for “He did as the requirement specs”, this means they were not very happy with the programmer.
6. Make sure they have experience working on same scale sites. If they do $20-$50 projects, do not hire them to do $800 projects.

Virtual Assistants

1. Sites to hire virtual assistants:
   1. http://onlinejobs.ph ($49/mo $109/3mo $299/year)
   2. http://bestjobs.ph (Free to post $5,000 peso to be featured and  resume search for 3 months)
2. Full time prices range from $200 USD-$300 USD average, you can hire some for as low as $100 and some pay their employees $750 to keep them because they are doing such a great job.
3. Here’s a list of tasks you can get your virtual assistant to take care of for you
4. Once you have hired the VA you can get them to learn new skills with training courses designed for VA’s.
   1. VAClassroom $17/mo
   2. ReplaceMyself $97/mo $997/lifetime
   3. Lynda.com $25/mo This is targeted to more advance skills and skills on certain topics. Worth considering depending on the level of your VA

   Here’s a more in depth guide to finding a virtual Assistant.