The advantages and risks of outsourcing have been the topic of this week’s posts.

You can access the first four posts by clicking the links below:
Advantages and Risks of Outsourcing Your Marketing
Advantages And Risks Of Outsourcing: Advantages 2-3
Advantages And Risks Of Outsourcing: Risks 1-2
Advantages And Risks Of Outsourcing: Risk 3

Today’s post on the advantages and risks of outsourcing covers a fourth risk.

Advantages And Risks Of Outsourcing
Risk 4 – You May Not Develop
Needed Staff Skills

As long as you outsource a one-time job or one that you need completed infrequently, outsourcing has advantages over training you staff. But if you use a skill often, you or an employee need to have that skill.

When you can get a job completed internally, you have greater control and can usually get the work done faster.

Plus, you’re building a team who can do whatever you need done. So if you need the same type of work repeated often, it’s worth investing in your own employees.

I often pay an employee by the hour to learn processes that I could hire done much cheaper, but I consider training them a long-term investment in my business.

If you take this approach, you can save time and money in the long-run by getting training aids to speed employees’ learning. For instance, I sell an e-book version of Strategic Publications for $49.95 and a paper-back version for just $79.95.

The information in this book can save you many times its cost by providing the best information available on designing all major types of publications.

I also sell an ebook version of Know’ em Sell ‘em for just $47. It explains exactly how to conduct a target market profile and provides many already completed for you.

Advantages And Risks Of Outsourcing
Conclusion

Outsourcing provides a resource of inexpensive specialized skills for your business. It usually saves you money over having an employee learn the skills. However, outsourcing is not without risks.

Being aware of both advantages and risks of outsourcing will enable you to make good outsourcing decisions. If you do decide to outsource a job, I recommend one of the following outsource services:
Scriptlance.com.
Rentacoder.com

Need a blueprint  for Outsourcing? You can build your online business from the ground up by Outsourcing Talented People.

I hope you have found this series of posts on the advantages and risks of outsourcing helpful. To read more about outsourcing, see

Seven Disadvantages of Outsourcing, Part 1

Get more marketing information like this. Subscribe to my blog, and I’ll send you weekly post summaries and a copy of my matrix Market Segmentation report. Just complete the form below:

Posted 6-20-08:
Advantages And Risks
Of Outsourcing
Risk 4

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I’ve been posting on the advantages and risks of outsourcing in this series. You can access the previous posts at the links below:

Advantages and Risks of Outsourcing Your Marketing
Advantages And Risks Of Outsourcing: Advantages 2-3
Advantages And Risks Of Outsourcing: Risks 1-2

To get to the next post in this series, click on the following link:
Advantages And Risks Of Outsourcing: Risk 4

Today’s post covers a third risk of outsourcing.

Advantages And Risks Of Outsourcing
Risk 3 – Vendors May Abuse Access To
Your Site Administration

If you are outsourcing a job totally independent of your site, you want be taking this risk. But if you are outsourcing a script or program to be installed on your site, vendors need access to your site administration.

I believe that most outsource vendors are honest, but I’m often too trusting. Let me give you an example of when that trust cost me dearly.

When I first outsourced for a coder to write the code for my target market program for AutoMarketAnalysis.com, the coder missed deadline after deadline. I extended the final deadline twice. By the end of that time, it was obvious that he wasn’t going to be able to do the job. So I went though the services arbitration system and they cancelled that contract so I could hire another programmer.

AutoMarketAnalysis.com shares hosting with another of my sites, Strategic-Publications.net. At this time, AutoMarketAnalysis had little content because the program wasn’t developed yet. But Strategic-Publications.net had 100s of pages. In giving the outsource vendor access to the former, I also gave him access to the latter.

Within three days of canceling my contract with the vendor, someone got in to my administration account and deleted all pages for Strategic-Publications.net.

Luckily I had backed-up the content on one of my office computers so the content wasn’t lost. Still it took a week for one of my employees to upload those pages and reformat them. So it cost me that employee’s salary.

Now I can’t prove that the outsource vendor deleted the pages. But in my two years of hosting Web sites, it has never happened before or since. What would you think?

The lesson you should learn from this post is to guard your site access and don’t give any outsource vendor more information than they need to complete your job. Otherwise you may find that in the advantages and risks of outsourcing, the risks may outweigh the advantages.

Do you want a blueprint  for Outsourcing? You can build your online business from the ground up by Outsourcing Talented People.

Subscribe to my blog, and I’ll send you weekly post summaries and a copy of my matrix Market Segmentation report. Just complete the form below:

Posted 6-19-08:
Advantages and Risks
of Outsourcing
Risk 3

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For my last two posts, I’ve discussed the advantages and risks of outsourcing, concentrating on the advantages.

You can access those posts by clicking the links below:
Advantages And Risks Of Outsourcing Your Marketing
Advantages And Risks Of Outsourcing: Advantages 2-3

But outsourcing does have risks as well. Today’s post covers two of those risks. My next posts will cover two more risks and conclude my posts on the advantages and risks of outsourcing. You can access it by clicking the link below:

Advantages and Risks of Outsourcing: Risk 3

Advantages And Risks Of Outsourcing: Risk 4

Advantages And Risks Of Outsourcing Risk 1
An Outsourced Job May Take Longer Than One Completed Internally

I’ve heard some gurus say that they can post a job with an outsource service in the morning and have the job completed that evening. But that hasn’t been my experience.

Most outsource services prefer that you list a job for several days before making a selection. And it’s to your advantage to do so if you want the best person for the job.

Even before you post the job, you must determine and write your job description, specifications, benchmarks and final deadline.

This takes more time than just telling an employee what you want done. The employee can ask questions and get answers quickly. But unanswered questions cost more time with an outsource vendor.

Plus, I’ve had outsource vendors go days without reporting their progress and then learned that they did nothing on my job during that time.

Advantages And Risks
Of Outsourcing Risk 2
Follow-Up Support Is Scarce

After completing a job and getting paid, many outsource vendors are impossible to get in touch with and won’t provide follow-up support.

Most of the outsource services forbid their participating vendors from contacting you directly because they don’t get paid if the vendor works with you directly on future projects. Thus, your only medium of communication is through the outsource service. Add to this that many outsource vendors speak and write little English, and you have a real communication problem.

Once a job has been completed, the vendor no longer monitors communications regarding it. You can leave messages for vendors, but most will never see those messages.

Of course, if you can’t get in touch with them, you can’t ask questions about what they’ve done or get support if you discover something wrong after you have paid.

Need a blueprint  for Outsourcing? You can build your online business from the ground up by Outsourcing Talented People.

Subscribe to my blog, and I’ll send you weekly post summaries and a copy of my matrix Market Segmentation report. Just complete the form below:

Posted 6-18-08:
Advantages And Risks
Of Outsourcing:
Risks 1-2

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The advantages and risks of outsourcing is the topic of this series posts.

I started it with an introduction and the first advantage of outsourcing. If you missed that post, you can access it at Advantages and Risks of Outsourcing Your Marketing. Today’s post continues with two more advantages.

Advantages And Risks Of
Outsourcing Advantage 2
Reviews And Samples
Aid Selection

Reviews are often available so you consider more than just price in your selection. All outsourcing services use some kind of review process, including comments by other business owners who have used that outsource vendor before.

You can also ask to see samples of the vendor’s work. I asked the freelance editors to provide a publication that they had frequently edited. I also looked at videos before selecting the video editor and Drupal sites before selecting my programmer.

Advantages And Risks Of
Outsourcing Advantage 3
If Vendors Don’t Complete Work
According To Your Specifications,
You Don’t Have To Pay Them

Another great advantage of outsourcing is that you can specify exactly what a job entails and set deadlines. If the vendor fails to meet specifications or deadlines, you aren’t stuck with a bill for work that you can’t use.

This can save you loads over assigning a staff member to do the job because you have to pay employees’ salaries whether they complete a job satisfactorily or not.

Of course, you can fire an employee who consistently fails to perform assigned tasks, but that’s much more complicated than canceling an outsource job that’s behind schedule or doesn’t meet your job specifications.

If these advantages appeal to you and you want to outsource a present job, I recommend that you go to one of the links below and sign up for an account. It’s easy:

Scriptlance.com.
Rentacoder.com

To get to the next post in this series, click the following link: Advantages And Risks Of Outsourcing: Risks 1-2.

Do you want a blueprint  for Outsourcing? You can build your online business from the ground up by Outsourcing Talented People.

Get more marketing information like this. Subscribe to my blog, and I’ll send you weekly post summaries and a copy of my matrix Market Segmentation report. Just complete the form below:

Posted 6-17-08:
Advantages and Risks
of Outsourcing:
Advantages 2-3

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You should know the advantages and risks of outsourcing before deciding to outsource any of your marketing.

Although you may not be a marketing expert and don’t have one on your staff, if you desire business success, you must market well.

But you and your staff do NOT have to do everything and you do NOT have to hire an expensive marketing agency to do it for you.

There are many inexpensive options. One is outsourcing through one of the many outsourcing services available online. The Internet has advanced the outsourcing industry to make it affordable for even the smallest business.

Outsourcing Sites

Many sites online act as a broker between businesses and outsource vendors. I recommend the two outsource services below:

Scriptlance.com.
Rentacoder.com

To help you to understand the advantages and risks of outsourcing, I’ll be posting about it this week.

Although, I mention outsourcing marketing tasks, the advantages and risks of outsourcing hold for any task that you are considering outsourcing.

I’m covering the first advantage of outsourcing in today’s post, and will cover other advantages and risks of outsourcing throughout the week.

Advantages And Risks Of
Outsourcing Advantage 1
It’s Inexpensive

After you sign up for site membership, you can post a project, and freelancers will bid on it. It works the exact opposite of E-bay. Freelancers bid lower and lower, to get your project.

I recently hired a programmer to develop a program for my membership site for $550. I got a video edited for just $200 and hired an editor to do a final external editing of Know ‘em Sell ‘em for just $100.

Outsourcing is often cheaper than what you’d pay your staff to learn the new skill, much less to implement it. Plus, you don’t have to spend money to buy tools and train employees to do one-time jobs.

To read about two more advantages of outsourcing click on the link in this sentence.

Do you want a blueprint  for Outsourcing? You can build your online business from the ground up by Outsourcing Talented People.

Subscribe to my blog, and I’ll send you weekly post summaries and a copy of my matrix Market Segmentation report. Just complete the form below:

Posted 6-16-08:
Advantages and Risks
of Outsourcing
Your Marketing

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