Comments on: Affiliate New Year’s Resolution: More Outsourcing

By: Doug

Doug — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 19:06:05 +0000

Rex, yes, I’ve a purchased a template or two from Template Monster. They have some great looking templates. One caveat — in order to customize the template (get your text and make any changes to the images) — you’ll need to know HTML and have Photoshop (or a program that can use .PSD files).

Of course Template Monster will do the customizing for you. I don’t know exactly how much they charge (think it’s around $250 or more). Whatever it is, you could probably get it customized for 1/2 the price on Elance or Rent A Coder.

By: Doug

Doug — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 18:54:40 +0000

Thanks for all the positive comments.

As an update I decided to take my own advice …

I needed a PHP script that interacts with a database. I know some PHP & MySQL — but I’m rusty. It would have easily taken me 3-4 hours to complete it, test it & fine tune it.

I put the job on Rent A Coder (RAC) and found a guy with very good feedback that knew exactly what I wanted. He’s doing the project for $30.

So, instead of spending the 3-4 hours. I spent only 20 minutes on RAC posting and chatting with the programmer. Not to mention that I’m sure I’ll get a much nicer script than what I would be able to do (and I have a go-to guy for future projects if it turns out well).

With the time I saved not coding the script, I worked on finding more keywords and optimizing some PPC campaigns — i.e., the things that will actually bring in money.

So, long story short, I’m definitely going to step up my outsourcing in the coming year.

Regards, Doug

By: Rex Bush

Rex Bush — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 18:09:11 +0000

Gagan, would you be willing to share with me the names of the content writers you discovered and how they work out for you. I’ll wait till your project is finished to contact them.

By: Rex Bush

Rex Bush — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 18:07:38 +0000

Doug, do you have any experience with buying and using a canned template? Some of them are very attractive. Does anybody else have experience with this?

By: fields

fields — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 16:29:08 +0000

Nice Post and good advice

I made the recent mistake of posting a project with 20 articles and I accepted a provider with a low bid and no feedback .. Now its gone beyond the deadline and I cant get in touch with the guy ..

I guess thats how you learn .. trial and error..

By: max

max — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 06:41:10 +0000

Hey Doug- great post. Outsourcing is something I’ve been thinking about for the last 6 months but have kept putting off. It’s now a priority and I’ll be searching eLance within 5 minutes.

By: Miles Baker

Miles Baker — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 22:25:55 +0000

Excellent post Doug! I used to only outsource projects that I couldn’t do, but not until I started to outsource everything I could do that someone else could that my business really started to grow.

By: Gagan

Gagan — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 19:57:10 +0000

This post couldn’t have come at a better time. I’m for the first time outsourcing the writing part of my 2nd website. I went to Elance and picked 3 good web content providers of India. I filter people with at least 90% positive feedback and with at least 15 reviews. I also look at what kind of project they handled. I think you should pay attention o the fact that is the person has experience in SEO, writing sales copy and knows about pre-selling the audience. This is my first outsourcing venture. I have hear good things about Elance. I hope things go okay with my project.

By: Denver

Denver — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 02:24:45 +0000

Sorry-lack of sleep! Just reread and went to elance.

You already did.

By: Denver

Denver — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 02:21:07 +0000

Amit-Thanks for another great article. I have a ton of sites in my feed reader but very few offer information on par with yours.

Can you recommend some good sites to locate article authors?

Thanks!