This weekend, I spent all day Saturday posting articles to websites, and getting backlinks for a client. The client wanted a fairly easy goal- 100 backlinks. However, the client didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for these backlinks (honestly, who would). I admit that I briefly thought about outsourcing the work, and saving myself the time and effort of getting backlinks for this client’s website. After all, who wants to spend their Saturday in front of a computer, posting content to a website?
When I came up with this SEO plan for this client, I realized that it would be less effort and stress NOT to outsource the work. Yes, I would essentially be working for less than what I normally charge (I didn’t even want to think about what this paid per hour). Yes, this work is less than glamorous (really, who enjoys building backlinks?). However, if I would have outsourced this particular task, I would have spent many days going back and forth with the freelancer building backlinks (differences in time zones, and all of that). Plus, the client would have paid more money in the end (the amount that I quoted the client was the average outsourced price, I could have cut maybe 20% off of that by haggling, and then add in the costs for me to supervise and double-check the work of the freelancer).
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not against outsourcing. Heck, a part of my business depends on it. When your budget isn’t too tight (here, the amount that I quoted the client was quite low), you can find freelancers that will be able to follow the specifications on work without much supervision. However, link building campaigns are horrible campaigns for finding talent (if you want it done cheap). As an example, I once had a freelancer who, upon “completion” of the SEO backlinking campaign, I discovered had linked his own blog instead of my client’s website (the freelancer was instructed to use three links per article, and the freelancer used 2 of those three links to promote the freelancer’s own blog). As another example, I had a freelancer work on a similar campaign a while back, and the freelancer did great work. Minimal supervision (always good) was required, and the individual understood the work to be done. The difference between these two outsourced projects was the price. The project that had a bad freelancer was a short and cheap project. Conversely, the project that had a higher budget and a longer deadline had the better freelancer.
The way that I see it, if I can get a particular task done in less than a day, sometimes it’s best not to outsource. I’m paying that price right now, where I’m waiting on a Perl programmer to email me a fix to his script (it’s been 5 days now). Outsourcing has it’s place- just not with the small and cheap projects.
For those who are wondering (this isn’t a service I advertise), I do often manage projects involving outside coders or freelancers. I’ve been involved with projects ranking from 30 line scripts, to large software deployments. My experience has told me that sometimes, it’s best not to outsource a particular project. Instead, roll up your sleeves, and get the job done yourself. It might not be fun, but neither is the hassle of outsourcing work!
Thanks for the interesting post