Hiring an Apprentice vs. Outsourcing vs. Manpowering Solo (28)
I posted about this yesterday and I thought it'd be cool to collect some feedback on how many of you have 'apprentices' or assistants.*
Most of us are familiar with the point of diminishing returns where you're maxed out with campaigns burning holes in your eyeballs, your inbox is overflowing and you simply don't have enough time to scale your business. The question is, how do you reduce the workload and continue to scale?
Do you....
A. Take on an apprentice. Risk him jacking your successful campaigns and/or thought processes, and hope that double the brains equals double the profits?
B. Outsource as much grunt work as possible. Take a step back from the 'doing', ie. copywriting, banner design and etc, and focus more on decision making.
C. Ignore the above, suck it up, work harder and keep the core of the business to yourself.
I'd be interested to hear if anybody actually employs an apprentice/assistant type figure. If so, what are the boundaries? Do you try to protect your campaigns so he doesn't go rogue?
Personally, if there's a market I want to expand in to, I prefer to look for a JV business partner instead of a deputy or somebody directly under me. I'm still involved in a lot of the creative processes behind my campaigns, from copywriting to banner creation and etc, but I'm trying to modulise as much as I can so that it can be outsourced easily.*
How do you manage the workload? Have you tried the spectacularly risky 'taking on a friend/relative as an assistant' play?
Incidentally, for anybody in the UK, tomorrow's episode of The Apprentice features a task related to collecting online dating leads. Probably gonna want to tune in to that for much hilarity. I hope somebody puts forward a "Would You Date a Soldier?" ad...
B. Outsource the grunt work and focus on what you're good at.
Originally Posted by ringpartner
B dizzle all the way.
A&B for me for two different type of campaigns
A, your friend/relative will fuck you over, guaranteed.
C, you will burn out before you get your company off the ground.
B is best.
The key is compartmentalization. It means breaking down your process into independent modules. From experience, I can tell you I have writers who have no idea how the rest of the company works. I contracted out advertising to a company that has no idea how I get readers. And I have a circulation team/process for growing readership that's all virtual. They don't even know who I am, or what publication they're helping grow.
Delegate and automate as much as possible and keep improving your process.
This has always been a hard thing for me, I get really agitated when I'm not in control of something and I don't think another person is going to do it correctly. For most of my time in this space I've done most of the work all on my own, except the past 3 months option B has been useful for yes the nitty gritty shit anyone could do like banner creation. I just mail off a couple templates and say pull images from these sources and paste here, anything else I just feel too anxious that it won't be done right so I do it myself.
Anyone else get those feelings?
Originally Posted by maynzie
Find somebody who actually owns an office place in a cheap country like PH/India/Pakistan. Tell him to settle just with him and he becomes your manager, whatever you gonna call it. Now let's say you need 50 creatives done with milfs on them, you just go to him, show him an example and tell him to get 50 banners created. Depending on your needs, if you do enough volume to keep 3-4 guys busy all day long, this saves a LOT of headache and is actually quite cheaper and saves you time too
Depends really.. VERY few people have businesses large enough to be able to justify outsourcing grunt work. Grunt work isn't all bad.. SO many times I've come up with my best ideas while doing grunt work 
follow up question: where do you find quality workers to outsource to?
C. All the way!
I can understand outsourcing mundane SEO tasks but for me every aspect of a campaign is too important to have someone else handle it.
There really isn't that much to learn in AM. Photoshop, Dreamweaver and some basic coding. That's all you really need ito "labour". Outsourcing campaign management/optimization is something I will probably never be comfortable with.
The times where I have outsourced stuff I ended up editing so much of it myself that I might as well have done it myself in the first place.
Experience is a BIG thing as well. I'm just so much more efficient these days than I was 5 years ago. I have thousands of banners and hundreds of landing pages that I've done over the years.
^
That's my exact experience too, most of the time I've spent so much time editing that it wasn't either worth outsourcing
Originally Posted by thetopham
Graphic design: US/Mexico
Grunt work, like small repeating tasks: Philippines
1 highly-skilled US web developer costs about as much as 12 .ph workers, I pay them $400/month on average, and that's considered good pay
There are exceptions to the above but in my experience, outsourcing high-level work is more trouble than it's worth
If I'm outsourcing art work, particularly 3D, I'll look to India every time. There's such a strong artistic tradition there, and some amazingly talented artists.
B and C
Im outsourcing a project that is already working. I never give full access to the person that outsource the work. Im making sure this person can't steal my stuff.
When its a new project im working alone because its never how I exactly want it when you ask people to do the job for you. As soon as the project is successful, i take someone to manage it and move to next one.
Originally Posted by caurmen
Not so good for programming though. I much prefer outsourcing to Eastern Europe for development.
If you end up editing the work that you paid someone else to do you're obviously (Sorry for being blunt) hiring the wrong people. Start studying hiring books and such (Top Grading comes to mind) and be PICKY when you choose people. When you think you've found a good guy give them a test task, then have a phone/skype call (no chat) for an hour where you go through everything they've ever done. Then check references and then and only then if all good then you hire full time (or part time) and pay them well and add bonuses to the mix (tied into profitability if you're really smart).
Once you find those A players you'll be able to scale like you've never done before with less work. I have a full time VA that does 95% my email marketing campaigns, handles most of the mundane campaign optimization (70-80% I would say), a part time designer that delivers great design and a full time backend developer (Just got this guy) that will enable me to crank out web properties like never before.
I could never do this myself, nor do I want to. No one grew big on their own...You're already using leverage (traffic, computer systems and hopefully workflow systems), why not add people to the mix.
Where you find them is really irelevant. Their skills and personality is all that matter. That being said I only use philipinos, but if I could find a good Indian/Pakistani I would use them.
I have had some really good experience hiring students off various social portfolio sites. You can get some really talented guys at a good price who are looking to launch their careers and need something commercial to show.
As far as coding is concerned I'm in the European camp as well. I just find that they are less spray and pray, more 'let me think about that' without just saying anything to get the business. I have had some good experience in China as well - I actually hired a school girl once off freelancer who was amazing at what she did.
Any short term outsourcing I've done is usually a nightmare.
It's really simple to determine the best option for you.
- Do you have communication skills and patience teaching someone what to do in order to save money? If so then outsourcing to Phillipines etc.. IS probably for you
- If you go crazy explaining things and would rather shell out more money for a fulltime local employee, then thats what to do!
Originally Posted by caurmen
I have a guy in Poland who delivers consistently great 3D work for me.
Though I am new to affiliate world....when it comes to managing the work for me the mix of A & B has always worked. Assigning or delegating the easier and non-productive work and doing the toughest or creative work myself. Also if you have a bigger team split the process and areas...works best...
yea splitting the business apart and outsourcing the parts to totaly different parties is the best way to go.
this way you have a good puzzle which only you can put together
What's amazing is that if you do this right, you can find A and B in the same person in the Philippines.
I would NEVER suggest to take on an apprentice in the US. Not in the business you're in. They'll end up screwing you.
The Philippines is a completely different story because of some significant cultural traits. They're honest, loyal, smart, hard working, and really just want to make you happy (obviously this is a huge generalization...not everyone is like this in the Philippines, but enough are).
They don't want to steal your business.
They just want to do whatever work they can to help you succeed.
Not always...but often.
You just have to be willing to train them.
I've never thought about this one "Keep the same context throughout the day. Switching between projects/clients is unproductive." Certainly makes sense, but a lot easier said than done, especially in our industry.
I always try to keep at one project at a time per day. Instead of mix and matching 3 all day long ^^
Originally Posted by thetopham
Originally Posted by John Johnas
Im currently seriously considering option A mainly for the low cost (£2.64hr)
Aside from that, I have had the best experience with Philippine outsource workers, but as many have said its only for small simple mundane tasks, like banners or content creation
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