When I owned my small business, I had upon occasion the need to outsource some very short-term software development work for an important client. Basically, I could’ve done the work myself but there just wasn’t enough hours in the day for me to work on everything, so I used offshore talent for 2 – 3 weeks. My experience was very positive and the overall results very good. Now, this was a long time ago e.g. over 10 years.

I hear that offshore services are very competitive, for example, say accounting. I hear its very cost effective to hire offshore to help fill-out all those quarterly forms and very all those transactions. I have not done this but it would be interesting to hear from others.

@bimboelizan

I’m with @robmitchell and @erikdeckers in that outsourcing is critical to growth.

I have inside employees, but I also outsource our programming to a local person who has built up an extreme amount of trust with us. He’s basically extended family. 

Ditto with some design and copywriting. 

We’ve also had bad experiences. We worked with a group outside the US to help develop Joomla sites but the partnership turned sour and managing them remotely, even with Skype, became too much of hassle.

When it comes to hiring a college student (or anyone, really) you need to be careful. A college student may be good on Facebook for planning a party, but not for executing your marketing plan or establishing your brand or handling customer service complaints.

I have been VERY lucky with a local college student, but I think that I got one in a hundred as far as maturity and focus goes.

Start slow, and let some prove themselves.

@suebookhout – Congrats! Once you have her all trained up, it will be such a relief. Not that you won’t still have to manage her and give her feedback, but if she has the basics and the right attitude then you’ll be so happy. I work with a woman in Argentina who is like that. I need to edit anything she writes in English, even though her English is very good, but it’s worth it for all the rest of the help she gives me.

I’ve always outsourced at least something. When I was a consultant for larger corporations, I had the funds to outsource anything that I didn’t add value to. Now that I’ve moved to building up my own website (selling pre-written business content), my budget is tighter and I have to gradually build up what I can afford to outsource. I can’t afford NOT to outsource or it will take me forever to grow the business. But at the same time, I have to control how much I lay out before the revenue grows. It’s a delicate balancing act of projecting ROI.

For any small business, you have to estimate how much more revenue you can earn by freeing up some of your time through outsourcing. Outsource the cheapest tasks first, or ones that would take you way too long to do yourself. Then move up the ladder until you’re only doing the things you do best or which require your direct involvement. I can’t wait until I can do more of that with my current business!

It would be helpful to learn more about the vetting process. I’ve heard good stuff but also numerous horror stories about outsourcing overseas.

As a web developer, I feel I need an outsourcing network to survive… When I started my business, it was relatively easy to ‘control’ – every project was a new site development and I could *almost* schedule them and control the workload. But now that I have many completed projects, any / all of those past clients can call on me for maintenance and ‘need’ their work done ASAP. It is just not realistic to tell them to get in line or wait a couple weeks.

In this business, I do not  and can not control how / when the inbound requests arrive. Even with development projects, a client will promise the text and photos on Thursday, but it usually arrives Wednesday or Friday. So having a network of subs is critical. None of them are on payroll, but they all know what I pay and how nice (or not!) and reliable (or not!) I am. So if I contact them saying ‘have you got 20 hours in the next 4 days?’, they are free to respond.  I know they have other employers. Some of them are in the USA, some are not. I have been managing development projects (within a corporation and form y own business) since the 90′s, so I flatter myself that I do a good job of writing up the requirements and treating subs with great respect. This is critical to success – everything has to be spelled out in detail.

Another thing to consider is that I personally have the skills and experience to go out and win business, understand a clients business needs, help them prioritize their budget, negotiate a contract… Although I have been in software all my working life, most of my subs (near and far) are better at the coding than I am but they do not have the skills to go out and pull in new business. So I need them and they need me. Together we make 3 people happy and keep 3 households fed – the client, me and the subs.

When considering a new sub, I start with a small, non time critical project. Give it a try, and see how it goes. Although that is also fraught – sometimes they are so delighted to get a new client, that they will do the ‘best job, ever!’ on the first contract, then go twice as slow for twice as much money on the next… you just have to keep your eyes and mind open….

I am so glad to hear that all of you guys at least value the outsourcing.