I have a confession to make…….

For those that have read my report, Six Success Strategies to Building Effective Outsourcing Partnerships (You can access at ESalesGuru.com), I did NOT follow some of my own principles in Strategy 3 - Choosing the right Outsourcing Partner!  One of the principles I emphasize there is to strike the right balance between cost and quality when selecting your Outsourcing partner. Well….

I recently outsourced an Article Writing Project in which I focussed WAY TOO MUCH on the cost! I outsourced to a firm who wrote a bunch of articles for $10-15/article; however, the quality of the articles was just not there. Being a writer myself, I thought I could just do some quick tweaks and edits and everything would be good to go - not the case! I quickly realized that I would bascially need to re-write all 10 articles, which naturally defeats the purpose of Outsourcing in the first place!

So back to the drawing board…. I decided to take some of my own advice and thoroughly screen for both quality and cost. Well, I have to say, the results were dramatically different the 2nd time around. I outsourced to another writing firm after screening their related experience and  writing samples and was very impressed with the final product. I barely had to make any edits at all, which is ideal! Now, I did end up spending a little more than the first contract, but it was still cost-effective and headache-free!

So, if you are seeking to operate a full-service SEO platform, you will naturally need to have a steady stream of relevant articles being submitted to industry-specific sites and such. Unless, you have a writing person or team that can dedicate time to this in-house, you will likely need to outsource. So, it is essential to get some good writing samples and confirm the outsourced partner’s demonstrated knowledge and ability to write content for your respective topic. You might even want to put an "One edit" clause into your contract, so that the Professional must be willing to do at least one edit if the draft is not up to par. Finally, if you are posting the project on an Outsourcing Portal like ESalesGuru.com, don’t get caught up with the cheapest bids. Yes, you need to focus on cost, but don’t make that the only factor in your outsourcing decision.

So, please learn from my mistakes….I have:)

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