How I got Into Outsourcing
Today I'm going to tell you a story and that story is about how I got into outsourcing. Now I know there is some information on the site that tells you about what outsourcing is and how we go about it and how we can teach you how to do it. But I thought it might be interesting perhaps for you to know how I got into it.
I was not always an advocate for outsourcing. In fact if you ask any of my family and certainly friends that I've had for long period of time, those that know me from when I started my business back in 1991, you will hear them say that they could never imagine me actually hiring anybody, let alone someone offshore and that would definitely had been the case. Because I was one of those people and I still I'm to a certain extent that needs to physically have control of everything that I do.
I'm also somebody that when I decide to do something, then I will go into it in a big way. I will learn everything there is to know about it before I actually start doing it. I certainly won’t get out and start teaching it until I do know it back to front, that comes from being a teacher I think in the background. So let me tell you how I got into outsourcing and it was purely by accident and also a necessity at the time.
I have another website called Black Book Cooking (being rebranded and launched late 2014 as Victoria Hansen Food) which you may or may not be aware of in addition to Vicsmedia (Vicsmedia is now part of victoriahansen.com). Originally I'm a foodie, I'm a high school cooking teacher and I went online, actually the first time I went online was in 1994 just when the internet was really getting started.
I've been online ever since in one form or another starting out with very simple websites that I built myself. I learnt how to do, moving up to the more sophisticated ones that I now have. When I was building Blackbook Cooking which was also under a number of different names before that, around about 2008, it was 2008, 2009, the site had just launched and on it were about 4,000 pages at the time. That had been built up over a period of time.
Each of those pages or most of them had an image and those images came from an image library that I had done a contra deal with. They had provided me with access to use those images providing I linked back to the website which I did with each image. But in about 2008, 2009 they changed hands. So you can see where I'm going with this. In the process of doing that, the new people who came onboard decided that they didn’t particularly want to continue with the agreement that we had, they didn’t think they were getting enough benefit from it.
My traffic wasn’t brilliant in those days. So they didn’t see me as high profile enough. So they gave me an ultimatum. They said I could either pay a lease fee for those images of which there were more than 2,000 of $60,000 a year. Well I nearly fell off my chair. I wasn’t even paying myself anywhere near that amount of money. The business wasn’t making that sort of money. So there was no way in the world I could afford it. But they were an integral part of this website because it’s a food website and these images were amazing.
The site that I got them from library is or does specialize in food photography. So the photographs were absolutely amazing and they made my site look brilliant and that was what was the draw card for quite a lot of people. Obviously my recipes were pretty good as well, but the images had a lot to do with that. So in the process of doing all these, I realize there is no way in the wide world I can keep those images. But I also kind of photo replaced them either.
So what I did is I had to look around on the web and I looked at a couple of other image libraries. Quite a few of them offered subscription. So if you paid for a subscription for a month or two months or whatever it might be, you could download anything up to 25 or 30 images a day. Now it had taken me nearly three or four years to accumulate those images and create that content. So I'm not going to replace it in three months.
I had to get some help and I really couldn’t afford to hire someone locally to do it at the hourly rates that we have on average here in Australia, so I was literally forced to go offshore. I thought, well you know if I just hire someone to do this and it’s a very simple little task, then maybe I can manage it.
So I posted a job on one of the outsourcing portals. I was flooded with people, I was almost overwhelmed. I couldn’t cope. I didn’t realize at the time it was because of the way I had written my job speak, there is a method to that in itself which took quite some time to work out but needless to say, I did actually make contact with quite a number of contractors that were all relatively good, but none really had the skill that I wanted for what I need for this. they needed to not only be able to source images that look like the ones that I had, but also be able to optimize them and then upload them to the site because I didn’t have the time to do any of that either.
So I had to trust them to go straight into my CMS and do this work. So there was a whole host of things here that were really very important to consider before I went down this track. But I had no choice, it was either that or shut down years of work and I wasn’t prepared to do that either. So what I did was post the job and I got quite a few applicants and I went through them and picked the ones that one applied to the job in the way that I would have applied to a job.
So the way they wrote their application was important; and also because they had a percentage of the skills that I wanted. So they might have been able to do research but may not necessarily had done anything with CMS. Or they might have known Photoshop but hadn’t actually done research. So I went through a few of them and out of all of them, one particular guy came back and said, “I can do this job.” Actually they all say that, “I can do this job.” But they can’t, not all of them can.
But he hounded me and he kept writing to me and I said, “Look, I'm sure you can but I need to assess a number of people so once I've done that, I’ll come back to you.” Well he just kept hounding me. He said, “Look, just give me a chance, show me exactly what you want me to do and I will do it.” I thought, how am I going to show you that? You're in the Philippines and I'm here in Australia. Then I remembered I had camtasia. So I thought what if I could do screen capture, a simple one that just showed exactly what I wanted him to do. Like on the website I had all of the contents and all the images put into spreadsheets because that’s how I do my work.
I'm very anal. Some people call it organized, some people call it anal but I am very organized. So all of the content that I had is in fact already in spreadsheet. So it was a matter of just looking at where they are going up to the link and having to look on the site. So I showed him. I created this camtasia video which is very simple and a lot of panning and zooming, not a massive amount of editing and I posted it on the website and I sent him the link. I said, “Have a look at this. Could you replicate that?” He said, “Yes.” I said, “All right. I'm prepared to give you a trial. One hour, that’s it, that’s all I'm giving you, one hour and I want to see how much of this you can do in that hour.”
So I uploaded all of the spreadsheets, he had links to go to the websites. So he wasn’t looking at the backend he was only looking at the site, at the frontend. These are the three sites for library sites that I'm prepared to pay subscriptions for once we do this. I said now the only way this is going to work, you’ve got three months to do this but you're going to have to find all of the images first and list them all and then when we know we've got them and I've approved them, then you go back on the site and I pay for a month of subscription.
So you’ve got two months to source and then a month of downloading and then we have to get them up on the site. He said, “Yep, I think I can do that.” Well I gave it to him. One hour later, I was blown away. What he achieved in an hour, I don’t even think I could have achieved in that hour and so I hired him on the spot. I said, “Now you're on trial, I need to make sure that you can do what you’ve said you're going to do and that you can actually fulfil it.” He said, “Yep, no problem.”
Well he’s still with me to this day. He is one of my most loyal and most accomplished contractors. I've taught him all sorts of things that he didn’t know before and on top of that he goes out and teaches himself. He is absolutely brilliant. Honestly a find of a century and I manage to achieve my target of what I needed to do a little bit over the three months but still not too bad. They quoted me $60,000 for those images. I managed to replace them from three other different video and image libraries with the help of my contractor for less than $5,000 all up.
So that included the research, the searching, the compilation, the downloading, the subscriptions to the sites, the whole things. In fact I don’t even think it was that much. I think it was probably closer to about 3,000. But still 3,000 to 60,000 there is a big difference there and I now have use of those images for the whole time that they are on the site. So that was my foray into this. Once I did it once and he worked out so well, I had made contact with two or three others on there that I hadn’t done anything with them at the time. I thought, I'm going to give them a go.
You know one of the dilemmas you face when you work for yourself is that you have to do everything, you have to be, the person who makes the cup of tea in the morning, that vacuums carpet and then at night you’re negotiating sponsorship deals and whatever else. There really aren’t enough hours in the day, they just aren’t. You can’t replace yourself. It is impossible to replace yourself because you’ve spent so much time accumulating all of these skills, you're almost unhireable anymore.
But rather than hiring one assistant, who might have maybe three or four of your skills for the same price you can hire 10 people who can take over 10 of your skills and do them all and focus just on that skill. That’s what I found the most beneficial with outsourcing. I don’t just have offshore outsourced contractors. I have contractors here in Australia as well although some things I can’t pass off.
I can’t get voiceover done by anyone that doesn’t speak English and with an Australian accent because that’s what I'm looking for. I can’t have the copy written down by somebody who doesn’t understand the context of the content well enough. So I have to have an Australian copywriter. I also have some other people here in Australia who manage my contractors and do things as well.
So I have got an even amount of both, well maybe 1/3 to 2/3rds, 2/3rds offshore 1/3rd onshore. But it has completely changed the way I do business. It has saved me an enormous amount of time and anguish and also allowed me to actually have a life in and around what I do. I don’t know if you've read the book, the eBook by Michael Gober but he talks about working on your business as opposed to working in your business. Well I was working in my business all of the time and there was so much stuff I didn’t even see.
But as soon as I stepped back and brought other people in to work on the business, I could then see the bigger picture and it has enabled me to just grow exponentially in a very short space of time at a cost I can afford. Don’t get me wrong, they are cheaper overseas in most countries than they are in my country. That's a given. But I have done some research and their hourly rate are commensurate with what they get paid for their award rates in their country.
So we are not cutting out anything by doing this with them, we are actually giving them work. I've become very close to my contractors. I know the names of their children, I've helped out a couple of them with operations they've had to have, I send them bonuses when they do great work, I help them buy equipment when they needed, if they can’t afford it. So I do what I can to help them in their lives.
They've become part of my family and that certainly made my business change from being a little one man, one woman operating business to something that is global. I mean let’s face it, I have made products and created content and information that I want the whole of the world to buy and use. Why shouldn’t I also hire from the same pool? Thanks so much for joining me. I hope that sort of helps you a little bit with how I got into outsourcing. I'm sure that once you just dip your toe in the water just that little bit, then you will be able to think on the same lines. I'm certainly here to help you if you do.
