I remember the first time I stumbled upon Mechanical Turk and the ability to get things transcribed effectively. I was absolutely blown away. The amount of awesome work that you could get, and the dependability of the service that is offered, is awesome. Mind-blowingly awesome!
“Who knew I could help someone across the globe and get paid to do it? And they can’t even see me smile!”
Then, when I realized that there are even more awesome people behind this entire service, I was completely blown away again! This is when I realized that there are people out there that have found there is a great need in helping other people out with tasks that they don’t necessarily have enough time to complete themselves.
This is where you can benefit in your business by knowing about the project outsourcing companies that are available to you. When you decide to leverage your resources, or at least the resources that you have most readily available to make up for the ones that you don’t have readily available, you’ll begin to grow at rates that you couldn’t begin to imagine.
1) Fiverr.com – The Piece Of The Puzzle Approach
You have to approach fiverr.com with some caution because it doesn’t filter explicitly the people that come across and offer their services (called gigs). The services that are offered there range from making a logo, making a book cover, making a video testimonial, and even making voice overs of under a minute in duration.
This all sounds awesome, but you have to be careful because a lot of times you wouldn’t know how good the service offered is unless you look at the ratings and comments for each one. So it’s a great source as long as you do your due diligence. But really, at the end of the day it’s only $5. Take a chance and see what happens.
2) Guru.com – Subject Matter Experts
When you’re looking for the person that is most well versed in biotechnical engineering, or something like geospatial intelligence, then you might need to head over to guru.com to pick up the person that has that particular skill most, or at least more than the average generalist out there.
This service is where you can take a laser guided approach to getting the information that you need on a particular subject instead of a broad range of smaller items. Not where you usually want to go first, but highly useful in the right situation.
3) Odesk.com – One Stop Shop
This is a site where you can do a project from start to finish and approach it either at an hourly rate or at a flat rate financing approach. From what I can tell, this overall approach at https://www.upwork.com (fomerly odesk.com) is both good and bad. I’ve found if you are not able to put your exact requirements to the tee, from start to finish, you might not get the results expected.
Maybe this is not critical for what you’re trying to get done, but a word to the wise here, have your statement of work ready and easily presented to those who are available to you. When your project definitions are very well stated, you very well might get your entire project done for a reasonable amount of resources invested.
Outsource as Much as Your Bank Account Can handle
The project outsourcing companies that will turn your business into a successful business are fiverr.com, guru.com and odesk.com. Give an honest look to each of those, and see what you can get help with today. Remember, as Andy Kessler said in his book Eat People, you’ve got to use the resource that’s abundant to make up for the resource that’s lacking. If you’ve got the cash and not enough time – you know what to do: outsource it now.