If you’ve read Tim Ferriss’s book the 4 Hour Work Week. Or ever tried to hire someone from elance or guru.com, you will know it’s not a straightforward task.

Check this video out to find out why.

Topics: 4 Hour Work Week, Personal Outsourcing, Virtual Assistant | 3 Comments »

I’m setting up a technocrati account up to share some link love around the internet.

Tim Ferriss has just made a post asking to link to a story of interest on his blog, I’m going to help him out.

This post shows what and how he packs when he is traveling http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/07/11/how-to-travel-the-world-with-10-
pounds-or-less-plus-how-to-negotiate-convertibles-and-luxury-treehouses/
keeps it really lite and i think that it is so cool,

Came across this site too about making money online and liked Roberts ‘flava’ Cybercashology http://www.cybercashology.com/?p=205

Here’s the link to my Technocrati profile http://technorati.com/claim/sf95f863mx

Topics: Internet Marketing | Give Your Two Cents »

IMGP1503

Originally uploaded by gavster6

In try outsourcing fashion. I have outsourced my son Jack’s first ride on the back of a motorbike.

It was with his Grandad, Dave Shires on our recent holiday in France where Dave lives.

Obviously I would have liked to have taken Jack on the back with me, but his Grandad is a more experienced rider than me and someone had to hold the camera.

Topics: Personal Outsourcing | Give Your Two Cents »

Here’s my take on it. I’m not sure if you can..
At the end of the day they are going to tell
you they can do everything.

Well they should if they are worth their salt,
because that is what you are employing them
to do.

If they are working independently i.e. for
themselves if they were any good they would
be fully booked, unless you happened to be
one of the first very few people who they
spoke to.

Obviously the best thing to do is to ask for
references of people they have worked for
and see how they react to that.

What I choose to do now is to work with my
partner in Outsource Success. He is Indian,
lives their, has a background in recruitment,
project management and IT.

He is must better placed to weed out the dead
beat VA’s than I am or ever will be.

About 6 months ago a new company launched
amongst a blaze of online publicity saying
that they had a team of 300+ Indian VA’s
that were available to get work done for you.  

I asked my partner to find out about them
as we might be able to poach some of the
workers for our team as they were obviously
not being paid much based on the prices being
offered to clients.

Funnily enough he had the resume’s of 5 people
already citing that company’s name, that should
have been a warning as why would they be looking
for a new job already.

Anyway he interviewed 3 of them, they were less
than impressive and weren’t competent at all.

Funnily enough I have not had any good reports
about this company, good at Internet Marketing
as they were they sucked on delivery.

As the saying goes

‘If you are going to pay peanuts
 you are going to get Monkeys’

Gavin Allinson
support@OutsourceSuccess.com

P.S.So my suggestion is to choose a company
    that can provide testimonials and to steer
    clear from one person bands.

P.P.S Give our team a try first, if you don’t like
      us I’m more than happy to give you the details of
      2 or 3 other companies that I have heard good
      things about.

Topics: outsourcing, Virtual Assistant | Give Your Two Cents »

I have had a number of people contact
me about putting into place strategies
from the 4 Hour Work Week.

This excites me that people are wanting
to take the first steps to living the 4HWW.

My concern is this, the majority of people
don’t have a solid enough foundation to
build upon.

I have been asked by a number of people about
various things, link building, SEO optimisation
google adwords, landing pages etc.

When I have had a look at their websites
often they have been so poor any money
that will be spent on sending traffic to their
sites will be surely wasted.

Let me give you a quick checklist to assess your site.

** Does your home page have a name and e-mail capture box?
** Is the capture box above the fold i.e can it be seen
without having to scroll.
** Are you asking your prospect to do only one thing on the page
a confused mind never buys
** Does your site look clean and tidy or do you have multiple ads,
logos and links

If your site complies with this basic checklist you will
be well ahead of the game and you can go and contact a Virtual
Assistant to get work done for you.

If it doesn’t you will be throwing good money after bad,
my team will put together a decent landing page that will
fulfill the above requirements and more for $100.

Send an e-mail to support@OutsourceSuccess.com to get a
landing page created for you.

best regards

Gavin Allinson

Topics: outsourcing | Give Your Two Cents »

Here is a section from an e-mail that I received yesterday
from Ginny in Australia

I have similar messages on a daily basis so
I know this is not an isolated problem.

This is what she had to say …

—————————————–

So far, I have been a bit frustrated with
the VA and outsourcers I have hired
- I spend as much time emailing back and forth
asking them to correct little, obvious
inconsistencies and trying to suggest ways to
get the site looking good as I used to spend
trying to work out how to do it myself!

—————————————-
and my response

Anybody who has used an outsourcer  or VA will
have had this problem at some point

OK the truth is this is less about the VA and more
about you.

I came to this realisation  myself when working
with the English web designers that a client had
already started with. Up until that point I had thought
that it was just one of the drawbacks of dealing with
outsourcers form a different culture.  DUH how wrong I was.

The tasks that I thought were obvious and needed
little explanation were not obvious to the
English designers and they either did not
do them or to the level of  that I required.

It is frustration at this point that leads people to
fall into the trap of.

** learning how to do it themselves
** doing it themselves if they are capable
** moan about outsourcers from different countries.

As I was having the same problem with Indian Outsourcers
and experienced English web designers the common problem
factor had to be me.

It was my failure to accurately

·  describe what I needed doing and

·  what my expectations were

that led to the break down in communication
and my subsequent frustration.

If your truthful the same reasons cause the same
frustrations in all relationships not just
those with your outsourcers.

I’ll share next time how I manage these
situations to get better results now.

Gavin Allinson

P.S. I’d be interested to know what else
causes you frustration with Outsourcers

Topics: outsourcing, FAQ | 2 Comments »

I’ve created thsi video which demonstrates the projects I am working on in my
Sports Marketing Strategy
business

Make sure you let me know what you think

Topics: outsourcing | 5 Comments »

In order to live the 4 hour Work Week you need to have a good Virtual Assistant. Contrary to what you may think they are not that easy to come by good ones at least, in fact some have said they are as rare as ‘Rocking Horse Poo’.

Listen to the recording below to find out why you need to hire a VA sooner rather than later.

Gavin

Topics: 4 Hour Work Week, Virtual Assistant | Give Your Two Cents »

The difference between Outsourcing and Out tasking

Topics: tutorials | Give Your Two Cents »

Geo-Arbitrage is a term I first came across in Timothy Ferriss’s excellent book the

4 hour work week.

There are 2 main applications

1 If you can charge in dollars for a job lets say $15 and get someone (usually a VA or virtual assistant in another location) to do the job for $5

you have just created an arbitrage ( money out of thin air).

2 If you are being paid in dollars and live in America and your cost of living ( rent, food etc ) is

$100) per month. It is possible to live in a country such as Thailand, Argentina etc where it will only cost you $500 per month for the same standard of living.

Where would you like to spend some time where the cost of living is lower than where you are.

Gavin

Topics: 4 Hour Work Week | Give Your Two Cents »