It is never easy to know when you need to be expanding your staff. There are so many factors involved in this decision. Is the extra amount of work really due to growth in your business? Is it sustainable growth, or seasonal? Do you have enough resources for expanding your staff? And where do you find the best qualified people in your area?

If you would consider outsourcing your extra work to freelancers, you will not need to dig into your savings to hire your own staff on a permanent basis. You will neither need to worry on how to find skilled people locally, nor on whether the extra work is due to growth of your business or another reason.  You will simply get the extra work done and rake in the profits.

#1. Getting the freelancers for expanding your staff

You can find freelancers as easy as finding canned food actually. You make trip to the store, pick a can and find out at home whether it tastes any good or not. Many buyers act just as they would when buying a can of food, going to a website for freelancers like Elance.com, or PeoplePerHour.com, post their job, receive bids and pick the lowest bidder and find out later whether it was any good or not.

Outsourcing should not be a gamble on quality, while fixing the lowest price possible.

Outsourcing can be done very cheaply, but this should never be the objective when hiring freelancers as a way of expanding your staff. You should make use of the expertise offered and always choose the best quality that you can afford. After all, it is not just a can of food you are buying. This is your business we are talking about. You would not want your full-time employees to skim the surface, so why should that be all you expect from freelancers?

#2. Creating a team of experts

When shopping for freelancers you want to find experts, who are affordable and available to you. And if you find a gem, you want to keep him for future projects. Here are a few tips for hiring the right person and achieving that:

1. You can separate the sheep from the goats very easily by writing a very detailed job description. The contractors interested in securing the job, will quickly write a proposal with a good time/price offer. However, the freelancers who are really interested in helping you and your business will use your information to check your business out and write a sharp proposal based on your needs.
2. Make sure that the promo talk does have some truth and contact the bidder before awarding the job. Find out more about him, how he plans to execute the project and if you are both on the same page.
3. Stay on top of things by keeping in touch with your contractor throughout the project. You can set milestones and ask for status reports, so that you do not have to be surprised when at the deadline things are not as you expected. Showing interest throughout the project also shows that you care about the end result.
4. Outsourcing is giving and taking. Reward your contractor not only with prompt payment, but also by leaving great feedback and asking to work together on future projects. You could ask to keep in touch through a social network. This way you are building a relationship with the contractor, rather than only buying a service.

Over several different projects, you will find experts in different fields. By building a good relationship with them you can count on a ready team when you need it; a team of individual freelancers willing and able to help you with your project. They know what to expect from you and vice versa.

Now, you have this big project to take on. Perhaps it is a whole new web store selling camping gear, or a promotional campaign for fishing tackle, or maybe the design and launch of a new 8 man tent. How are you going to manage a project that requires multiple contractors at the same time?

#3. Tools for helping expanding your staff

When expanding your staff, the most important thing of project management is communication. You need to be able to communicate to each contractor the overall aim of the project, their individual tasks, and the expected results. And some contractors may need to communicate with each other to come to the same goals.

Communication can be a tricky thing when working with contractors oversees, all in different countries, speaking different languages, working in different time zones. Luckily, there are many tools available to you to help you manage your project well. Here are a few examples:

• Jingproject.com can be used to communicate detailed instructions to your contractors, or they can use it to create a presentation of their work. It allows you to make a 5 minute video of whatever is on your desktop with running audio commentary.
• WebEx.com can be used to hold meetings with all your contractors at the same time. It is a video call/chat tool, with up to 8 people at the time in a conversation. You can watch everyone’s webcam next to each other like a round- table conference.
• Skype.com is used to make free calls around the world to other Skype members, but also very cheap calling to telephones worldwide. Sometimes it is easier to communicate by phone then sending emails back and forth.
• Freemind.com can be used to make a master plan of the project. It allows you to organize items in a treelike structure and add links to the items.
• Gliffy.com can be used to communicate expected results in flow charts, floor plans, and diagrams by dragging shapes into a picture.

These are just a few useful tools for you as a project manager, there are many more available online and offline. However, the most important tool to achieve success with expanding your staff is your own great leadership.

Do you have any extra tips to share on expanding your staff?

When you start making websites and are trying to make a living from it, you soon realize that many hands make light work. This obviously applies to any number of businesses, however a new market has opened in the internet world. The reason for this is a simple matter of economics and convenience. A house wife in the USA can work online for a webmaster in Australia and earn a decent income without even leaving home. That’s the convenience part, the economics part is that people working online will not charge the same price per hour as a person required to attend a job in person.

There are countless people from all over the world offering online services such as content writing, blog maintenance, SEO, and more. The question is, “why isn’t every webmaster using these outsourcing services”?

Reasons why webmasters are not outsourcing work for their websites:

1. They don’t know where to start. How do you begin to teach someone over the internet how to do a job. Even writing a job advert is not an easy task. I found that if you do not mention the things you do not want and be clear, your worst nightmares will happen.
2. They don’t want to manage people or they do not know how. This is not an easy task, managing workers, and it is even harder if they are from another country.They interpret everything in a different way and you have to explain things in a simple language.
3. They don’t trust anyone with their business. Often webmasters think that they will not find anyone to the job as good as they do.
4. They think good workers are too hard to find. Hmmm. This is true, and if you find a good worker on your first try then you are in luck.
5. They think its too expensive. Outsourcing is not expensive, in fact it can be so darn cheap, it can make you feel guilty. But there is that old saying, “you get what you pay for”. Be careful of that one.
6. They have no idea that this is even possible. Who would have ever thought we would be employing people in other countries to help us in our online business? I can’t believe how times have changed.
7. They are not experienced in outsourcing. Well this is a bit obvious. Of course a newbie would be dubious about hiring someone for a job over the internet.

Where do I go to hire an outsource worker?

There are so many websites that are free for you to post a job ad on. Applicants reply and you interview them for the job. I have tried many websites and have found Elance the most user friendly. i have also had the most success there. I have also used Odesk but I do not like this as much.

I usually get people to write articles for some of my smaller niche websites as there is no way I could supply all the websites I have.

Odesk is a website that you can go to and hire a person to help you with your website work. Although it is not just for webmasters, that seems to be the dominant aspect of this website. If you search through the jobs that others are posting you will see that they are all about building websites, writing for websites, or even building software do sell on websites. It’s crazy how outsourcing has become the “in thing” and if you are not doing it, it’s about time you started.

There are now a huge number of websites like odesk, however having tried them all, I have ended up back at Odesk and Elance.com.

How to Post a job on Odesk?

1.  Sign into your account on Odesk.

2.  Hover over the My Jobs Tab.

3.  A menu will appear. Choose Post a job. See the screen shot below.

4.  A form will appear. Simply fill in the details.

When choosing between hourly and a fixed rate you need to think very carefully. I personally like choosing a fixed rate for a particular job. Then if the job is completed then the payment is due. With an hourly rate you can choose, for example 5 hours a week. This job will continue until you end it. If you click on the advanced options link, as shown in the Screen shot below, then more options will appear.

I definitely like the way you can see all the candidates for the job you posted all clearly listed on the one page.It also seems that you do get more employee applications coming through also.

Getting an account on Odesk?

When you sign up for an account at Odesk you will need to verify 2 payments that will be deposited into your credit card. These will also be reversed so it is free to join Odesk. It will cost you nothing in the end. I highly recommend joining Odesk if not for hiring people, but for the learning experience. You can browse through the jobs and see what others are doing with their websites.

One of the hardest parts about being a websmaster is coming up with new content and products continually to keep your website visitors engaged. It doesn’t take long to realize that if you do update your website regularly, the traffic also comes in at a steady, reliable pace. Therefore we need a constant supply of articles, ebooks, giveaways, and more to run a successful website.

I struggled with this for two years, and yes I did outsource some of the work, but it was still too much for me to handle. Then I stumbled upon Master Resell Rights website and was shocked! There was free content, more than I could ever handle. It was nuts.

I could not resist and joined asap. It only costs $19.95 per month and you would not even believe what you get…I probably shouldn’t be showing you this, but hey, why wait like I did to find out about it?

What’s inside the Master Resell Rights website?

It basically has everything you need to start selling packages. All products have rights set to them. Some are private label rights, others have master sell rights, and so on….Private label rights products basically allow you to get the product and rebrand it as your own and do what you want with it…

There are products available for almost every niche and you can also request a product.

What can you do with these Private label rights products?

• Rebrand the product and sell it on your website
• Use a product for a bonus for your other products
• Give the product away as a gift

Each product comes with the rules or rights clearly stated. It is up to you to adhere to the rules.

Can you make money from Private label Rights products?

Hello?? Yes you can. It’s up to you how you sell it but people are making big money out of selling and using these products. Private label rights does not just involve reports and products, there are also articles to use for content. If you don’t like the articles you can edit them and make them your own original, interesting content.

Webmasters are making a full-time income by using private label rights products.

What sort of products are at the Master Resell Rights website?

• Ebooks
• Reports
• Video packages
• Audio packages
• Website themes
• Rebrandable software
• Email Templates
• Complete mini websites
• Sales pages for products
• Goodies just for you…personal use only..
• etc etc etc..

Click Here To Join

There are even archives from previous years.  Click on the banner above (my affiliate link) if you are interested. You can also use this stuff in your membership websites.

Here is a video showing the inside of the website…I cannot show you everything because there is too much!!!

Hey what do you think? Can you see yourself making money out of these PLR products? Please make a comment and let me know what you think…

If you are a webmaster, outsourcing work is a must. This means you hire people to work for you to do work just like in the real world. Anyway in this video below I will show you how to hire a person from one of the main outsourcing websites Odesk.com. You can interview the potential workers by email, msn, or skype. This whole process can be a bit of a headache when you first start out.

Please note that in this video when I committed to hire a person for 5 hours it is billed every week until I finish the job… Other sites hire a person for a job and can pay them for the entire job. For example I could get someone to write 10 articles for me and pay them $5 each article and that’s the end of the job…Or I can hire a person to write 5 article per week and pay them every week. You must be clear about what you are doing.

I have too many WordPress websites to provide content for them all and I outsource some of the work to specialized article writers on Elance.  You can go there to expand your staff beyond just you and outsource a job that you would usually perform.

Unfortunately when I first started creating WordPress websites from scratch I wasted a lot of money on unnecessary mistakes. It is not always easy to judge how well a person will do a job from half way across the world. There is no face to face contact with some contractors, although I like to try and achieve this through Skpe. I have writers in the USA, the UK, and even Europe.

5 tips for hiring the right person on Elance.com

1 ** Be clear about what you want

If you are vague with your job description then what ever you haven’t mentioned, usually happens. It is almost your fault for not finding the right person on Elance.com. You need to be precise and take time writing your listing.

2 **Set a price range

Set a price range of what you want to pay because otherwise you are wasting both your time and the writers time when they put in a proposal. You do not want extravagant quotes coming in.

3 **Set you job job criteria

Set you job job criteria and be strict and stick to it. If you are upfront with the rules now, hopefully you will flush out the people that do not suit you. If they get freaked out when they see your criteria that’s good. You only want the right person for the job.

4 **Delivery for the job

Tell people exactly when you expect delivery because people can get very slack when working unsupervised. Just remember that the people applying for this job are from other parts of the world and have different work ethics. What you think is normal and courteous, may not be in their country.

5**Escrow

When hiring the right person on Elance.com always use Escrow which allows Elance to hold your funds until you are ready to release them. Do not release the funds before the job has been completed.

A friend of mine released $200 accidentally before receiving any work and the writer mysteriously disappeared from the face of the earth, along with the money. He used Escrow but his inexperience led him to push the RELEASE FUNDS button. If the writer had not supplied the work and the funds were still in Escrow they would have been returned to him. Elance is great that way.

Example job listing – hiring the right person on Elance.com

I need many articles but this job is for 25 to see how we work together. I am a serious buyer and will continue to give you work providing you adhere to these guidelines:

—–Criteria—–

*** You must be able to write in good flowing English.

*** You need to engage the reader and make them feel like you are talking directly to them.

*** You must deliver articles on time, as per schedule.

*** All articles are to be on the same Word 2003 doc. We do not accept word 2007. (This is so my VA can open them.)

*** The file name must be labeled clearly. Eg. Niche_yourname_1-10 and Niche_yourname_10-20

*** Each article on the Word document must have its own title.

*** All articles need to be 500 words in length. They should also contain subheadings and sometimes bullet points.

*** All articles will be checked through Copyscape so make sure you are providing 100% original content. No PLR content.

*** While writing an article you must wear red underwear. (Just checking if you are paying attention)

*** You relinquish all authorship of articles.

*** You must provide the same high standard throughout the whole project. If your output does not match your sample work then we will have to cancel our job.

—–Subjects—–

1. Subject one

2. Subject two

3. Subject three

—–Samples—–

See the attached sample and then choose a topic from above and write your own sample article to send to me. I will not accept previously written articles. I want you to choose from the subjects above.

—–Pricing—–

I am on a budget as I buy 100’s of articles a week on a variety of niches. For this project I want to pay $4 for 500 words, however depending on the quality of your sample, this price may increase.

I will not accept any bids higher than $100. Please do not waste your time if you cannot fit to our budget.

If your asking “WOW, did she even get any responses to this job advert?” Well the answer is yes! I had about 5 applicants and I actually chose 2. That’s how good they were.

Update: Since this post was published I have hired many more people to write for me. Hiring the right person on Elance.com or any other job website gets easier with experience. Also the key is to keep great writers busy with your work so they have no time to work for others.. Ha Ha.

Hiring the right person on Elance.com definitely requires that you scare a few people off first.