Outsourcing is FUN

[pippi]

ugh!

http://outsourcingmadeeasy.net/

do a google on outsourcing made easy as well if you really want to get mad

Testimonials

I used outsourcing to help with an email promotion I was struggling with. They sent the email for me for $100 and it turned into over $60,000 in sales.

~ Cathy Bliss. Gold Medal Ice Skater

I started off with a small project that only cost me $25 and it saved me over 20 hours of phone calls that I was going to personally have to make.

~ Aurelio Ramos. Business Coach

Ever since I learned about outsourcing my life has been so much better. I went from struggling with running 1 company to having 3 successful companies and I have more time to spend with my wife.

~ Ray Taegle. Business Owner

[geekgirl]

I totally hear you. I'm a freelance web/graphics/flash designer programmer server tech who just fled the northeast for virtually the same reason. All the tech companies out there have laid off their IT staff, the region is littered with design colleges RISD, BROWN, BU, etc., and all the students are saturating the market doing work for almost free to "get started on their portfolios". (There's over 50,000 students in my fields of expertise in Boston alone). It's not quite the same as seeing your job go overseas; but it's certainly being priced out of the market.

Plus, there's huge competition with sites like squarespace - which have essentially automated many of my skills. So, my profession is constantly being outsourced to robots. (And, I have to admit, they do a really good job at squarespace)

On the positive side, if you've ever seen this episode of 30days:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0833623/

I found it eye-opening. Some of the outsourcing can be a good thing, and ultimately - in an odd way, beneficial to us.

I'm not sure its beneficial enough in the long run, however, to offset the destruction all of this is doing now.

The only secret I have found to dealing with it is to constantly keep moving, evolving, and adapting.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The good thing about outsourcing is that you can work at the same places everybody else does. Here are a few place online marketers use for outsourcing Internet stuff:

Amazon's Mechanical Turk: https://www.mturk.com/mturk/

Odesk: http://www.odesk.com

Elance: http://www.elance.com/

Getacoder: http://www.getacoder.com/

Guru: http://www.guru.com

There's a lot more.

(Please do not accept work to fill out offers unless you like spam--I will explain that market to you if you like.)

For normal work for stuff that is used in Internet marketing, you have to accept offers, offer services and compete. The trick is to do some stuff cheap, establish relationships and reputation, then increase your price as you start working for folks by email (off these boards). Lots of people are doing this.

If you think the prices are too low, for, say, Mechanical Turk, you should read this from The Simple Dollar: Can You Actually Earn Reasonable Money from Mechanical Turk?

Michael