Tuesday, January 1, 2008

VA - sort of...

Happy New Year to everyone! 2008 is going to be a GREAT year...I can feel it!

It's late, and I'm tired, but wanted to let everyone know that I have hired out one task on eLance and am getting ready to hire out a second task. Lovely service that thing is! Wow - I do like it thus far.

My business focus is changing. Will talk more about it later. It will be a very good thing though! Starting my two weeks of vacation tomorrow and look to make significant progress on my venture(s).

Cheers and best wishes to everyone in 2008.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Would you be willing to share what specific task you outsourced via eLance? I am eager to hear the results! I have made a proposal directly to a contact I have overseas to do some software development work. I will keep you posted. Kudos on following through on what you said you would do - truly inspiring.

The Four Hour Trial said...

Hi Brick,

There is a thread and survey over at http://fourhourworkweek.com/blog (the blog of Tim's, the author of 4HWW). It's specifically for VA's.

I read through the posts and survey results and found that most people seemed to be very happy with eLance. Thus, I signed up.

I hired out two tasks, one administrative in nature and the other programming related. I've already got my solution for the admin task (contact lists) and am still pending selection for the progamming tasks. I'm actually thinking about posting on Rent-A-Coder.com for that task because I've used it in the past and was happy. The bids from eLance are a little higher than I expected but we'll see.

I'm going to use eLance for a number of things in the upcoming month. Mostly related to marketing/sales tasks.

-M

Anonymous said...

Can you share the description of the outsourced (administrative) task? I'm looking for suggestions on how to word these. Also, what was the cost for the task? In addition, what category did you choose for the post? Lots of variables that can impact the odds of finding a successful VA!

The Four Hour Trial said...

Hi Rex,

Remember, I'm trying to remain anonymous for now! That said, I cannot post entire details, but I can give some ideas to help:

1) I was VERY specific on what I needed.
2) Upon bids being placed, I further clarified individually to any of their questions.
3) I gave exact format of how I wanted the data delivered to me.
4) It cost <$100 for something that I could have done myself, but not for that kind of cost efficiency.
5) I reviewed each of their ratings and that played a big factor in my decision to pick one. However, I also messaged them each individually and used the timeliness and quality of their response to drive my final decision. Many of these companies just post canned bids and I wanted to weed through them to see if I would get a person able to communicate with me in a timely manner.
6) I'm VERY pleased with the person I found and am already having him work on a second task. Once he tells me what he will charge for it then I'll open up a new project and give it to him w/o any open bidding.

I know this isn't exactly what you are looking for, but if you want to tell ME what you want then I'll actually be happy to craft a note telling you what I WOULD write.

Thanks,

-M

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
The Four Hour Trial said...

Hi Rex,

Your post looks fine to me. For eLance, did you choose to have it pay through Escrow? I can imagine that this has a feeling of security to the providers (especially for a newly registered buyer).

The fact that your event is in less than two weeks makes it sort of a difficult task. Are you paying only on commission? It was difficult for me to determine what you mean about the discounts based on a code. Logic tells me that every time a participant registers with that code then the provider will receive some sort of bonus or payment. This puts a lot of human trust into the equation - or, more appropriately, human error in calculations! :-)

Categories: I would put it under Sales and Marketing with sub categories of Lead Generation or Promotions or Tradeshows and Events or Promotions. In fact, the eLance doesn't let you select multiple categories so I would post it three times or more based on your needs. You may even look for samples in the Grassroots Marketing subcategory to see what it looks like.


SEO is probably not relevant for your immediate need and may have scared some people off. SEO is for getting visitors to your site from organic search terms via search engines (meaning non-payed page rank). It doesn't work overnight.

What I think you really need is a nicely targeted mailing list! You can get that FAST and CHEAP through eLance. Then, do you targeted campaign from that! Just one thought.

Hope this helps.

-M

The Four Hour Trial said...

Rex,

I can't find your email address here, or on your blog. You should be able to find mine by going to the "View my complete profile" area under About Me. Click on that and send me an email please.

Thanks,

-M

The Four Hour Trial said...

Note: I deleted one of the comments here by request of the author.

Regards,

-M