So my virtual assistant quit yesterday morning.
She was supposed to fill in time sheets on a daily basis so that I knew how her time was being apportioned, but she hadn’t completed one since last Friday. So I sent her an email asking why. She replied telling me that she had gone out of town on holiday, and wouldn’t be doing any more work for me.
So that was a bit of smack in the chops. I also got an email yesterday from Unique Article Wizard, telling me that my first article submissions had been rejected for the following reasons:
- Article has grammar issues that make it hard to read. Please proofread and make necessary changes.
- Some of your keywords are not relevant to the article content. The system uses the keywords and category selections to ensure that your article is filed properly with the directories. Please make sure your keywords relate to the topic of the article.
I was surprised to receive this email, as I was following Spencer Haws’ backlinking strategy to the letter. I dropped Spencer a line to let him know what had happened, and he was equally surprised. He speculated that the problem was down to UAW tightening their quality control, and SimplyPLR producing less than stellar content more recently. I can certainly verify the second point – to be honest, even the un-spun versions of SimplyPLR’s content is pretty crap (and the spun versions are terrible).
Rather than move into damage control to take care of these problems, I actually decided to take a step back and reevaluate my niche site strategy at a macro level. My evaluation has led me to consider a completely different course of action from what I had planned.
Lessons Learnt
One thing has become resoundingly clear to me – I have gone about things in completely the wrong way. That has led to a lot of wasted time and money. I am not too concerned about that – not only do you have to spend money to make money, you also have to spend money to learn. And I have been learning plenty. Besides, there is no point crying over spilt milk – the money and time is gone forever – all I can do is try to improve my processes moving forwards.
With that said, I thought that it might be of value to pass on what I have learnt.
1. Do Everything Yourself (To Start With)
Near the end of January, I wasn’t particularly enamored with the idea of writing content and populating my niche sites. I decided that I wanted to outsource the whole shebang. Part of my logic was that I could actually make a net profit outsourcing the work and spending the time I gained doing freelance work.
Whilst that is absolutely true, I missed one key pointer – when it comes to building niche sites, you generally need to do everything yourself at least once. If you don’t have a good idea of how everything comes together, how on earth are you supposed to teach someone else to do it?
Case in point: I spent Saturday afternoon trying to prepare a tutorial video for downloading pre-spun articles and submitting them via UAW before I had even done it myself. After 3 hours, I gave up because not only was I unfamiliar with the procedure, I didn’t even know if the articles would get accepted. Stupid stupid stupid.
You need to be very comfortable with every element of the process in order to outsource it. It’s much like how the owner of a business should have at least a rudimentary understanding of what all of his employees do. Laziness and impatience will do you no favors when it comes to outsourcing work.
2. Build A Solid System, Then Outsource It
This tip is not so much about the process, but more about how you teach it.
I remember listening to an Online Income Lab podcast back at the start of the year. Trent was interviewing a chap called Matthew Newton, and he talked in detail about how he had put together the training material for his VA. He actually roped his brother into testing the system for him, and kept working on it until it was essentially foolproof.
Knowing your system is just the first step. Translating your knowledge into clear and actionable instructions is another. I would personally recommend that you prepare training material in video format, for two reasons:
- Written instructions and screenshots take an absolute age to put together
- If your VA follows your instructions carefully, there is little room for error
First write out the steps, then use a piece of software such as Screenflow (for Mac – what I use) or Camtasia (for PC) to record them. If the process is somewhat complicated, you should split it up into several videos, so that your VA can take things step by step.
3. Once You Have Outsourced, Don’t Get Lazy
Here’s a fact – everyone makes mistakes. Your VA is no exception to that rule. If you think that you can hand over your training videos and wipe your hands of the whole process, you will be in for a shock. You can of course leave your VA to his or her own devices, but they will get things wrong. It doesn’t have to be about incompetence – it can simply be about making honest mistakes.
In the first few weeks of your VA learning a new process, you should follow their progress carefully, and correct any minor errors along the way. Far better to nip mistakes in the bud than for them to turn into a habit. If major mistakes are being made, there is either something wrong with your training material, or you’ve hired the wrong person.
4. Know That Your System Works Before You Outsource It
For me, this is by far the most important point. You can get away with the others to a certain extent, but if you have simply dreamt up a system, created training material, then handed it over to your VA, you’re going to end up wasting a lot of money.
Because believe me – the system you start with will not be the system you end up with. Unless you have money to burn, it’s best that you make the majority of your mistakes on a lower budget (i.e. one where you are doing the bulk of the work).
I decided I was going to outsource before I had any of my processes down. Some of it came together quite nicely, with little financial loss (such as keyword research, content creation, and site population), but I have hemorrhaged money elsewhere (particularly in link building subscriptions that I haven’t even used) because I essentially didn’t know what I was doing.
Before you start outsourcing your process (or any particular element of it), make sure that your system works. For instance, I am very happy with my keyword research process, so I would happily outsource that (although I will probably always do the final analysis and decision making). But my link building strategy is still up in the air, so I need to keep costs low on that front, find a winning formula, then forwards with a concrete system.
In A Nutshell – Know Your System
All of the above advice boils down to one main point – you should know your niche site building system back to front before you outsource it. At that stage, you will be scaling up on a winning formula.
I mentioned at the start of this article that I have decided to take a change of direction with regards to my niche site building business model. Stay tuned, as I will be revealing my plans very soon.
I know that quite a few of you outsource at least part of your niche site building process. So please chime in with your thoughts – do you agree with what I have said above? Do you have additional recommendations? Let us know in the comments section – and thank you in advance for your input!
Creative Commons photo courtesy of stuartpilbrow
Oh my goodness Tom!
Yes, you definitely want to go through the entire process at least once on your own before you outsource it.
In my current process, my wife tests things for me. I would consider her an “average” computer user. She can use Word, Excel, surf the web, post photos to Facebook, etc. But she’s clueless about internet marketing.
So when I create a video process, the first thing I do is hand it over to her to see if she can follow it. I watch her watch the video, and I take notes. If she has questions or gets stuck at any point, I know I haven’t given clear enough directions in that particular section.
In doing this, it allows me to iron out 98% of the “bugs” in my newly outsourced process, and when I send the revised tutorial to my outsourcer, I’m far more likely not to run into any problems.
Find someone in your life like that, who you would consider and average to maybe even slightly below average computer user, and see if they’re willing to help you in this way.
It makes a HUGE difference! 🙂
-Mike
Great advice Mike, and something I am going to be doing moving forwards. Thanks! 🙂
I originally hired 2 VA’s for my 4 new niche sites. 1 to do the content writing, and another to do the backlinking. After a month, I fired the writer, since I was getting better results with Text Broker, and it was a bit cheaper in the long run. I do 3-5 stars to get better quality and have set up a great team of writers and am very pleased with their work.
After about 6 months of backlinking, I saw no results with the new sites, so I fired that VA as well. I’m going back to old school with the links, letting them happen naturally like I did with my first 3 authoritive niche sites. I’m just concentrating on creating great content and letting Google do the rest. That’s my plan… for now. 🙂
Hey Richard,
I tried that with a site I created called Deal With Anxiety – just wrote plenty of articles targeting very low competition keywords, and hoped that Google would take note. It didn’t. A failed experiment for me – I wish you success with yours!
Cheers,
Tom
Hey Tom,
EXCELLENT post here and I wholeheartedly agree with your points. As you know, we run an outsourcing company here in the Philippines AND we build out niche websites, so this topic is about as relevant to what we do as it can get.
Point #1 – Spot on. If you haven’t done it yourself, you won’t know whether it makes sense when your VA takes 1 hours to do a task, 3 hours to do it, etc. Additionally, you’d have no idea how to check their work and know whether what they’re doing is the “right” way or not. Handing over someone else’s plan and saying “do it like this” has been a recipe for disaster in our experience.
Point #2 – We like to say, “Make it work first and then scale the S$#% out of hit” If you scale an unproven model you’re in for a world of hurt when it comes to cost/ROI…it’s a huge risk and can be at a very large scale. We’ve gotten to the point where we don’t even bother taking on outsourcing clients if they don’t have their process down on something that works first. We know that it’s so likely to fail that it’s not worth our time learning their process, helping them get staff, etc…
Point #3 – Definitely have to follow up. A mentor of mine gave me a great process he called the “skill transfer process” I thought I’d share with you:
Explain – Explain exactly what it is you’ll be doing, the reasoning behind it, etc. This would be the 30,000 foot view of the process.
Demonstrate – Walk them through the entire process as you’d like it done, step by step. This should be done by you so that they can review your process, take notes, etc.
Practice – Let them step through the process themselves, but step in and correct immediately when they have something wrong.
Observe – After they seem to have gotten it down, spend some time just watching them do it without jumping in. Take notes on what they’re doing. You can space this out further and further out as time goes on.
Feedback – Provide them direct feedback after observing their work, explaining what you’d like to adjust in the process.
Point #4 – The better your VA’s understand your process, the more flexible/nimble they will be when it comes time to making a change. With our niche process we change fairly often, so it’s very useful to be nimble.
Loved it, Tom! Sorry I’m so wordy! lol
Hey Justin,
Awesome advice – thank you! I especially like what you said about handing over someone else’s process – even if they had it down to a fine art, if you’re not totally comfortable with it, it’s essentially a brand new process.
Thanks again! 🙂
Tom
Just curious, do you think there is a market for niche sites built out and then “turning the keys over”. I’m not referring to what Justin and Joe do (which is a super value BTW), but more like;
1) You provide the KW
2) Company writes the content and builds out the site
3) Give you the keys
4) Company does all the backlinking for the the first 3 months.
Thoughts?
I know there is something there, but just not sure what it is.
Hey Matt,
You should ask Trent Dyrsmid of Online Income Lab – he offers a service very similar to what you are suggesting.
Cheers,
Tom
Wow, this post is like Deja Vu! I did the exact thing when I started out, I was so hot on reading all the “Outsource to the Philippines” guides that I actually up and moved here, hired a bunch of people then realized that I had no Idea what they were supposed to do.
I had to take a step back – learn all the tools myself – then teach them the proper way to do stuff.
In the last couple months I’ve had exactly the opposite problem. I spent 2 months perfecting a complex SEO system, adding it all as a template of checklists in TeamworkPm so I wouldn’t have to constantly tell my outsourcers what to do – and then Google decides to go and change everything.
No I have to spend a couple more weeks deciding what changes to make.
Well, no one said it was gonna be easy… Oh, wait – yes they did!
Haha, I feel your pain Chris! You live and learn though…
Tom,
I think you mentioned previously that you got your VA through VSF? If that’s the case, what happens when your VA quits, do they find you another at no additional cost? I’m considering using them and I’m curious how that aspect works. Thanks!
(Sorry if I’m wrong about VSF, I couldn’t find the post in which I thought you mentioned it)
Right now Wesley, I’m not sure. As soon as my VA quit I fired them off an email asking them to find me someone new – that seems utterly reasonable, given that she quit after just two weeks. It would be fair to say that they picked a poor person for me if she only lasted that long (and all of the work she was doing was exactly as the job description described it).
I haven’t heard back from them yet, which is a little concerning. I’ll give them a few more days. It’s all academic as (a) I have found someone else who is willing to work on a pay per hour basis and (b) I no longer need a part-time arrangement, but it will be interesting to see if they are at least willing to find someone else for me.
Thanks for the reply Tom. If it’s not too much trouble could you toss another quick reply on here when you find out?
Great Post Tom! I agree that developing a system that you have actually worked out yourself is the way to go. Doing everything yourself to start allows you to work out the bugs and fully understand the process.
Also, I can only echo what you said about SimplyPLR and UAW…thanks for the great thoughts…
Hey Spencer,
Thanks for dropping by and sharing your thoughts. I’m glad you agree with me – shows I am (now) going along the right lines!
Shame about UAW and SimplyPLR – time to figure something else out.
Cheers,
Tom
Great post and great comments here guys. My VA just left recently so I’m looking for another one. What I did was do everything myself in the beginning, then I made my own set of videos and written docs for training. I timed myself going through the training so I had an idea of how long it would take to learn from scratch. When my first VA went through it he had no trouble.
Thanks to Justin above for his comment as well, that’ll be really helpful when looking for my next VA.
Hey Andre,
Sounds like you have a good system down. Timing it yourself is a great suggestion – if you can encourage your VA to provide detailed timesheets, then you can budget out the cost of your sites to a good degree of accuracy.
And like you say, thanks to everyone else for their comments too! It’s great to have some really experienced guys weighing in here 🙂
Cheers,
Tom
If you hire from oDesk they have this thing that screen captures their desktop, so you can gauge how long it takes for them to complete tasks. I think that it takes 6 screenshots every hour or so.
Pretty cool…thanks for the tip! 🙂
HI Tom
Some awesome inputs from some of the best in the business [Justin (woow long post dude :-))]
As always i seem to do things differently!!
I totally agree you need to understand the steps involved and the overall strategy as well. (for example litle poin tin building 1-5 niche sites and expectig each to be a winner!)
When outsourcing I dont document anything in any format! Give nothing to my people at all.
What I do is define what result i want and any criteria for the action, I then have them sumbimt to me a sample of there work (many samples in fact) to ensure they can supply what i need. Then i montion their work against that specification (PR2-pR4 Blog comment with OBL<100 etc).
I then use One VA to manager that whole process. That VA is capabke also of doing all the steps herself (VA manager).
I apply a similar process to sites I buy and rejuvenaite or expand. Defining what actions i want done to it.
regards
Hi Steve,
Thanks for chiming in with your method, which sounds interesting…it sounds like the equivalent of giving actors the rough outline of a scene then telling them to ad lib, rather than work from a script. I think you’d need a lot of faith in your “manager” VA for the process to be effective, right?
Cheers,
Tom
HI
Not really Tom, Im treating virtual employees like real world ones.
Would you in a semi technical role expact to work to a script!
I put more effort into the up front recruitment phase so i know I onlky get people that already understand whats required. They can and do read blogs and process as well.
Often they have built stes themselves as well. Or written an ebook etc etc.
The VA manager has worked for me for months so i know their capability before i move them up.
So whilst Virtual most of the VA’s are already expert in what they do. I would not take a real world employee and expect to train them in the job i employee them for. Sure further training is done in both worlds.
Hope that explains better
Thanks a lot for sharing your experience!
I’m currently trying to rank my niche site, it’s 5 weeks old now. And to be honest, I lost my patience at time. But I understand that patience is the key factor when it comes to SEO. And I also understand that if I can’t wait for my tree to bear fruits, my efforts will be wasted.
Indeed – I can’t believe how impatient I was with my first niche site – looking back, it was ridiculous. Climbing the ranks in Google takes months, not weeks.
Hi Tom,
Excellent post! Good that you learnt a whole bunch from it. That is what gets you there eventually!
It is exactly like the advice I tried to give you after seeing your income report, but hey, you don’t my advice! :-))
Keep up the good work! You’ll get there for sure.
Mark
It was very timely advice Mark, like I said – it just came a day later than I had come to the same realization! 😉 Great minds think alike, right?
Sure thing! 😉
I think it’s my first time replying to one of your posts here so, hi Tom, I’m Steve, nice to meet you!
First off, great blog you have going here, it’s good to hear the perspectives of someone who started the niche site thing at about the same time I did. There’s always a useful takeaway for me from your posts.
I just wanted to mention that I had similar quality issues with simplyPLR. I couldn’t believe it when MyArticleNetwork REJECTED my simplyPLR articles due to poor quality! They are the same company!! Lol. So i unsubscribed from both and stuck with UAW and signed up for Traffic Kaboom (on recommendation of the IMimpact blog).
Cheers,
Steve
Hi Steve! Thanks for commenting 🙂
Yes – the fact that SimplyPLR articles get rejected on MAN is an absolute joke. I am pretty angry with myself for handing money over to the guy who runs those sites. Oh well – live and learn!
Rank Jumpers just got de-indexed……
Yep – another one bites the dust…
You never spend money to learn, you invest money in learning. Your system is careful selection of crafted knowledge put in motion.
Also it seems impossible (at least to me) to get a system working without knowing the inside out of it. Part of the solution is to automatize the process as much as possible and for that you have to master your own process.
Keep going!
Thanks Nando 🙂