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Australia’s Email Marketing Guru, Business Coach, Author

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Guru Tour
By West Loh

Folks, welcome to the Guru Personal Tour. This is West reporting in and thank you for joining me. I hope you’re enjoying all the information that I’ve packed into this outsourcing package for you. And I’m looking forward to hearing how it’s affected your business and your life. And obviously, with more leverage and all these people working for you, you’re going to be able to get a lot more done, you’re going to be able to spend your time really focused on the important things in your business and that’s going to transform your results.

So let me get started with Guru.com. Overall, I find Guru very responsive. It has a good range of coders, writers, scripters, marketers, graphic designers…it’s actually a very good, general kind of outsite. Whereas Rentacoder (now vWorker) might specialize in techies and Elance might specialize in writing, I believe Guru is a perfect complement to those two because it kind of fills in the void where the other two might be a little bit lacking. And I actually believe that this site is fair in terms of its prices and it has quite a wide selection and range of people coming and bidding on your projects.

So this is the home page [see video 01:24]. I have an account here. If you haven’t got an account, it’ll ask you to sign up. So make sure you sign up for an account. It’s absolutely free. It doesn’t cost you a cent. The way these sites make money is that when the coders join the site to provide work, as someone who provides work and then pays the coder, you will provide also a small fee to Guru.com. So when the coder gets paid, Guru.com will take a small percentage out of what the coder has bid on it. So it won’t cost you anything extra to use the site, but it actually does cost the coder to accept work and accept money through the site. So that’s how they make their money. Either way, they’re geared towards making it quite an interesting and holistic and comprehensive experience for you. I like the interface for Guru.com as compared to Rentacoder. It’s much more user-friendly. You can see that it has quite a wide range of sections that provide services in. And that’ll depend on the project that you’re getting outsourced.

So let’s have a look at the Admin panel (myadmin). This is my admin. I haven’t used this account in a while, actually. But what you see here [see video 02:53] is it tells you anything that anyone has bidded on your projects will come up under this. If you click on ViewBids/Proposals—I don’t have any bids active; I don’t think I’ve had any projects active on this account for awhile. Here’s some of what I’ve had in the past [see video 03:10]. I wanted someone to fix up a photo in my email signature. I think it’s long finished now but it still records it. This is one of the providers, Willie Johnson Jr. Okay, I awarded and paid this gentleman to complete this task for me. And like the other sites, what you’ll do when you find a coder that potentially could work for you is you click on their profile and you go through that same process. I’ve hammered it through the other sites. I’ve hammered it in a lot of my ebooks and my presentations. You want to make sure, just like eBay, that they’re capable and willing and responsive. Their skill set matches what you want. Their past work is of high quality. They’ve had rave reviews from other people and you actually contact those other people as well.

So what I really like about Guru is it is very, very comprehensive in what it provides. All the contact details are here. Obviously, Guru would prefer that you didn’t go to this gentleman outside of their site. This is a product I’m creating so… listen, if you want to contact the guy, he’s very good [see video 04:30]. Feel free to do that. An overview of what he’s capable of. All these are different languages. These are all the operating systems, databases and stuff that he can work with. This guy’s actually quite highly talented. He writes very good as well, from what I can remember. Read through all these and see if they make a fit with what you’re after.

I also like to look at Work Samples, résumé I like to skim through. Now all of these guys tend to have high qualifications from different organizations. Some of them may or may not be relevant to you but really keep your eyes on the ones that would be relevant for you. I think, for their bids, they tend to really give you great value for money. I found incredible value for money. Do use the Work Samples tab. I really like to check out and see what they’ve done in the past especially on projects that are similar to yours. If you’re getting them to write, have a look at all their written documents. If you’re getting them to do some graphics for you, ask for some samples. Go to their past providers and have a look at the quality of the comments they’ve left. I would also contact them if you get time. You know, it doesn’t take long to shoot them an email. Find out how it was working with this person. And you can see the kind of projects they’ve done here as well, the ratings they’ve got, the reviews they’ve got, that sort of stuff. Take your time to go through that if it’s a big project. If you’re just staring out, you can take less time. And, you know, if it doesn’t turn out, it’s not going to bring the house down, so to speak.

So that’s the important part of the whole process. Remember, as I said, you’re trying to get potentially a staff member to work with you on similar-type tasks for your business on an ongoing basis. So it’s not just one task that you’re getting them to do. It’s almost like interviewing them, doing a whole background check because you’re getting a new virtual staff member. And that’s really going to transform your business and your effectiveness. And that’s one of the main reasons why I hope that you’ve tried to gleam from all the information that I’m passing on to you.

All right. So from here, you can post a project [see video 06:51]. We’ll go really quickly through this. Choose your category. And it should be very similar to the other sites that I’ve taken you through as well. If you haven’t had a chance to watch my Elance and Rentacoder, my Camtasias, please do that as well. It would be quite useful for you to give you a quick tour. So after you click ‘post your project’, you basically type in the title. Same principles on outsourcing that I’ve had in the past; don’t put too specific details. You’re being vague. I’m getting them to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) if it’s very, very high in intellectual property content. You can’t disclose for your competitors. Remember, this stuff is available on Google search so it’s available publicly. So you want to give general and specific later on. I also like to put in a private code in here to make sure that when they reply they include the private code. Remember I was saying in one of my presentations that some of the coders have software that automatically bids on projects that come through regardless of whether it fits them or not. They accept it and then they tell you later on that, you know, it’s not a good fit. So you want to make sure right from the get-go that it is actually someone who is actually ready and can customize all their work towards what you want. I like to also talk about the availability for them, communication avenues; a few other things like payment you can discuss later. But I like to tell them that I pay them promptly. And then your golden starting phrase, you know, ‘this is an easy project for a coder who knows what they’re doing’ will tend to give you much, much lower bids than something just diving into a very complex project.

And that’s pretty much all you need to put for this general item project description. Remember, later on, you be very, very specific. The more specific you are later on, the easier it’s going to be for you. If you’re very vague later on, it’s going to be tough for the coder to deliver the goods. And that’s from past experience as well. So make sure you know exactly—you know, if you handed someone a blueprint on how to do what you want done, then that is what you need to give them. On the other hand, if you want the coder to give you a lot of input you want to put that in as well. So, you know, I’m looking for this done but I also want a lot of input or direction from an expert, so from a coder who knows what they’re doing to give me guidance on this, this, this and this. So if that’s what you want, make sure you’re very clear on that.

Include any files you want to upload, that sort of stuff.

Budget again. Same as all the other sites.

Okay. So once you click on that [see video 10:08], you can then choose how you want it to be available. Invitation Only—maybe you’ve worked with coders in the past. Later on down the track you want to invite them to bid on it again. Or basically, Public and Freelancers.

So fill out the rest of the information. I’ll just type in some information so I can show you the next page.

Okay. So this is the final page before posting the project. I’m not gonna post the project. Obviously, this is just a mock listing to show you what’s done. So make sure you check everything here [see video 10:52]. It’s very important you check everything to make sure everything’s correct. You will get a chance to edit it later on if it’s not right. But, you know, if it’s not right you’ll get bids immediately within the first four to six hours. You’ll get, you know—depending on the project—anywhere from three to ten bids. You don’t want to be going back and having to tell those guys that the information you put in was inaccurate and they have to rebid and recalculate and all that sort of stuff. So make sure it’s done properly and it’ll save you time as well. And the clearer you are, you know, the more specific they’re going to be and the faster and more efficient and higher quality of work they’re going to be when they actually work with you.

Okay. So that covers the Post a Project tab. I think with Guru, it’s pretty self-explanatory in terms of searching the site. I think this is one of the easiest sites to start on if you’re just getting out there. You might want to start by posting a small project on Guru.com and basically testing out the interface, testing out the availability of some of the coders available and going from there to moving on to bigger and better projects.

So that’s, I guess, a personal tour… again, a couple more things just before I finish up here:
The message board should be available with coders through here as well. I’m pretty sure that that’s available. Here it is [see video 12:36]. So this is the message board, discussion board—they call it here. I’ve got ten or so communications with this gentleman. And this is just for you and the coder. It’s for no one else. It doesn’t get posted publicly like the project does. And I do believe you also have to verify certain payment criteria just to secure your identity. And it is quite safe. I mean, it’s a pain in the butt at the start when you’re going to put in all these verifications but it is actually a lot safer to deal with coders and for them to deal with you now that you are verified and are proven a person with and identity and someone who actually can also be proven that they can pay once the projects are delivered.

Guru also has escrow—same as the other sites—where Guru accepts and keeps the money and doesn’t release it until you are happy with the work of the coder.

So that’s Guru in a nutshell. I really, I think the touring of the site itself, I hope I’ve given you a little insight on how to use it. If you’re new, it would have been helpful; but I also believe you could also just tour the site, play around with all the buttons, click on everything. You can’t really go wrong. Read all the things that are important and impertinent to what you’re looking for.

I want to finish up by saying it’s all about the mindset when you come to these sites. Know what you want. Think about or revisit your hedgehog concept or what Jim Collins likes to call your absolutely core skill that provides the highest value for your company and your business and outsource the rest. Make sure that you’re not spending time doing tasks that can be outsourced for less than what you’re worth. And in most cases, any task or any tedious, repetitive, low-value task is going to be better outsourced than for you to do it yourself. And part of this course where I’ve put together all these videos and also the presentations is to get your mindset right so you can really start focusing on what’s important and take leaps in your business.

I want to finish up by saying that outsourcing is definitely in the next phase for people who want to get online and really leverage themselves. It can also be used for a lot of offline stuff like you need to get books written and that sort of stuff. Really sit down, have a look at your business model, have a look at your strategies, have a look at your mission statement and find out where you could leverage your business, which areas. Sit down, get a mind map going, talk to your managers, talk to your business partners, talk to your best employees. If you can wave a magic wand online—or even offline—what would you do that you can’t do now due to lack of time or lack of money now that you know you have the entire, you know, almost an army of coders with unlimited skills available for you, ready to work at an absolutely bargain price? They produce world-class work for next to nothing. They work 24 hours a day. They’re ready to work with you. They’re ready to work for you and they’re hungry to help you. So I hope I’ve helped to give you some sort of mindset change as well as give you a heads-up on how successful people use outsourcing to their advantage.

If you have any other questions, problems or issues, please email me at info@westloh.com. I really appreciate any feedback as well. And thanks for watching these series of videos. If you haven’t seen the Rentacoder and Elance one, quickly please watch those before you get stuck into outsourcing. If you’re getting started, I recommend getting started probably on Guru. Start with something small. You might want to get a webpage modified. Everyone has stuff that they—probably a webpage that they want to get modified or get an email written or something. Or get a report written. Something really simple, really easy. Get used to it. Put all your verifications in on the sites and you’re ready to go for much larger scale down the track.

So, that’s it for me. If you haven’t had an opportunity to soak up some of the other items that you’ve purchased in this product, make sure you have a look. We’ve got some great ebooks for you. We’ve also got some interview transcripts, some reports. I’ve included my Powerpoint presentations in audio CD, mp3 files as well. So there’s a ton of information in there that you need to start trolling through before you really dive into it. By the end of it, you’re going to be an absolute expert and you’re going to have all these guys working for you at the end of the stream.

So good luck with your business. As I said, contact me if you need anything else. Thanks again for listening and I look forward to touching base in the future. Take care.

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Elance Tour
By West Loh

Welcome, folks, to the Elance Outsourcing Personal Tour. This is West reporting in and I hope you’re having a fun time going through the pack and learning lots and lots about outsourcing so you can transform your business.

This is the front page of Elance [see video 00:17]. Obviously, if you haven’t got an account with Elance yet, you’ll need to basically click—there’ll be a link up here somewhere—it’ll say ‘Sign Up.’ I’m already a member. I’ve already used Elance on a few occasions and I’ll be more than happy to take you through and talk you through some of the processes and some of the parts of the website that you need to be familiar with. So make sure you get a free account. I believe you have to verify a few things if you’re serious about getting some work done here. These sites are cracking down on security and identity so you might have to provide three or four forms of identification, credit card and a few other things—which is good for you, basically. The more identification that you basically give, the safer it is for you and the safer it is for the coders.

So I’ll just point this now. This gentleman is a guy called Timothy Ferriss who wrote the 4-Hour Workweek. It’s a fantastic book. If you haven’t read it, it’s all about basically outsourcing your entire life, making your life highly leveraged and enabling you to do the things that you want to do. It’s a good little video. I recommend you just having a listen to Tim and definitely getting a hold of his book or audiobook if you can.

So let’s have a look at some of the important parts of the website. I want to go to MyElance [see video 01:56]. Again, similar to Rentacoder (now vWorker), what you’ll find on Elance is a selection of either coders coming to look for work or people like yourself who are looking to get jobs done. So majority of people on this site will actually be providers—people who are actually wanting to provide the work—believe it or not. So that’s a good thing for you. It means a lot of people are competing to bid on your projects.

So let’s have a look at your interface. Now once you sign up—as I said, you go through all the verifications and that sort of stuff—you can click on MyProjects. Now these are a few projects I’ve had in the past [see video 02:38] before through various university degrees and stuff like that.

Let’s have a look at this one. Now that was the title of my project [see video 02:54]. I believe we’ve actually worked this one through. These are all the bids that came through. Some of them are here. And what happens when you actually get a ton of bids is you need to start looking at different criteria in order to choose the coder that’s going to work really well, really diligently, who’s going to work at a good price and is going to stay with you. So that’s important when looking for a coder.

Now Elance is, in general, good for writing. I found people who have really good English, people who are highly qualified, have lots and lots of experience writing on journals, newsletters, articles, ebooks at reasonable prices. I mean, in recent times the market has tend to become a little bit overinflated; Elance is one of those sites where kind of upper-class writers and professionals will come and offer their services on.

So if you’re looking for rock bottom deals or you’re looking for a place where you can just pay the cheapest price for a job, Elance is probably not the place to go. But if you’re looking for a good quality writer, someone who can actually produce content if you have a membership site or if you’re looking at writing a book or getting a book ghost-written or looking at a series of emails for your client base, then on almost any topic you’ll be able to find a good writer on Elance. You know, you pay them what they’re worth, but I think they will deliver for you.

So this one [see video 04:35], I wanted to basically get some eclasses written. So I put up the listing, got a whole range of bidders on the project. There was a significant range—average bid was $156 USD—and I ended up choosing one of the gentlemen who delivered really well and is still working for me today. It’s probably been six months later. So this, again, similar to the other sites, you can have a look at a provider. Now Elance is actually a lot more ergonomically designed, much better navigation than what Rentacoder is. You can have a look at the Portfolio of that particular provider and it will show you the past projects that they’ve done. It’ll show you some of the feedback that they’ve had. There are some of samples up here [see video 05:29]. You can have a look at their style of writing. You can have a look at their past ratings from other clients. So they’ve had a lot of good ratings here, 2 neutral, 1 negative—that’s pretty good. Their total earnings. So these are all the stats that you’ll take into account when you’re looking at choosing a coder.

I also like to have a look at their past projects and see what kind of industries they’ve been writing for, have a look at the kind of scope. You can tell by the price whether they have been big projects or small projects or medium projects. So this writer seems to be a good one. I would also look at their profiles. Sometimes they have websites. Sometimes they give out some of their qualifications. Sometimes they like to give samples. Here we go [see video 06:28]. So you can then just read through all of those, read through all their things. I think, you know, if you’re really serious about getting a long term writer for you, having a long term relationship who’s doing quite important work for you that you could see happen in a long term basis or if it’s an important product such as a book or an ebook or something like that, then it is important to do your due diligence because it’ll save you a lot of heartache and pain later on.

So if you want to post a new project on Elance, you just click on the Post New Project button [see video 07:04]. And it’s similar to Rentacoder. You need to go through all these things: you type in your title, your description, that sort of stuff, when you would like it done, use escrow. So escrow, Elance holds the funds once you’ve deposited the funds into Elance either via your credit card or via Paypal, Elance will hold on to it and it won’t release the funds to the coder until you are happy with the work. And that’s what I love about these sites: is that you have total control over the coder’s work and the payment of the coder. If they don’t deliver to your 100% specifications, then they don’t get paid. So it’s in everyone’s best interest to really work through.

I’m going to start to fill out my mock presentation here so we can just have a quick look at anything else I might need to explain. So approximate budget, you just choose what you are looking to pay in the ballpark of or you can sometimes leave it open, I believe, I’m not sure. And that tends to give a wider range of choices when people bid but it doesn’t limit you. Because if you put list $150 or ‘Less than $500,’ you will tend to only get, you know, a very small percentage of people bidding. And remember, things can be negotiated. Maybe you can offer services or you can offer equity later on for really good people to work with you.

Okay. So this one here [see video 08:54], it’s kind of like eBay has—if you compare it to eBay—eBay has like featured listings and you can pay the, sort of the go to the top, and then get put in front of more people. Elance has a similar thing if you want to do that. Click on Featured; if not, just click on Standard. Okay. And basically, it allows you to preview things. Now obviously, I haven’t put in any detail so I’m not going to post this. But you would just click Post Now once you’ve got it all done. Remember, don’t put in all the details for everyone, for someone to be able to take away a blueprint and copy your project from start to finish. You want to put in something that gives people a general idea of what you want but then give them specifics later or you might get them to sign a non-disclosure agreement if it’s very important stuff.

Again, you also might not wish to title it. Like ‘outsourcing,’ it looks very obvious what I’m trying to do. You might just put in ‘ebook project’ or something like that and then fill them in on the actual title, chapter outlines, specs on exactly what you want to talk about, et cetera, later. So that’s a smart option as well.

All right. Let me just flicker back through Elance to find out if there’s anything else I need to talk you through. Go back to the home page. (Click on MyElance). Okay. I believe, with Elance, you will also need to verify before you pay. It’s quite simple. I mean, the interface looks very clean and neat. I don’t believe these [see video 10:58] are super, super important. You can flick through these in your own time. The most important one is up with the Buyer Activity, flick through the Projects, Draft Projects, that sort of stuff.

Again, I’ll just show you quickly the process of looking at past projects for potential suitors. This is the actual interface [see video 11:27] where you can see where all the people have bidded. I believe there’s a notice board as well.

Okay, so I’ve awarded it to this gentleman.

Okay, that’s [see video 12:00] explaining the escrow. So that just basically explains the escrow here, how it works. I’ll let you read through that in your own time. You can pause the video now and just have a quick sqeeze or you can go into Elance and have a look at it yourself. Shut that down.

Here we go. Private Message Board (PMB) [see video 12:16]. Sorry about that. It’s been awhile since I’ve been back. So in this message board, it allows you to basically communicate with your coder through the Elance interface. I like to use it for communicating with them at the start to make sure they’re responsive, to make sure their English is good, to make sure that some of the things they say are congruent and to make sure they’re not like a computer program that’s just spitting out, you know, responses generally and not tailoring things to what I need. I also like to use it to really pass on a lot more of the finer details. You can attach any attachments, documents explaining anything you want detailed through here. And this is a private message board so people don’t get to access it. When you post your bid on publicly, then everyone gets to see it. And it’s actually even searchable through Google. So as I said, be very, very vague if you’ve got specific project details in mind. So this is like—we’re back and forth, back and forth. And that was our private message board, which is on most of these outsourcing sites. And it’s very, very useful.

I think that’s pretty much all I wanted to cover with Elance. In summary, I would have to say that Elance is very neatly organized. Their interface is clean. The general population is quite high in terms of the prices that you’ll be paying, but the quality of work tends to be better. Same process that I’ve been teaching you throughout the entire outsourcing course here in that you need to look at a few different specific indicators that they’re going to work and they’re going to stay.

So that’s pretty much it for Elance. I’m going to talk through another site now. I look forward to hearing your feedback and I look forward to hearing about you using these sites to your full advantage.

So it’s West signing off and I’ll see you in the next video.

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