Outsourcing Costs

Published August 19, 2009 | By Kathy Dobson

With all this talk about outsourcing, I am sure you are wondering by now how much these services are going to cost you. You’re not alone…that’s probably the most asked outsourcing question. Since we’re talking about a ‘relative’ issue here and not a fixed one (every single business has a different set of needs attached to it, and not all business’ will use the same services), it is impossible to give you an exact amount, but it is possible to give you an idea of costs.

Generally there are two types of costs involved with outsourcing depending on the type work completed and/or the level of experience and expertise your contractors offer, payment will be set up one of two ways:

Hourly: an hourly rate is simply that…a flat rate charged per hour. Your independent contractor or virtual assistant charges you for each hour of service they provide.
Set-fee: for some of the more specialized services like web design, graphic work, many contractors will bill you for work performed using a pre-agreed upon set fee.

Each contractor/assistant will charge a different amount per hour. Their fee is based on experience and skills. You can find virtual assistants charging from $10 all the way up to $60 an hour. Once again…the more specialized your project the higher you can expect your hourly fee to be.

Additionally, some contractors will use a third type of fee which is percentage-based. Once you’ve worked closely with your contractor for a period of time and feel you have developed a level of trust with them and vice-versa, you can work out a percentage based fee. Normally in order to attract this type of contractor, your business must be established and successful.

Even if you can’t afford to outsource all the chores you’d like to from the start, choose one or two that take up the most amount of your time or that you find particularly unappealing, and look into the costs for outsourcing those first. Even starting out small….outsourcing one article or blog post a month…will free up some of your valuable time.

So, how do you make that payment now that your project is complete? Since the majority of the assistance you receive will be done via the Internet, there are a few ways that contractors may require payment from their clients. The most requested ones are:

PayPal (now, you just knew that one was going to be first on the list)
Check or Money Order
Credit Card

Paypal is normally the preferred method of payment…particularly if you hire assistants who live outside your own country. You’ll find that the majority of contractors conduct their billing via Paypal. Payment is as easy as clicking a button in your account once they have invoiced you.

This is a great video I found through a link in Phil Hopkins blog review about a product called AffiliateArticleWriters.com. This post is not a review of that product…although I may review that product in the future, but today I am interested in the video as an excellent teaching tool about outsourcing with some very sound advice included. Take the five minutes to watch it. You’ll learn strategies and valuable information on outsourcing articles. This valuable information could save you making some serious article outsourcing mistakes.