The Time I Failed at Outsourcing My Job
Failure. Oh sweet, sweet failure.
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It was spring of 2010. I was finishing my Masters degree and I’d just devoured Tim Ferris’s 4-Hour Workweek. I was already feeling uneasy about going to graduate school, mostly because of the cost, and this book didn’t help. When you compare tens of thousands of dollars in student loans with the price of a book like the 4-Hour Workweek (the hardcover, extended version, no less), it’s hard to argue for traditional education, but that’s another topic for another day. Let’s take it one failure at a time.
Where was I? Ah yes. Graduate school, Tim Ferriss, and blood-sucking student loans. I decided I didn’t want to jump into a job after I graduated, and since I also had exactly $0 in capital to start a business, that left me with the option of doing some freelance writing work. I thought, “This is the perfect opportunity to put the 4-Hour Workweek to the test!” So I started doing some freelance writing online, and let me tell you, it’s a rough world out there. My limited experience with writing at that time was as Editor in Chief at my college newspaper. So I signed up with some online content farms that were paying $15-20 for 600-word articles, just to get my feet wet. I figured these sites would be as good a place to start as any. Once I got some articles up (mostly how-to articles about how to start child care businesses, for some reason), I started scheming about ways to outsource all or part of the writing process.
Bad Start
In hindsight, I was off to a bad start already. $15-20 per article doesn’t leave much margin to play with. But I was determined and inspired by Tim Ferriss and his ability to turn himself into a human guinea pig. I took that inspiration and did a little brainstorming. I figured that I could outsource the research of the articles, and have my yet-to-be-found outsourced assistant write up a rough draft. Then I could simply edit the draft, check all the references, and submit it. Easy! Editing a well-written draft takes substantially less time than writing something from scratch. I didn’t know how much I could pay for such a service, and I knew that most people would go to sites like Elance and Odesk to find freelancers. I decided to take a slightly different approach, and I went on Craigslist—in India—to do some price research.
I Was Shocked
I found hundreds of American companies looking for content writers willing to pay a whooping $1 dollar for 600-word articles (I checked again now, 3 years later, and there seems to be substantially less work like that available). I could have been really thrilled at how much money I was going to save, but this discovery didn’t leave a good taste in my mouth. I grew up in a third-world country, and my graduate degree was in Business and Sustainability, so these sort of exploitative prices raised all sorts of idealistic and ethical red flags. I believe that since the Internet is breaking down borders and access to talent from around the world, there’s no reason not to pay a fair wage for quality, no matter where it is. (However, I’m open to counterarguments.)
“…there’s no reason not to pay a fair wage for quality, no matter where it is.”
Once again, I decided to take a slightly different route, and I posted the job with U.S. minimum wage as compensation. I was not ready for what happened next. I received an enormous amount of responses. And not just any responses—I got emails from highly qualified professionals with 10 or 20 years of experience in their fields. I got emails from C-Level Executives, professional writers, and college professors. It was insane. Unfortunately, most of the candidates were not good writers. Most of their emails were hard to read and had an abundance of spelling and grammatical mistakes. But still, I was expecting a lot of entry-level candidates, so it was surprising to say the least.
You’re Hired!
I sorted through the candidates and picked two that seemed promising, both women. If they could do the research for one article per hour, and work from India while I was asleep in the US, then I would wake up to at least 8 or so articles ready to be edited. I would try to edit and submit at least 3 or 4 articles an hour, at a “profit” of about $10 per article, which would leave me with a respectable wage of $30 to $40 an hour. Not bad. I would pay them via PayPal, and communicate through Skype and email. Theoretically, it was a solid plan.
Now, anyone who knows anything about writing knows that this is pretty insane. You can’t possibly thoroughly edit and submit a 600-word article in 15 minutes. At least not at that level of experience. Did I mention I also had to find all the article images and write up the captions for them? Yeah, this was not going to work.
Still, I gave it all I had. I spent countless hours glued to my seat at coffee shops writing and timing every minute of a self-imposed 10-hour shift, not wanting to sit too far from the restroom so that I wouldn’t lose unnecessary seconds. Communicating with my new assistants was hit-or-miss, and I often ended up writing the articles from scratch because their drafts or outlines were unusable. It was hard, and it was hell. Finally, about 3 or 4 months into it, my girlfriend at the time said, “I think you should just get a real job.” Defeated and exhausted, I said, “Ok, fine.”
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
I learned several valuable lessons through my short stint trying to outsource my work to India.
1. Managing people isn’t necessarily easier than doing the work yourself. There’s a reason why good managers get paid a ton of money. Managing people is a higher-level skillset that most people looking to outsource often lack.
2. Failing is part of learning. I already knew this one, but I got to appreciate the process of failing in small chunks as you’re trying to inch your way towards making something work.
3. Tools can’t help you if your vision isn’t clear. What was my plan, exactly? Was I ever going to scale this writing operation to an epic team of assistants and live on a beach somewhere—constantly checking my email for articles to edit? I’m glad that I got to fulfill my curiosity, but I was sorely lacking a long-term plan.
Have you had any experiences with outsourcing that are similar? I’m curious, so connect with me on Twitter, @alexcequea, and let me know!
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