Pragmatic Outsourcing

Things Not to Outsource Even Though They Say You Should

“51 ways”, “101 tips”, and even “1000 and 1 ideas” on how to Outsource your Life. It seems like there is a non-stop competition in blogosphere to come up with a bigger list. Of course VA companies promoting wonders of life outsourcing directly or through “independent” blogs add their list of ideas and justifications. No matter whether you agree with him or not you gotta give it to Timothy Ferriss, he’s a true trend-setter.

While there are many ways to outsource most annoying aspects of your professional and personal life working with VAs is by no means a panacea for all your errands and chores. I will cover rules for “not outsourcing” in another post, at this point I just wanted to highlight a few areas that VA firms would suggest you outsource while you really should not. The list below is fairly small mainly because I wanted to concentrate on tasks that are highly advertised as VA-friendly tasks while they are not. So, here it goes

10 Things Not to Outsource Even Though They Say You Should

1. Website development. If website is primitive, it takes just knowledge of MS word and few clicks to create a website. If you have no clue how to do even that you should spend a few hours googling, otherwise you are leaving yourself wide open to fraud and over-billing. If the website is very simple yet above a one-pager you probably will spend more time explaining to VA what you want then creating it yourself using DreamWeaver or FrontPage, and if website is a bit higher in complexity you will be lucky to get your money and time worth by working with VA. Find professionals – there are plenty of them (see ideas on how to find one in Best Places to Find a Freelancer.

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December 13, 2009 Posted by Nick Krym | Outsource Your Life | 1 Comment