Offshore Your "Busy" Work
& Technical Work

by Michael Ellis (1/20/2006)

If someone were to ask me what was the most widely used IT (Information Technology) buzzword in 2003/2004, I'd probably have to say that 'offshoring' was pretty darn high up on the list. In the IT world here in the USA, the term 'offshoring' is referring to relocating a technology related job from here in the US to somewhere overseas (mainly India) where the technical labor costs less, which usually results in the work costing less as well.

Over the past couple of years there have been numerous examples of large corporations off-loading various technical-related jobs to various offshore locations by the 100s and 1000s. I have experienced this shift in jobs firsthand - remember I'm an IT geek at heart that started out working in the IT industry. I can tell you that the demand for IT expertise in the US has declined significantly in the last decade.

To give you a brief summary of how this all came to be; you have to look back to the early 90s. In the early 90s, the Internet was still a rather new phenomenon, and the major Internet entrepreneurs were based here in the USA. Sure there were definitely people all over the world learning this rather new field, but there wasn't yet an efficient and easy way to link the offshore talent with the home-based entrepreneurs to allow the level of collaboration needed to work together. Therefore, it was just more practical for US-based entrepreneurs to hire US-based IT personnel.

Then, throughout the 90s the Internet simply exploded. At this point, just about everyone in the US had a connection to the Internet. Internet access overseas was also much more readily available. Furthermore, many software tools were also created that allowed people in distant locations to work together efficiently. And many websites that allowed entrepreneurs and technical experts to get together and coordinate/execute projects together regardless of their locations were also becoming popular. Now the Infrastructure was in place... Today, with a cost savings of up to 75%; many organizations are saving a lot of money by offshoring tasks.

How can offshoring benefit the small-time Internet entrepreneur?

Simple. The small-time Internet entrepreneur can benefit the same way the large corporations are benefiting - by offshoring! The Internet is the great equalizer. You no longer have to be a multi-million dollar corporation to have the connections to the best development prices. Now small business owners can find and communicate with great talent (anywhere) to work on projects at the lowest possible prices.

Here are some possible projects:

• Do you have a website that you've been putting off to develop because you simply don't have the time (or technical expertise) to create it? (Technical work)

• Maybe you have a website that you want to incorporate a catalog of products with a shopping cart (purchasing) capability but don't know what's involved? (Technical work)

• Or maybe you have a website but you simply don't have the time to write quality content for it? (Busy work)

In any of the cases above, you can surely find a suitable person to get this work done for you at a nice cost savings if you know where to look. And a couple of great places to look for this cost savings are Getafreelancer and Rentacoder. Both of these sites allow you to post your project details and developers will respond by bidding on how much they will require to complete the project. You can also specify a price range that you are willing to pay.

Many of the developers that bid on these projects are from overseas, so the prices are kept low. However, you will also find that there are US-based developers on the site as well. These developers have to compete with the overseas developers, so you still get a good price. However, if you do use a US-based developer, you're no longer 'offshoring' your work, but rather 'outsourcing' your work. What's the difference as long as you get a good deal for quality work. The fact that you have access to this global competition allows you to benefit (like the big corps) by paying a lower price for the work.

Make sure you select a developer that is experienced in kind of work you're looking to get done. If you have a writing assignment, make sure the writer has a lot of experience writing content in English and is willing to show you plenty of examples of their previous work. You also have the ability to see the developer's ranking/Bio on the site.

Go ahead and take a look at some of the projects currently open for bids on these sites. That should give you a good feel of what kind of tasks are being developed through these sites, as well as, the typical rates for the tasks.

Note about offshoring/outsourcing: Don't think that you can offshore/outsource everything. In the past, I've come across a few entrepreneurs that assume that anything and everything can be offshored/outsourced successfully. I certainly have not found this to be true, but I guess it depends on how you define 'successfully'. The tasks that seem to work well via offshoring/outsourcing are the repetitive tasks (busy work) or the easily definable technical tasks - tasks with easily definable inputs and easily definable outputs.

Good luck! And be sure to come back to visit VictoryKey often for more online business tips and discussions!

Author - Michael Ellis (Email: michael@victorykey.com)

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