Master Finding Good Help to Delegate To

I had just finished creating my business model and settled on Joomla as the cms of choice. I find Joomla easier to use than WordPress and was very confident of finishing the site on time. Time unfortunately does not suffer procrastinators and I found myself in the need of good help to finish off some work which I considered to be easy and repetitive.

So I quickly headed to digital point forums and posted this

I need someone to do a Joomla project very quickly . I will pay $30.

I hang around the forum for about 15 minutes and needless to say I got some 20 replies in English and some other languages I could not understand. Seeing myself as a “budding new age entrepreneur ” I settled on the cheapest help I could get. That my friends was the end of a rather good story.

For the past 4 weeks, work that could have been done in 3 hours has not been completed and I keep getting all these requests that tell me to ” pay now, work finished”. I was so annoyed , I had to change all my ftp passwords and redo the site from scratch. The total cost for the 3 hour job was 4 weeks ,headaches and another 10 hours to redo the Joomla site.

This is my advice if you wish to get good help to delegate those boring jobs you have to do in your web site.

1. Find Good Help in The Right Places

Where you go to find the help depends on the job that you need done. There are a myriad of places e.g. craigslist, creativeheads, get a coder etc. Where you advertise for the job you need delegated depends on the job to be done.

The job I needed done was very specifically a Joomla project that needed someone who was conversant with Joomla. I know that digital point is a good place to get good help but for technically related work, I would have been better served to go to Joomla based forums.

2. Communicate what you need done.

I posted a one line job description. Must be a record in itself and what I got was a one way ticket to a messy job. All I needed was 3 minutes to write this down.

I need someone to install Artios SEO component in Joomla and set it up to no sections and no categories and working on all installed components.

I would have got only 3 or 4 replies and then gone on to choose the person to delegate the work to by their answer to a more detailed job description. Being detailed means exactly that. I now believe in writing down everything including the name of my cat in these projects.

The main aim here is that you communicate the exact end product you need and not necessarily how it is to be done unless it is part of the job.If we could all communicate like ants, we would all be better off.

3. Cost is Not As Important as Quality of Good Help

I know that everyone is concerned about a budget but I believe you only attract the wrong help if you write down your budget for the whole world to see. I don’t remember ever going for a job interview knowing how much the company budget was. I would be asked how much I wanted after I am on a short list and sometimes I was not hired because of the company budget.

I now do not write down how much I will pay for a contract until I have identified a short list. Then I haggle from there. I am more inclined to people who haggle than uncompromising people. Life is a compromise and I believe the haggling process will set a tone on how you will work with a particular contractor. Cheap does not mean good.

First get good quality, next find a way to use that quality within your budget. If the quality is not within your budget, then increase your budget but find good quality help. It will save you more time and money in the long run.

4. Give People a Break

We all remember the first person who gave us a break. So why do we continue looking for “experience”, “experts”,” 10 project portfolio” ? You might actually get someone who does not have the right experience or qualifications but is excellent at finding solutions to your particular job. This might look like contrary to point 3 but it is not.

Most Internet entrepreneurs are self taught and without design degrees. Someone gave them a break. I can assure you that someone gets better rates than you every time. Would you not like to be the guy who tells his wife, “I was the first person to buy from Bill Gates ” ?

Finding good help to delegate your Internet business jobs is not part of the things that are taught. You just have to find the best method that works for you. These are the first steps that I take to identify the contractor I will use.

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Tagged with: • business model • cms • entrepreneur • find good help • job description • messy job • new age

Filed under: Success Tips

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