20 Tried and Tested Outsourcing Tips for Beginners

Outsourcing is a major business decision, but that doesn’t mean you should hesitate too much from doing it. The fact of the matter is more and more companies are now outsourcing to increase their productivity and profits, while lowering their costs. Sooner or later, you won’t be able to keep up with the competition if you refuse to outsource yourself.

To help you reap significant profits in your first ever outsourced project, we have compiled the industry’s top 20 tried and tested outsourcing tips below.

1. Figure Out What to Outsource – You can start with simple tasks such as link building, web content writing and data entry, before moving on to more complex ones such as Web designing and programming.

2. Learn Tasks Before Outsourcing Them – Be sure to understand or learn the tasks you’ll outsource first-hand, so you’ll know how much time each task consumes.

3. Play Safe but Have an Open Mind – Remember that one of the primary reasons you outsourced in the first place is to reduce costs. Try to look at smaller firms, which offer more inexpensive prices.

4. Check Portfolios Thoroughly – See how many clients a firm has served and how satisfied these clients are. It’s also highly advisable to contact these clients yourself to hear their feedback.

5. Look for Deals with Free Trials – Avail of free trials and if you like the results, start with a small project with the same firm right away.

6. Work with a One-Stop Shop – Instead of spreading your tasks to multiple providers, work with a good outsourcing firm that provides various services all in one place.

7. Start with a Small Project – A smaller project reduces the pressure on both you and your outsourcing firm, increasing the chances that you’ll get it right the first time.

8. Reduce Redundant Tasks – Tasks like tag development and image finding can be passed down to outsourced employees to reduce your load.

9. Tell Your Firm Exactly What You Want Done – Always provide your outsourcing partner with crystal-clear instructions on what you want done instead of making them assume or guess.

10. Allow Time for Both of You to Grow Together – Do not expect a miracle overnight. Be more patient until you and your firm are completely in synch.

11. Hire a Manager – Don’t expect your outsourced staff to do everything automatically all the time. Hire a manager that will supervise their work and update you regularly.

12. Keep Costs low and Profits High – Sure, your outsourcing firm looks fantastic but it doesn’t follow that you should shell out like crazy. Hold off on spending until you see money coming in regularly.

13. Don’t Hesitate to Give Incentives – Provide incentives to your outsourced staff in terms of financial bonuses if they do a great job to encourage them to work even harder.

14. Budget Wisely – Take note of all the fees your firm is charging you and always consider if they are fair and necessary.

15. Never Underutilize Your Resources – Make sure that you are using your firm’s fullest abilities. Check out if there is downtime among your employees and if it costs your operations.

16. Understand Your Role as a Client – It’s very likely that you are not the only client of your outsourcing provider, so always respect their time to build a stronger working relationship.

17. Build Long-Term Relationships with Your Staff – Training costs are high, so instead of hiring new people to replace workers who leave, try to build a pleasant relationship with your workers to make them stay longer.

18. Ask for Daily Updates – Ask for written reports, tabulated data, screenshots and other proofs of daily accomplishments from your outsourced workers.

19. Develop Templates, Examples and Systems – Set up a miniature factory by producing the templates, examples and systems that your present and future outsourced workers can use.

20. Get Feedback – Improve the performance of your outsourced operations by getting feedback from your workers and firm.

Outsourcing is easy once you’ve found the right outsourcing or offshoring provider. Do not let your fear take control of your business and bring it crushing to the ground. Outsource now and try these outsourcing tips to improve your business as quickly as possible.

5 Tips on Writing Web Content That Works Wonderfully

Images, videos and other graphics can only hold the attention of your website’s visitors for a while. Once they’re done looking, they’ll get out, increasing your bounce rate and sending your website to the bottom of search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s the text or Web content of your pages that will ultimately hold visitors’ attention and make them explore other pages of your site.

To enhance your site’s SEO, you need Web content that’s interesting, informative and search-engine-friendly. The best way to come up with this kind of Web content is to hire Web Content Writers who are highly skilled in writing and SEO. But just to get you started on overhauling your website’s text, here are some tips on writing Web Content that works wonderfully:

1. Write Your Goals First – If possible, the readers must get the essence of your article from the very first sentence. Thus, if you’re writing to sell a brand of vacuum cleaner, for example, don’t beat about the bush and tell them how the vacuum cleaner was invented. What’s your goal or conclusion? Tell them right then and there. “Finally, here’s a vacuum cleaner with a nozzle that fits in the tightest corners of your house!” Of course, professional Web Content Writers can easily mix it up and catch the attention of readers even if they delay revealing the goal of their article, which is why it’s best to hire pros for your website.

2. Speak to a Smaller Audience – One of the biggest mistakes of people who dabble in writing Web content is speaking to the world. If you do that, you will not convince or persuade anyone to do what you want them to do (explore your site or avail of your service, for example). You need to narrow down your audience and speak to your niche of potential customers. Thus, if you’re promoting a brand of skateboards, forget about dry, perfect, and academic style of writing. Write like you know the skateboarding subculture of the streets while still being polite to your audience. This way, you can hit your target audience on the bull’s eye and make sure that they’ll be persuaded to buy your product.

3. Create a Progressive Structure for Your Article – It’s easy to turn readers away with ideas that are scattered all over. To keep them interested, you need to decide on how information in your article would progressively flow. Ideally, information should be mentioned in a descending order of importance. Always ask yourself, what does your readers want to know first? Second? Third? The key is to think about what you know, which can solve their problems and concerns. Also, remember that readers online usually only skim through your article – they do not scrutinize every word.

4. Build Momentum and Don’t Lose It – Vivid, specific language is the key to holding your readers’ attention. Each headline you use must convey your message even when taken alone. Thus, never make a vague headline like “Great Dog Food.” Instead, write “Grow 40% More Fur in 30 Days.” Instead of writing a lead sentence such as, “We have the best solution for your belly fat,” write something like, “Finally, you can lose 20 pounds in just 30 days while increasing your vitamin E intake and improving your skin.” Informative and striking sentences like these will give your visitors reason to read on, because they would know they’re getting useful information.

5. Shift From One Idea to Another Smoothly – Provide smooth transitions from one idea or sentence to another. Convey your message as if you’re narrating a logical story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, with each event bringing forth the next one. You can use sentence connectors like “moreover,” “furthermore,” “however,” “in addition to,” “contrary to,” and others to make your points flow more smoothly.

These are just the basic techniques in writing effective and powerful Web content for websites. To ensure high quality for your articles, hire Web Content Writers now and witness the wonders they can do for your website’s search engine rankings. Invest in excellent Web content and reap consistently great profits in the future.

Powerful Web Design Tips from Offshoring’s Graphic Designers

While many people have been designing their own websites these days, Web Design is still not as easy and as simple as it looks. It’s not just a matter of constructing pages, but effectively communicating your message to your visitors through the right choice of themes, colors and images. If you want to have the best Web designs possible, you need the help of professional Web Designers and Graphic Designers who have a ton of experience practicing this complex craft.

To teach you how to design Web pages correctly, here are some tips from our Intermediate Graphic Designers currently in our inventory.

Rolando “Jun” Orlina, Intermediate Graphic Designer:

1. Make designs that load in 15 seconds or less.

2. Minimize use of images and use tables creatively.

3. Use a lot of negative space or white space for a cleaner look.

Jether Sarraga, Intermediate Graphic Designer:

4. Apply the Web 2.0 concept with bright colors that are cool to visitors’ eyes.

5. Use professional brushes for your background.

6. Put 3D Effects panels and containers to draw visitors’ attention.

7. Integrate glossy effects.

8. Create cute icons that people will find adorable.

Levi Jimenez, Intermediate Graphic Designer:

9. Make sure the design is cross-browser compatible.

10. Create a clean and neat layout design.

11. Use CSS to create cool texts that will make your website come alive.

Dean Dytuco, Intermediate Graphic Designer:

12. Go for easy navigation of links to encourage visitors’ to explore other pages.

13. Keep in mind all screen resolutions, especially for websites with long pages of content where you want to reduce the need for people to scroll.

14. Always check for broken links before uploading the design to your server.

Benjamin “Benjie” Martires, Intermediate Graphic Designer:

15. Basic adjustments tools are Photoshop and Fireworks. Here are some tips on how to optimize and adjust images for the Web:

Go to - menu> images > adjustments >
levels
hue/saturation
color balance
brightness/contrast

#1 image too dark
ctrl+l (levels)
channel rgb
settings 0 / 1.60 / 210 (these are different for each image. Fiddle around

#2 colors off
ctrl+l (levels)
channel rgb 0 / 1.10 / 230
ctrl+b color balance
color levels -9 / +4 / +5

#3 colors off
ctrl+l (levels)
channel red 120 / 1.0 / 255
channel green 30 / 1.0 / 240
channel blue 0 / 1.0 / 245
ctrl+u
hue/saturation
0 / -10 / +10

16. Optimize images for the web – Once you saved the images to jpeg or GIF
Format, use Adobe Fireworks to cut down the size of an image by
selecting the settings of your choice. If you don’t have Fireworks, you can search the Internet for other online tools like Gif Wizard.

These are just a few of the many tricks professional Web or Graphic Designers like Jun, Jether, Levi, Dean and Benjie can do. If you’re interested in hiring anyone of our Intermediate Graphic Designers who provided the brilliant tips above, contact us now at sales@offshoring.com

Cool Ways to Cool Down this Summer

Here comes the sun and it’s not holding back its heat! Summer is fun, especially since you can head to the beach and get that beautiful tan, but the heat can also be overwhelming. Climate change is also pushing the temperature to new crazy levels, which can be uncomfortable to most and even physically dangerous to others. Exposed to extremely hot temperatures, your body may become dehydrated, leading to dangerous conditions.

Keep yourself comfortably and safely cool this summer by following these tips:

Avoid Tight, Dark-Colored Clothing – Yes, the color of what you’re wearing factors in on how much heat your body receives. Light colors like white reflect heat, so you’re virtually wearing an armor that deflects sunlight. On the other hand, dark-colored clothing absorbs heat, increasing your body temperature. Also, make sure that your clothes are loose-fitting so there’s plenty of air in between the fabric and your skin.

Drink Plenty of Fluids – Don’t trust your thirst reflex when it comes to proper hydration in the summer. Usually, by the time your brain signals your thirsty, you are already dehydrated. Drink plenty of fluids, especially water, non-carbonated sports beverages, coconut juice or lemon water (“nimbu pani”) since these restore fluids more efficiently. Avoid alcohol, coffee and other caffeinated drinks because these further dehydrate the body.

Eat Lighter Meals – Skip that supersized fastfood meal because digesting heavy foods like this will only increase your body temperature since your body has to work harder to break them down. Instead, eat lighter meals, such as fruits, vegetables and salads, which are easier to digest and keep your temperature low.

Take Frequent Baths – Nothing refreshes like a cool shower on a hot summer day. If you have enough time, you can also dip in a swimming pool or go to the beach with your family and friends for a nice swim in the cool sea. Another thing you can do is refrigerate a bottle of water and use it to spray your face when you’re doing something outdoors.

Wear a Cooling Neck Wrap – Have you tried wearing a cooling neck wrap? You can buy this from your local sporting goods store. An ordinary cooling neck wrap is soaked in water or refrigerated, then worn around the neck to keep your body temperature low. There are also new cooling neck wraps which don’t need to be refrigerated as they contain a kind of gel that cools your neck.

Use a Misting Fan – A misting fan is not like the ordinary fan you may have at home. It is usually portable, battery-operated and cools you off with a soothing, misty breeze. Its blades are also soft, so there’s no danger of hurting yourself with them. You can use a misting fan while resting after a game of tennis or after doing any outdoor activity.

Keep yourself hydrated and full of energy everyday with these tips. Enjoy the sun but always mind your health, so you will be able to accomplish everything you want to do this summer season.