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Planning on outsourcing? think again!


brandonmcfee

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Hi everybody. Just wanted to share my experience on outsourcing my work on Fiverr. Hopefully, it will benefit even a handful of freelancers here. I work as a graphic designer and illustrator here on Fiverr and I have few successful gigs. One of my gigs is about drawing scenes for kids’ stories, and as you might have already guessed, such gigs are about working on long term projects. One day, I received a message from a very polite and classy buyer from the US. He writes stories for kids and asked me to work with him on a series of stories. I finished the first story with him professionally and did everything my self (layout design, text formatting, making illustrations for the whole story and preparing the file for the printing process). The buyer was very happy with the result and tipped me a HUGE tip! my client then messaged me about starting the new project. But I found my self flooded with work at my daily 9:5 job and had no spare time to work on the project. So, I decided to pass it to an “associate” who I thought was up to the job. We started very smoothly and my client was happy with the results. But after a while my associate started to deliver very late with a remarkably poor quality as if the work was made in just 5 minutes. My client got concerned and told me to find another artist to continue the work with a style very similar to the one we used! of course this’s an almost impossible task specially when you’ve already spent months in search for your priv. “associate”. So now, we have no choice but to continue working with such incompetent artist in order to avoid ruining the whole project. Results of such mistake are:
1-After having a delivered on time rate of 100%, now I have a 85% one.
2-My excellent relationship with the buyer started to suffer a lot and deteriorated.
My advice:
Working on longterm projects could be easily a mine field. Think carefully and wisely. Commitment itself is a huge burden. Think about something that’s quick and easy to do but earns you a decent amount of money/single order, not working for 7-10 days (or maybe more) on a single kid’s story page + a lot of energy, effort and time.
Well. that’s all. Hope this will be of some use for somebody.
(Sorry for my poor grammar and for any typos).
Thanks for reading.

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No one is going to do the wrk like you. Im in the same boat with a FT job. I only go after specific jobs that arent long term. Its better to give up on some wrk than either rush to finish, or get an outsider and risk providing poor results.

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I’ve generally found people who want to join my “writing team” (I also fly solo) have woeful levels of English. I mean, I understand the pitch, but…c’mon.

I know there is a writer here who I think must have joined very early on. I don’t remember their name, but some of the older heads might–anyway they kept their prices low and were a TRS I think, but started outsourcing at some point, apparently without care for the quality of the work. So there were a lot of abysmal reviews about the crappy quality of the English (poor grammar etc) and they lost their TRS. Still going as far as I know. I’ve forgotten their name now though. It’s not anyone on the forum!

Nothing wrong with outsourcing, but it would have to be someone reliable, good and trustworthy. Not easy to find…

WRT to big ole projects beyond the norm I stretch it out into milestones with batched delivery (e.g. separate gigs). It works fairly well, and gives both buyer and seller leeway.

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well, you have your point. one can’t just justify who is the right person to outsource a project to unless you try.

when I’ve lots of project, I outsource them someone to people, but I try them with small project.

You u can’t always do it all, no matter the present disappointment you just encountered

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Thank you for sharing your ‘learned it the hard way’ experience with this!
Sorry it happened to you, but it´s always nice to hear a few true ‘case studies’. Something like this might cross one´s mind rather than some general impersonal pros and cons one read on the subject. And for personal stories, it´s more often success stories you read and rarely about the fails.
I wish you good luck for your rate to go up again very soon.

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Thanks for your kind wishes and for the supporting words. It’s a dilemma actually. to grow and prosper as a freelancer you need lots of work. To finish lots of work you will eventually seek for some help. Seeking help will lead you to outsourcing. Outsourcing means that an outsider will work under your hard-earned name and badge. Will he/she be up to it, or he/she will screw things up? probably you won’t know at first. You have to learn “the hard way” 😦
Kindest regards

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Your post is so timely for me. I just had the same thing happen this week. I did a favor for a Buyer by finding an actor for them and allowing him to be ordered through my gig. What a mistake that was. In fact, I’ve found that doing “favors” for Buyers has never has worked well for me. I plan to take your advice. Thanks for the post.

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Sorry for this your experience. I can feel your pain and disappointment. People often forget that “what one does today will speak for him/her tomorrow”. Laziness in all aspect is a matter of in-built self. No matter what, the way you do your work, that is the way you will do others. Because the character is in you. I am a new seller on this platform and I have been giving my best in all I lay my hands on. This has been helping me a lot. Recently, i have been looking for old sellers who have huge orders to handle to give me some work and monitor the best i will give in the fields I have chosen. I can’t imagine disappointing any opportunity given to me because I see it as helping me to grow. I am someone who opens to correction every time. Everyone should be thinking and knowing that the person that give you work can also do the work but giving it to you because he/she has the trust in you. Always give it your best.
Thanks

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