If you've watched my videos before, you know
I'm a huge proponent for getting outside help
whenever you need it. Running a business is just way too much work
for one person to handle all on their own and learning to delegate is the best way to avoid
total burnout and actually is what will help your business grow.
Assuming you've already decided you need help,
your next question is probably where you actually find the people who can help you.
You want to work with people who know how to do the job and get it done
well, right? Right. So today I'm going to tell you my go-to places
for outsourcing and delegating help.
Hi, I'm Mei Pak. I help makers, artists,
and designers make a living selling their handmade products online.
I currently have three businesses that are making really good money
and I truly know I couldn't have done it without the help of the people
I hire. Here's the thing - even if your business is a small operation
and you feel like you can handle it all on your own,
you still need a plan for the days that you simply can't be at work.
Or you might end up needing help with something beyond your expertise
level that is just taking away important time
and sucking up your energy. Or if you're like me,
I constantly have a list of things I want to do for my business,
but I keep procrastinating it.
My favorite solution is to outsource it,
because clearly, I have some resistance to that task.
At the end of the day, hiring help is a smart move for any business
if you can afford it, but you want to make sure you're doing it the right way
and making the most of your money and not getting burned.
The first place I recommend to find help is Upwork. Upwork is the world's largest marketplace for freelancers.
So it's a great place to find help across a variety of different fields.
Whether you need to find a virtual assistant, a graphic designer and email marketer,
a social media expert, customer service
help, bookkeeper, or even legal assistant,
Upwork almost has it all.
It's pretty much unbeatable in terms of the variety of people
you can hire. The freelancers on there have portfolios on their profile
so you can look through their work and make sure they match what you're looking for.
Plus my favorite bit is they’re reviewed by businesses that have used their services before.
So everyone is held accountable
and you can tell right away if a person is worth working with or not.
Not only that, but with Upwork, you just put up a job listing and freelancers come to you,
instead of you going out to find them.
That means finding a great candidate doesn't take up a lot of your time.
You usually won't have to scroll through endless names and faces.
You just need to sort through the ones that reached out to you.
Between being able to access portfolios
and reviews,
you can rest easy knowing the person you hire through Upwork is someone you can trust,
which is such a big deal. As of the filming of this video,
Upwork does charge a 3% processing
fee on whatever you pay your freelancers. Still,
they do offer a free membership where you can interview up to three candidates per job posting
or you can pay $49.99 a month to interview up to 15 people per job
posting, along with some other benefits like featuring your job post on the site's main page. Upwork
has a great system built in for you already
so I think the cost is well worth it.
Most of my hires come from Upwork. Fiverr is another good place to outsource help,
especially for tasks like copywriting, SEO,
Etsy audits, and graphic design.
Fiverr is similar to Upwork in that it's a marketplace that
connects businesses to freelancers around the globe.
While Upwork is great for ongoing assignments,
Fiverr is better for one-off projects.
So if you need like a quick logo design,
or some one time social media copy, Fiverr is the perfect place to look. Fiverr freelancers
also have a portfolio of work on their profiles along with reviews from previous clients,
so it's got a great feedback system that holds all freelancers accountable
and keeps them from ghosting or not putting in the work.
But note that Fiverr freelancers can also review you after a job is finished.
So make sure that you treat everyone kindly
and professionally. But regardless of review system
shouldn't everyone just treat everyone professionally
and kindly,
right? So on Fiverr,
you will have to sift through the professionals yourself instead of letting them come to you,
like on Upwork. You will get a chance to message back
and forth with the freelancer before you hire them
so you can get an idea of whether they be a good fit for your project.
If you end up really connecting with your freelancer
you can always take the relationship off of Fiverr
as long as everyone is comfortable with that. You can create a Fiverr business
account for free for your first year as of the filming of this video,
or you can simply use Fiverr without a business account,
which is what I do to hire your freelancers.
You'll pay a processing fee of $1.00 per order under $20 or 5% of the total for orders over $20.
Now, if you're looking for full-time or part-time employees,
you can head to OnlineJobs.ph.
It's a job site for people from the Philippines.
Now, the site only allows for part-time or full-time salaried positions.
So this isn't really the place to go to if you're looking for one time or hourly projects.
If you need consistent, help it might be a better fit for you,
compared to Upwork or Fiverr. Most of my husband's
team for his personalized art business is actually from the site.
It's a job board so it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Fiverr and Upwork.
There's not a feedback system for reviews
so just make sure that you really take the time to vet each freelancer before offering employment.
You should only use this site if you're looking to hire someone for 20 to 40 hours a week.
It's more difficult to find a freelancer willing to put in that much time
on Fiverr and Upwork. So it's my go-to if I need someone
for serious hours and the benefit of working with people from the Philippines
is many of them are fluent in English and we have really favorable
currency exchange rates, which makes it extremely affordable to hire at a full-time
or part-time basis.
Just to give you a benchmark, you could hire someone for 200 to 400 US dollars per month full-time
and they would consider that a healthy living income,
depending on where they are from in the Philippines. Of course that rate
does depend on what role you're hiring for,
what level of experience you need and so on.
So that rate could be a bit higher. It's important to note that with OnlineJobs.ph,
you will have to handle payments on your own and hold a freelancer accountable for their work.
You won't be able to rely on the site to do this for you,
like how Fiverr and Upwork can. In that way,
It is a lot like hiring an employee outside of the internet world.
You just have to be a bit more careful. You can post a job
and see applicants without paying a fee on the site,
but you will have to to pay for a membership to actually contact the applicants. For $69 a
month you can create up to three job postings and contact up to 75 freelancers a month.
For $99 a month, you can create up to 10 job postings and contact up to 500 Freelancers a month,
which is a lot. You're not locked into any contract,
so you can always cancel once you've made your hire.
Now, there are some positions that are just harder to find on freelancing websites.
For example, when I was searching for someone to help me with YouTube ads,
there just weren't very many people on Upwork to choose from, and no one on Fiverr.
So, I ended up finding a marketing agency through a referral. Referrals are
great for those hard to find positions
where you really need to hire someone you can trust and rely on.
I also found my business and project manager through referrals. One
great thing about referrals is that you can feel good about hiring someone that a friend
or colleague,
recommended. Having said that, referrals can also be a double-edged sword.
I've had people refer freelancers to meet who are just their personal friends,
but who they never actually had a working relationship with
which I think can be very different things.
So you'll still want to be careful and be thorough with your research and interview process,
even if the freelancer came recommended by someone
you know and trust. Along those similar lines,
if you're looking for a specific design help and no one on Upwork or Fiverr feels like a great fit,
you can head over to Behance. Behance is where I'll go if all else fails
and I need to find a great artist to help me with my logos, website
design, or anything else design-related. On
Behance you'll be able to browse artists portfolios
and if anyone's looking for work, they'll display that on their
profile along with their contact information.
Behance is free to use and it's a good way to find
and connect with talented artists around the world
looking for work. If you need some in-person,
local help, I recommend using Craigslist.
I hire all of my production and shipping help through Craigslist.
Of course, there are risks to using the site,
and I know it's gotten a bad rap over the years,
but you just need to make sure that the person you're talking with is who they say they are.
So make sure to go through a thorough vetting process with anyone
you talk to on that site. Have them email
you their resume and portfolio
and exchange a few emails back and forth before deciding to meet with them
in person. When you do meet in person,
make sure it's in a public place the first time.
As long as you use the site safely, Craigslist can be an excellent way to meet talented
and passionate people looking for work in
your local area. Posting job ads on Craigslist cost
anywhere from $10 to $75,
depending on where you're based. Now
there are other popular job sites, like college boards and indeed.com.
And I've used those in the past but haven't had much success with it.
I'm not sure why. But I think when it comes to college job boards,
a lot of students are just busy and they may not really be great
for long-term hires. Indeed tends to attract professionals looking for full-time salary work,
so it's not the best site to find freelancers.
So these really aren't my go-tos for hiring help.