How to avoid pitfalls of outsourcing Web Development to India, Pakistan, Ukraine, etc.
I have spent a sizable amount of cash outsourcing projects to India for web development and have learned a ton in the process. Unfortunately, of my own fault, none of my projects has taken off yet. But I am still working on it!
My first project was an iphone app for coupons. I thought (and still do think) this was the wave of the future. Unfortunately I could not get anyone to use it and I gave up trying to promote the app. Also, most retailers that have coupons these days still do not do not have sizable sales through mobile sites according to my research, so I think dropping the project was worth it.
The second failed project was a purchase countdown site like Groupon. I totally bombed this one too because getting a business to sign up for this is not easy. Especially when you are promoting one at a time like Groupon does. I have a full time job so selling businesses on the idea on the weekends was a total pain. Maybe I should have thought about that before I had the site developed. : P
My third dream website is a project that I am working on now that is destined for greatness - I am positive this one is going to make me some cash. 
I cannot reveal all the details but if you want to learn more about it when I actually do launch it, go and create an account at www.localpinch.com. You will be on the ground floor of something huge!
So I thought I would write down my thoughts on getting your "dream website" developed by a programmer in India (or overseas somewhere) and how to avoid some of the pitfalls that I unfortunately fell into.
First off, the main pitfalls are:
1. The developer is almost done and says this is going to take more time and we need more money.
2. The site ends up being something you are not psyched about.
3. The site is buggy and you need to send it back for revisions.
4. Tons of revisions and the developer does not want to do anymore without charging.
"you want website? i make website for you. no problem."
I have had three different developers out of India, all of which I found in Elance.com. Elance.com as well as odesk.com and guru.com all allow you to find developers, create a request for a bid for your porject, manage the actual project, and pay for it as it gets completed. I spoke with one guy briefly and he barely spoke English but they are typically pretty responsive via email.
1. Getting Quotes - If you open the project to the entire provider community you are going to get a lot of quotes. Make sure you read exactly what they are saying when providing a quote because many providers do not even read your proposal. I think the best way to qet quotes for web development is to pluck each one and submit the project to them directly. If you send it out to everyone you are going to be managing tons of different proposals and it can get confusing. However, opening it up to everyone can find the diamond in the rough developer that is really good and will do it for cheap. So this is up to you, but first off, read specifically what they are saying in their proposal - don't browse.
2. Milestones - set very gradual milestones. I think that paying as little as possible upfront is the best option and setting very clear milestones is the best. I think 5 separate milestones at least is optimal. I had a $1500 project, with three $500 milestones. We hit the $1000 milestone and I realized that hiring this particular developer was a mistake. So I was out $1000 and had nothing to show for it. Don't let this happen to you!
3. "Working from Scratch" - do not ever agree to a project from scratch. If the developer wants to make it from scratch chances are you are going to get a piece of garbage. There is a plethora of CMS frameworks out there like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and other things that you can use as a base to your project rather than working from scratch, I guarantee if you allow them to create something from the ground up its going to look like it was made in 1992 and have minimal features. Plus you will probably need to keep coming back and getting something updated here or there or fix a bug.
4. The wire frame for your project - make sure the plans that you submit for your project are as detailed as possible. There should be nothing put up for interpretation for the developers. Every time I have allowed a developer to interpret how something should be implemented in a project, I have gotten something back that is not ideal. For my next project, that I am putting out for a bid right now, I used screenshots and photoshop to show exactly how I want thigns to work and function.
5. There is no substitute for working with a developer within your company. Outsourcing is a skill that needs to be honed in my opinion. You need to know alot about development yourself if the site is at all dynamic and is not a run of the mill informational site. Basic sites are what these guys are best at, but innovative, out of the ordinary sites where the concept is something new take a good amount of development knowledge on your part as well. If you cannot explain exactly what is needed to a developer who's second language is English you will probably not be happy with the outcome.
The freelance web development networks that I know about are these three:
Bing Cash Back closes after about 15 months and $50 million
Microsoft acquired Jellyfish in October 2007 for a cool $50 Million. They lanched Bing Cash Back with great success and tons of fanfare in early June 2009.
And it was working really well. Bing Cash Back was getting the search engine tons of exposure. There was a huge buzz about it. Bing was rebating huge amounts - matching in cash back to shoppers what advertisers were paying them in commissions for the sales; which means some retailers selling low margins products like electronics and shoes, for example, were giving back upwards of 25%. These are cash back amounts that sites like Ebates and Mypoints could never compete with.
But apparently the model was not sustainable. Bing (Microsoft) announced it is ending its cash back program today on July 30th, 2010. So what happened? And what happens to the people at Bing that said "Hey, let's spend $50 million on this wicked new technology. Its going to get us tons of new people to use our search engine". And then 15 months after launch they shut it down?
This story actually makes me feel better about some of the money that I have spent on ideas that never panned out. When I spend a few hundred dollars on a project of my own that is a complete flop, then maybe I am not doing so bad. Microsoft of course has billions of dollars to play with but $50 million cannot be a drop in the bucket for anybody.
New Google TV will be great for small business
Today at Google’s software-developer conference Rishi Chandra is announcing the dawn of Google TV. Here is the minute to minute account of the conference from the Wall Street Journal. TV watchers can interact with the web easily while watching TV and choose from their favorite things on the web as part of watching TV. TV and Internet blended together is not new but Google does seem to have taken a leap to actually poularize and make it easier to use. You dont want the actual internet on your TV but it would be stellar to interact with it in an easy way on your TV. I think that is what Google is doing with Google TV.
Of course they are not doing this because they are just being nice, Google TV is a new medium for consumers to view their ads.
What will Google TV mean for small business? I think it will be a great opportunity for these reasons:
1. Location based advertising through the TV on a very small scale will allow a small business to reach highly targeted audience in an affordable way.
2. TV watchers can search for what they want and small business can serve up ads based on that rather than throwing out 30 minute spots in the traditional TV way. If I am a club promoter I do not want to pay for a 30 second spot that is being watched by my grandmother.
3. YouTube, blogs, and other popular video are served up much easier on people's TVs with Google TV. These are free for small business to create content and get it out to consumers. If you are a landscaper in the Chicago area, for example, wouldn't it be cool to have a landscaping show on youtube that people actually watch on their TVs.
I am a Twitter Convert – and it only took a double murder to do it
Ever since the dawn of twitter, I have wondered why the hell are people using this thing? I mean I have nothing to say to a bunch of people that do not know me and I really do not care to hear 140 character messages from Ashton Kutcher and Sarah Palin. Twitter is such a waste of time, it seems so incredibly pointless. Right?
This post tells my story on how I got hooked...
I created a Twitter account for LocalPinch my newest website project. My reason for creating the account was to learn more about twitter and how people are using it - its such a hot topic in Social Media Marketing these days. I followed Ashton Kutcher and Rainn Wilson, some Chicago Newspapers, and a few Chicago locals by searching "Chicago" under find people. Some of those people started following me, actually. Wow, they are following me? So I wrote a couple tweets to entertain my audience like "Sitting on ass, very bored at work. Humans are not meant for desks." and "What is the point of this Twitter thing anyway? I'm stumped". And that was about it. I lost interest and found it pretty pointless. I didn't care what Ashton or Rainn or the Chicago locals. So I did not return to twitter for a few months. It seemed like an utter waste of time.
Then one day I was bored at work and remember that I had this Twitter account. I had just read another Advertising Age story about how some huge retailer is using Twitter to get more sales. I decided to log in and see what was happening with the ol' twitter account. I was reading some of the pointless drivel people wrote and then I got a really interesting tweet from @coloneltribune (The Chicago Tribune) that there was a double murder at the Old Navy on State Street at 11am. The time I was reading this tweet was about 11:12AM. This hit pretty close to home because that store is about two blocks from where I work. I told some other people in my office about the shooting - the story was common knowledge at about 12pm. So that was really cool.
Then @smashingmag sent over some really cool tutorials on web design that were awesome. The tutorials were super useful and I was starting to get hooked.
Just today I got this tweet: RT@explorechicago:Author of Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk, discusses new novel 2nite at Harold Washington Library! FREE http://bit.ly/dioURA One of my favorite authors at the Chicago Public Library - which is about 2 blocks from where I work! Kind of a cool tweet. Finding out about breaking news and cool events like this has shown me the value of Twitter. I actually have it open all the time now.
A couple of tips for enjoying Twitter: be sure to edit who you follow. At least I do. Some people tweet incredibly pointless stuff that just crams everything up. You can easily un-follow them and it will greatly increase enjoyment of twitter. I have a pretty streamlined twitter account that tweets me cool Chicago events, some deals around Chicago, ESPN for breaking sports news, CNN for breaking national news, and some web-related stuff. A lot of people really do tweet useless drivel and will make it a terrible experience. Also, if you have a twitter account you don't have to tweet. You don't have to upkeep content like on a blog or other website. I use Twitter to stay on top of trends and that's about it. I don't really tweet anything. But when I do, its going to be tweeterrific.
Emerging Standard Two Weeks Traffic Report
Here is the traffic to my emergingstandard.com blog after two weeks on the web and 4 posts. I have submitted each article to stumbleupon.com and digg.com - as for other traffic strategies, that is about all. I will be placing these posts under the category Emerging Standard Traffic. I want to blog what type of traffic that I am able to get along with the type of articles that I write and the strategies that I use to get the traffic. So far, I have only submitted each article to StumbleUpon (I have a profile) and to which has driven a few hundred hits but they all leave very quickly because the bounce rate is about 67%, as well as digg.com which has driven no traffic. Each spike below is a submission to stumbleupon. Few things I need to do... write more articles per week and produce more original content.
Dawn of The iPad: more eyeballs and more kitchens
Some articles are saying that sales of the ipad did not meet expectations and others believe they greatly exceeded them. Whatever the iPad sales were for the first three days that it has been on sale, does not make much difference in the long run. The product is going to start a real trend in computing. The experts have tested it and the initial results on performance and usability are really good. The dawn of the ipad is going to be more revolutionary for online media than the iphone or itouch or the laptop and even television. Before you stop reading and think I am an idiot consider these points:
First, the ipad is making online media much more mobile and accessible than the itouch, iphone, or other phones like the Droid. Its prettier, bigger than a phone (but not as strangely shaped as a laptop), much more of a social experience than a phone, and has the speed and battery life to interact with humans in a way that is a satisfying experience. Can't you see something like this sitting on your kitchen counter as a sort of knowledge oracle for your family? Mom says, "what degree oven do I need to bake halibut", sister says "did you see that dancing Indian video on youtube?". The interaction with the iPad is much different than opening a laptop or huddling around a phone.
Second, the consumption of media has never been ideal on the computer - ipads will make using the internet more reasonable and enjoyable. Sitting in a special room in your house, tapping on a keyboard that is attached to a processing tower, at some form of a desk is not the most comfortable or social way to watch youtube videos, shop for shoes, follow mlb.com, or view photos of your kids. The iPad changes that - anyone can easily share media and easily interact with it together. Just check out this video of scrabble on the iPad.
Third, the iPad and the social computing tablet concept are going to get copied - alot. The touchable, well-sized, more colorful machine is not just something Apple is going to do. Google will probably make something eventually, PC makers like HP and Dell or maybe Motorola will make a tablet as well. I give it til July 2010 and we will have two more colorful touchable pad type machines that run apps. In three years, I bet my 63 year old mother will have one.
The iPad and future devices like it mean that the borders to producing and sharing media are breaking down even further. The breakdown is making its way from the desktop to the laptop to the phone and now into your kitchen with the ipad. Consumers will pay even less attention to CBS, CNN, and NBC, and pay more attention to new media. So the question is - how can all of capitalize on this trend?
This article on Inc. magazine outlines multiple ways that you can make money with the ipad - you need to move quickly, do it strategically and be smart, but the opportunity is there for anyone. The entire landscape of media and manufacturing as well is breaking down from a one to many marketplace to a many to many marketplace. The iPad makes this shift even more by moving ears and eyeballs away from the TV and radio and onto the web where everyone can be a seller or purchaser in a global marketplace.
Skimlinks – create affiliate links without joining programs
Skimlinks, a new affiliate marketing technology offered by a UK company, creates automated affiliate links for publishers. If you are a blogger and want to make cash from almost any outbound link to merchants on your site but you would rather not deal with managing the tech and upkeep of affiliate marketing, you should sign up for skimlinks. There are so many affiliate programs out there (thousands) and so many networks, realistically managing all of the programs would mean hiring a small team of people. Skimlinks automates the whole process for you. I checked the terms and conditions for skimlinks that you must agree to upon applying as a publisher and they take 25% from the commissions paid by the retailer - that is a pretty heft sum. But for a one or two man shop, I think this is worth the cost of not having to deal with links and code and joining affiliate programs.
The way that it works is this - as a publisher, you will link to some merchant URL or specific product like these vans I want to get. When someone clicks on that link, rather than go directly to Vans, skimlinks will use a web service to compare that URL to the URLs of the merchants in their database see if there is a match. If there is one, skimlinks wraps the link you created with the necessary code to be an affiliate link. So the original link that you pull from the merchant does not change on your site, instead skimlinks looks at it after the user clicks and decides whether it can be an affiliate link or not.
One of the questions that I had is can you use Skimlinks with something like adwords or a doubleclick ad? On their FAQs it says that it will not interfere with other advertising on your site.
The other question I have is what if Skimlinks is not in the affiliate program of the merchant that you are linking to? Merchants will reject publishers for many reasons and skimlinks needs to apply to all of these advertisers. There is no guarantee that skimlinks will be admitted rather than your blog.
Also, what if you are already in certain affiliate programs and want to use skimlinks as well? Like, if I were in Vans alraedy because I write about shoes all the time. Does that mean if I install skimlinks will they start taking 25% of my Vans commissions?
Overall though, the concept is really cool and can help bloggers make some extra dough rather than worrying about multiple affiliate programs which can be a total pain.
Retailmenot.com: capitalizing on “Brand + Coupon” SEO
Retailmenot.com is close to if not the most popular coupon and deals site in the world. The site founded by two Australian entrepreneurs gets around 6.8 million visitors normally and about 10 million per month during the holidays. The site has an Alexa traffic ranking of 351 in the United States and 966 worldwide at the time of this article. From what I hear the founders have kept the size of the company around 9 employees (so these guys are making a real pantload to quote my favorite Etrade commercial). If you are not familiar with affiliate marketing, every click that comes from retailmenot.com to a retailer website that results in a conversion means some type of commission for retailmenot. With 50,000 stores, many of which have a great page rank that means lots of commissions. So after using the site several times and reveling at its absolute worldwide coupon domination I wanted to try and dissect why it is so successful. Here is what I came up with.
- Capitalizing on "Brand + coupon" on search engines - every page on their site is titled "brand + coupon codes - all coupons, discounts, and promo codes for 'brand.com'". The vast majority of their business comes from searches for "brand + coupon". Every brand page is SEO optimized so that it will show up first. How long this will hold up in Google, is anyone's guess. Google indexing loves pages that are consistently updated, have a high amount of inbound links, and have a subject matter that is highly relevant to the search. Each page is devoted 100% to the brand + "coupon" or "coupon code" which is the most popular terms for savings shoppers.
- Non-reliable coupons stay on the site as content - Retailmenot will not delete these un-usable coupons because they mean more content for Google spiders to gobble up. I think this speaks volumes for anyone looking to increase their SEO for a specific topic which can be updated consistently. Add more to one page on a specific topic rather than creating new posts or pages - do not delete old content if you can avoid it.
- An army of coupon contributors - Retailmenot is able to get new coupons quickly and get the most up-to-date and far-reaching/comprehensive catalogue of coupons because of their huge number of freelance contributors. The contributoprs are compensated to post coupons they find with posting contests, points, and cash payouts. Several of the contributors can find coupons that are not intended for the web by using email campaign, social media, and direct mail coupons. Retailmenot is very cooperative in taking down disallowed coupons, but that does not mean they are prevented from getting the incoming viral links and valuable click-throughs these non-web coupons provide.
- Ease of use - they have a very intuituve organization of their coupons. The most popular are sorted to the top which makes it easier for people to use. They also have a feedback system which answers that inherent question with online coupons "Is this thing really going to work?" By creating an easy-to-use brand based system the offers are forearded between friends and are easy to be viral.
- Other ways they are making sure to get your click - Retailmenot Toolbar for firefox and explorer, newsletters for brands or themes (whenever new coupons are available they will email you automatically), blog and mac dashboard widgets.
If anyone reads this post and has some input as to why retailmenot.com still dominates almost every coupon search for almost any brand worldwide please chime in.
Fiverr.com – a five dollar swap meet
A friend of mine sent me this article about a new site called fiverr. I was smitten with the concept because it is so novel. If you did not read the article above, Fiverr.com is a marketplace where people can exchange services like photoshopping and design, advice, funny and bizarre, crafts and one guy in Chicago says he will drive around with 
your logo on his car for a month for $5. A bunch of people offer services - and everything is $5. So perusing all of the different services I think that design and photoshop related postings is probably the most popular type of service offered.
I am still throwing around concepts for a logo for a site that I am working on called localpinch - its a local gift certificate site and its still being developed. So I searched "logo" on fiverr using their search box - incredibly, there are 27 pages of results. Think fiverr is catching on?
I decided on a seller whom I will name Kosmo (I dont want to give out his name for this article). The procedure works like this. First, you checkout using paypal which I do not mind, then you are given an order number and taken to a contact form where you can give the seller some type of direction or instructions for the project. I was really impressed with Kosmo, he reached out to me within a couple hours asking me what type of concept or colors I was interested in for my logo. I was able to reply and attach an image for what I was looking to get designed. I said...
"Hi KOSMO,
if you could integrate a picture of a google map that could be cool – like a square map on the left and then on top of the map is the “L” of localpinch. but if you have another idea thats fine. something like these web 2.0 logos would be great.
Thanks,
Tim
and the below logo is what I got from Kosmo... 
The map is not a google map and it doesn't really scream web 2.0, but hey, this is $5 right? I think if I invested about $30 and got a bunch off these $5 logos, one of them would fit the bill. Fiverr encourages you to review the seller after the purchase. One of the reasons I chose Kosmo is because he had a lot of positive reviews.
Groupon – brick and mortar business moves online with a deal a day
The concept is incredibly simple - a business offers a great deal but will only sell it if a certain number of people purchase. Groupon sends one deal per day to its loyal fan-base for everything from restaurants to salons to skydiving and teeth whitening. Groupon will sell a service say. "$10 for $25 worth of Asian and Japanese Fare at Oodles of noodles". Groupon (and the local business) sets a total number that need to be purchased for the deal to be activated. Thus the "group" and the "coupon" come together.
Other than being a simple and fun site, the business has found an effective way of selling offline-traditional-local products and services on the web. The transaction makes everyone happy - the local business gets new business quickly and is paid out after the groupon is over (groupons last for 24 hours), groupon users are happy because they get a great deal on a local product or service, and groupon is happy because they take a cut of the action. Offline-local business need to sell online, online business is taking more and more of the cutomer's wallet. Groupon allows offline-traditional-local business (OTL) to quickly and easily capitalize on a huge online following.
In recent news, Groupon hired Rob Solomon as their COO
And they worked out $30 million in VC funding from Accel.
