Outsource your projects online

Need some more time at the office? Per­haps you’ve got a project that needs sev­eral hours of tedious work. You could hire an assis­tant or a temp to come in and han­dle these tasks, but if that’s not an option in these eco­nom­i­cally chal­leng­ing times, try vir­tual out­sourc­ing some of your research, data entry, word pro­cess­ing or travel plan­ning to a vir­tual assis­tant on the Internet.

Vir­tual out­sourc­ing isn’t any­thing new. In Sep­tem­ber 1998, Busi­ness Week inter­viewed peo­ple at sev­eral US-based vir­tual out­sourc­ing firms, and they dis­cussed how their com­pa­nies help small– and medium-sized busi­nesses reduce their over­head expenses.

In 2006, this Amer­i­can Bar Asso­ci­a­tion arti­cle dis­cussed vir­tual out­sourc­ing for legal firms.

You can even out­source your social net­work­ing, although that seems to defeat the pur­pose. Make sure the vir­tual out­sourc­ing firm has some pri­vacy guarantees.

This post at Elance has more details and a list of 25 examples.

Related posts on billso.com

• 9 Decem­ber 2007: The mobile office in Honolulu
• 29 Jan­u­ary 2007: Quiet time
• 21 August 2004: Reverse outsourcing
• 6 August 2004: Do NDAs mean any­thing in India?
• 1 June 2004: Irish IT staffers turn on their CEO after out­sourc­ing announcement

Tagged as: management, network, outsourcing, privacy, social