You can find stuff as bizarre as hiring people to post on your facebook wall in order to make your girlfriend jealous, or sing happy birthday to you by name in a bikini… But the most useful applications I’ve found come in some of the SEO related gigs. Namely, social marketing, article writing, link building and even video testimonials.

• Social Marketing
  Buy yourself hundreds of facebook fans, facebook shares, Google Plus 1 votes, tweets, social bookmarks on dozens of sites, etc.  These kinds of things can help an SEO campaign, but take hours doing them yourself.
• Article Writing
  For $5 you can generally get a decently written 500 word SEO article in the topic of your choice.  This is a bargain for those of us who crank out tons of web content on various niches, but hate writing.  I’ve done a couple of these through Fiverr, and they weren’t the worst I’d seen, especially for how complicated the topic I gave them was.  It certainly was around the same quality you’d get from another outsourcer on Elance.com, for half the price.
• Link Building
  Be careful with this one.  There are some valuable links to be gained, but simply going for the ‘too good to be true’ 50,000 links in 3 days is not going to help your campaign.  Google knows what looks fishy, and some of the link wheels and highly spammy offerings on Fiverr will only hurt your efforts.
• Video Testimonials
  There are dozens, if not hundreds, of men and women of different races and languages that offer up a 1 to 2 minute honest, professional product review by video.  Though this could be used less ethically, you can also send your product to the reviewer for an honest review.  Video testimonials coming from different people mean more to consumers than if the testimonial was coming from you. Not bad for $5!

If you’ve been thinking about outsourcing some of your internet marketing tasks, Fiverr is the perfect way to get your feet wet.  You can check the gigs out, check the feedback of the contractor, make sure they’re good, and risk your $5 and sit back, while someone else does your dirty work.  Once you get your feet wet, you’ll be on Odesk and Elance hiring a full time team.

Don’t do it the hard way.

My first idea was to form a Nevada corporation. I would then register that entity as an Amazon affiliate, and that corporation would pay me as a shareholder.  But that would not only add time, but cost several hundred dollars. Not to mention this process would add more red tape at tax season. This intimidates most affiliate marketers of the badlands to just forget about it and move on.  Then I found a secret weapon.

Do it the easy way.

I found Viglink. To put it in simple terms, Viglink is a very large affiliate aggregator.  They’re not registered in one of the banned states, so they qualify for Amazon affiliate.  Also, due to their volume, they get the top 8.5% commission rate on all Amazon items. What they do is allow you and I to monetize our sites with their affiliate account, as kind of an ‘affiliate’s affiliate’. So you’re not actually an Amazon affiliate, but you’re kinda a contractor for Viglink.

You install a snippet of code on your site and from that point on, any links you post out from your site (that can be affiliated) will automatically convert to an affiliated link.  Have a WordPress site? It couldn’t be any easier.  Just install the plugin and add your Viglink key.  You can also set it to automatically add affiliated links to your pages.  For example, the application saw that I typed ‘Amazon’ on this page, but I didn’t create the link, Viglink did. This makes affiliating your pages much simpler- and automatic.

The bonus, Viglink has thousands of merchants, not only Amazon! You don’t have to apply to dozens and dozens of affiliate programs, only to be rejected, then weed through the specific pages and products you want to link to.  Simply go to the page you want to link to, copy the URL, paste it into your site, then Viglink will automatically convert that link to an affiliate link.  Viglink takes 25% of whatever the affiliate program pays.  The good news for someone in an Amazon ‘banned state’ is even after their 25%, due to the fact they get the 8.5% tier, you actually get 6.4%, which is still more than most Amazon affiliates make at the bottom tiers.  So what are you waiting for? It’s a very simple workaround, and trust me, it will make your life easier.

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They have developed an algorithm that when you enter your site URL and keywords, and do your onpage optimization, you’ll get a price spit out at you, for what you’d pay for which search engines.  It also will tell you if it’s a good SEO opportunity or not.  The two tools you can use before even committing or even creating an account are the ‘keyword opportunity tool’ and ‘keyword suggestions’.  Their system undoubtedly ties in to Google’s keyword tools to calculate their risk on taking on an SEO campaign with your URL and keywords.

The ‘keyword opportunity tool’ will tell you how much you’ll pay per month if your site ranks in a certain position in Google, or Yahoo/Bing.  In this screenshot you can see that you’ll pay $149 a month for this particular keyword if you rank in the top 3 in Google, and $87 a month if you rank in the top 3 of Yahoo/Bing.  So, yes you’ll have to pay, but let’s be honest, for the cost and the risk, it’s not that terrible of a proposition. Many people put thousands of dollars into an SEO campaign that may not even produce results, at least with RankPay you can see what you’ll have to pay if you rank. If you’ve ever thought about outsourcing your SEO, you might want to finish reading this review.

Did RankPay Work for Me?

I used RankPay for 2 different websites, way before I knew anything about SEO. I was stuck way at the bottom of search results and the research I did do on SEO made me nervous that I would screw something up and get red-flagged by Google, so I figured I had nothing to loose.  I was right, after a month, I didn’t see any immediate improvement.  I got a bill from RankPay that was $0.  In that account breakdown, they showed my starting rankings, along with my current rankings.  No change, no charge.

Now that I am well aware of what it takes to get a link-building off-page SEO campaign going, I realize that RankPay‘s approach to ‘slowly but steadily’ build diverse links was the right way.  Google likes links from diverse sources, from social bookmarks, forum posts, blog comments, high authority links, social votes, directories and the like. Google also doesn’t like when one day you get 500 backlinks and the next month you get none.  RankPay slowly posts quality, diverse backlinks to your url, and in your dashboard you’ll be able to see what kind of links are being added.

After the second month, my rankings started to gain traction, and in several keyword terms, I was ranking in the top 3 results.  Seeing that I was doing no other off page SEO, I credit the increase directly to RankPay.  Once the rankings were in a good position, I moved them to ‘maintenance mode’ which is half the cost, and RankPay simply works to maintain those rankings by doing necessary link-building.

My RankPay Review

Pros:

• No risk
• Cost is up-front and fully expected
  
• You only pay if you rank
• It’s fully managed by SEO experts who know what the heck they’re doing
• You can manage SEO campaigns on many many sites and keywords

I would definitely recommend RankPay to anyone who wants automated SEO who has inadequate knowledge or time to build links, but also is on a budget.  If you are sitting on an excellent site, which is onpage optimized, content rich, and wondering where your traffic is, you should give RankPay a shot, as you have nothing to lose.  If you don’t rank, you don’t pay.

Cons:

• You have to pay a price for both major search engines, not just Google
• Some keywords can be expensive to rank in
• If your site gets stuck at 1 position that you have to pay monthly on, you have to pay that each month even if you don’t improve beyond that (for as long as the keyword is active)
  

Pretty much the only kind of person I wouldn’t recommend RankPay to is the SEO guru who has a firm handling on link building and has a team to carry out that method, or perhaps if you have a much larger budget and are working with a fortune 500 site.  But those guys probably aren’t reading this right now.

All in all, my RankPay Review is positive.  RankPay is a great low-cost, low-risk way of dipping your toes in the waters of search engine optimization.  Its also a great way to manage many different SEO campaigns without having to manage your own team.

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But I’m small potatoes… I can’t go global…

You may run a 1 or 2 man operation and be intimidated by the prospect of expanding your business overseas.  Maybe you’ve settled with offering international shipping, and settle for the ridiculous shipping price that nobody ever would pay to have your items shipped to them in Europe.  There is a way to expand your reach to the far corners of the world, and it’s easier than you might think. It’s called product fulfillment.

Seriously? Then where?

What I did was start with the largest English-speaking market outside of North America- the UK.  I recommend if you’re starting out, do this as well.  You can always expand to other English-speaking markets, like Australia, and even go so far as to have your site translated to different languages and use shipping fulfillment there to reach the market.

In the UK, I use Shipwire. Basically, I ship cases of merchandise to Shipwire’s warehouse in London, and as I sell to customers in the UK and Europe, it ships from the warehouse in London.  It ships quicker, cheaper, and more professionally than if I tried shipping from here.  Not to mention, customers tend to want to buy items in their own country – go figure.  Shipwire allows me to have a UK operation without actually being there. It worked so well I ended up using them for even my domestic shipping, for pretty much the same reasons, and to free up our own time.  They charge you a per-shipment fee which varies, based on your shipping volume.  Usually it’s around $1.90 per item.  For a small operation like ours, it’s FAR more feasible to use fulfillment like Shipwire for a simple fee of $1.90 per item than it is to hire a UK lawyer, set up a company, an office, staff, etc there in the UK.

If your product can be sold in the UK, and has equal demand in the UK, you can easily expand your customer base by 65,000,000 people, or 20% (assuming you’re in the USA).

Step-By-Step Instructions on Expanding your eCommerce Business to the United Kingdom

•  Step 1: Research Demand

Even countries as similar as the USA and the United Kingdom have many differences that could possibly void demand for your products there.  If you sell electronics, make sure you are selling the right voltage; If you’re selling DVDs, make sure you’re selling the right versions; Don’t expect American political humor items to sell well in the UK; Etc.

• Step 2: Build a UK Site

Make sure to snag your .co.uk domain.  This would be best if it were the same domain as your main domain.  This is the best for obvious SEO reasons in that country, as you begin your SEO campaign for this site. The next best would be to use a subdomain like uk.yoursite.com. Change nuances like British slang, change currency to pounds, add your toll free number, and you’re set.

• Step 3: Get a UK Phone Number

Depending on your volume, this could be as simple as getting a simple Vonage UK phone number, and forwarding it to your local line, or as complicated as hiring an outsourced call center to manage your phones in the UK.  Either way, when a UK customer goes to your site, and sees a local toll-free number, they are at ease knowing they’re dealing locally, and apart from YOU, they are.

• Step 4: Sign up For Shipwire

Go to Shipwire and sign up for a free trial, send some product, give it a shot.  Your packages will have your chosen company name on the “From” address, and your customer will get their orders quickly and be as happy as can be. One benefit of the United Kingdom is that the country is so small, shipping from the Shipwire warehouse in London is fast, like 2 days, even when paying for a cheap mailing service.  Your customer will not have to even pay customs, which is another huge plus and marketing point.

• Step 5: Sell

Once you are all set up and have all aspects of your UK presence in place (.co.uk site, toll free UK phone number, Shipwire warehouse) you are now accessible to 65 million new potential consumers, and with very little risk.  I mean, for a few hundred dollars, IF THAT, you’re in business.

Disclaimer: Make sure to at least consult a UK accountant if you start seeing a significant volume of sales, because once you get beyond a certain number sales you’re required to pay VAT and register a UK entity.  I keep my sales there under the threshold and never had to deal with this.

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In previous conversations with friends the issue has been brought up about morality.  A specific question some may be brought to is:

“Is it morally acceptable for me to outsource this task to a guy in the Philippines for $1 an hour, do it myself, or hire a company in my home town?”

The generation that brought us union culture has also given outsourcing a stigma as somehow causing the decline in jobs in the US.  Let me challenge that with my own explanation of this issue. In short, money is amoral, meaning it doesn’t know good from bad.  You can use $100 to do evil, like buying rat poison and feeding it to a dozen puppies.  But with that same $100 you can also do good, like helping out a family that’s down on their luck pay their utility bill for the month.  My main point is, money itself is a tool that is amoral.

My epiphany on outsourcing

A few years ago, I used an American company to do my web development for one of my websites.  Boy was that stupid.  It wouldn’t have been if they added value, but they didn’t.  They began to treat me like I was small potatoes and that they had bigger fish to fry, and dropped the ball on a couple projects, so I began to shop around.

I found out about web developers on oDesk , a website where you can post your task or job and have tons of foreigners who are completely qualified, bid on the job.  I got a guy who specialized in the CMS I was using for that website, and only bid about 1/10th of what I was paying before.  So I gave him a shot.  Long story short, he finished the job 10 times faster, for 10 times cheaper, and he was 10 times more helpful and accommodating than the US based company.  I later found out that the company I was hiring in the US was actually outsourcing all the work themselves to the Ukraine… So wait… I’m paying you $2,000 to do something, you pay $200 to a guy in the Ukraine, and keep $1,800… What value are you adding for $1,800?

 My question to the guy who says it’s wrong to outsource work is this:

What is more moral? For me to spend $2,000 to hire the American company, and he sends $200 overseas, and pockets the $1,800? Or is it more moral for me to spend $200 on a guy overseas, and keep the $1,800 to invest in my kids’ college fund, or do anything else I feel like doing with that money?

Why do we feel somehow morally obligated to keep overpaid, underperformers employed at the expense of our own personal financial situation? My first moral obligations are to my family, not the “US Worker”.

What’s your time worth?

Here were my 3 options:

1. Do it myself

2. Hire a local company

3. Outsource overseas

Let’s see, I could do it myself but it would take me about 2 weeks of full time energy… If I can get it done for $200, and save myself 80 hours of work, I would say that’s a smart decision, wouldn’t you? Or, I could hire a company and keep loyal to an American company… But then I go bankrupt and don’t have a job myself… So I conclude that I need to outsource.

I’m still pretty new into outsourcing, and still have several areas of my businesses that I need to optimize and outsource, but the principles learned in that experience have given me a new outlook on the issue. Instead of looking at it as I’m destroying someone’s job here, I look at it like this: I’m creating MY job, and with it, my income gets funneled down through the local economy through my spending.  Not only that, but I’m helping a fellow human being overseas who is JOYFULLY working for $2 an hour, even happy to have a job at all.  How is that immoral? Americans are the only ones who deserve jobs?

In summary, my primary moral obligations are to my wife and kids, and so yes, it is a morally better decision to outsource some of my tedious tasks than for me to waste my time on them, or overpay another entitlement-minded US company.  Not only this but I can multiply my productivity, and be a more fruitful contributor myself.  Macro, micro. My tasks are now macro (big picture), while delegating (at a very low cost) tasks such as data entry, research, copywriting, etc.  The possibilities are pretty much endless.

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