After my last post about the Art and Science of SEO, I got an email from a Mr Tyler DeWitt of http://www.dewittsmedia.com/seo-blogs/ asking me some questions about setting up an outsourcing company in India. As luck would have it his question fit in nicely with my plan to write about the SEO processes I set up and why I moved the entire operation to India. So, with Tyler’s permission,(complete with his ads and phone number BTW), I’ll post his questions and my response here as the second in the series about building the ART OF SEO into a scientific process.

QUESTION ABOUT SETTING UP AN OUTSOURCING OPERATION FROM DEWITT MEDIA
Hey this is Tyler Dewitt I know Aaron, and Jim pretty well. I actually never even heard of you I read about you on Aaron blogs, but anyways I notice your moving to india. I was wanting to ask you a few question what do you think of out sourcing work to india the reason I ask is because I plan on flying over there one day and setting up out source companies for the us to India. Which not to many people will know about it as I speak I have a few people over there now, but I'm thinking of building it pretty large, or as large as I can.

What do you think of that you seem to have been around for awhile. I know that it's a pretty big thing now days, also I seen john scott on your blogroll I know him to he offered me a job over in toyko, but I  urned it down awhile back. Anyways you think that's a good field to get into from your experience cause I notice a big majority of IT companies are out sourcing which its not talked about that much, but if I was to out source I would build the companies under our company and not outsource to other companies if you get what I'm saying.

Tyler Dewitt (CEO of DeWitt's Media Company)

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Ok for the first question:
>what do you think of out sourcing work to india<

Well, obviously I think it is good enough that I would endure multiple 30+ hour plane rides complete with body cavity searches and rectal probes,(be fore-warned though, the rectal probes cost extra), malaria, typhoid fever, salmonella and just the weirdness of sticking out like a raisin in a bowl of milk to be able to do it.

>Anyways you think that's a good field to get into from your experience cause I notice a big majority of IT companies are out sourcing which its not talked about that much,<

Yes, a lot of IT companies are outsourcing.

I don’t know that I would say a majority but there is no question there are a lot. 

The trick is that you have to have two things to really make it worth it. First you need the volume.

In the US, any programmer with even a Bachelor’s degree is going to cost about $40,000 per year. At that salary you can be pretty sure the employee is gone at the first job offer that pays $40,005. You are paying the least and of course there are exceptions to the rule but the rule remains you get what you pay for. In terms of talent, education, focus, loyalty and just about every other aspect of a good employee.

In India $8000 a year is a good job. $1000 a month is a GREAT job and you are now interviewing people with Master’s degrees and 3+ years experience. $24,000 a year and you have the best of the best.

There are also cultural differences that provide benefits to an employer. Again, I’m speaking in generalities and every culture or country has it’s good, bad and ugly but as a rule, reputation means a lot to Indians. This fosters an environment of a little higher sense of duty and doing what you say you will do. There are certain accepted practices to leaving one job to start another that simply do not exist in the US job market.

So, yes, reduced salaries by as much as 50 to 70% can be very attractive BUT, when you still have to cover the expense of the travel, the rental for suitable, (suitable being a VERY subjective term), temporary living quarters, hiring reliable financial and legal counsel, the re-location of key organization people, the cost can still be prohibitive to some companies who do not have the revenue to justify spending several thousands of dollars to be able to save 60% on salaries.

A good way to look at what I mean is that if your total cost in labor last year was $100,000, (not counting your own salary of course unless you want to reduce that by 70% as well),and you can save $60,000 next year by moving the bulk of your labor requirements but it will cost some $40,000 to go there, get the counsel you need, set up an office, buy the furniture, interview and hire the people BUT,(and this is the big but), you only made a profit of $20,000 on sales of $200,000 last year, you can’t afford to save the $60,000 next year. 

That is why the first trick is you have to have a company with the volume to justify the initial expense of moving there and getting set up.

TO MAKE OUTSOURCING WORK, YOU NEED TO HAVE THE MANAGEMENT IN PLACE

The second trick is, you need someone you KNOW you can trust to be there to manage the operation. It’s not that you can’t trust the lower level staff members, it’s that with any new company there are a lot of things that need to be defined and without a strong leader/leaders in place that you are confident understand and share your vision, the whole train can easily take the wrong track.

In my case, I had worked with several people in India for over two years and I had started thinking of making the move a good year and a half before I mentioned it to anyone. I started doing things to kind of test certain people that I thought displayed management ability.

I found someone that I felt fit the bill and began a slow, tedious process of kind of grooming them to become my partner. I got lucky and found the right man for the job. Someone who has a high sense of ethics coupled with the education in management and the experience of running several large teams over the past 10 years.

I had considered moving someone from my Oklahoma staff there but no one was jumping at the opportunity to move 10,000 miles away to an exotic land that few knew much about. So, instead, I slowly started shifting more and more of the “process” I keep talking about to other companies over there. I was actually recruiting kind of.

So, if you have the volume and the management, (assuming you’re not prepared to go yourself and do it), then you just have a lot of problems to overcome BUT it can be a very good move. The thing to remember is not to be afraid of the problems. You are going to have those in India or in Oklahoma City. It still boils down to the same basic principles of business anywhere on the globe.

I’m very happy with my decision. I now have a staff of 18 for about 1/3 of what a staff of 7 was costing me before the move. I now have a staff that is motivated, well educated, focused and well managed. Amish Vyas, our SEO manager alone has a MBA from one of the most prestigious business schools in India as well as a Bachelors in electronics and telecommunications. http://outsource.techndu.com/meet_your_new_employees.html

Plus I am now able to rent out most of the office space we had in our building in Oklahoma City and reduce our cost in utilities, payroll taxes, health insurance and so forth. All in all, we have cut our expenses by more than 50% overall.

From playing a guitar to painting the Mona Lisa to knowing how to get one website to place above all it’s competitors in a search engine, there are those who do these things so well that what they do could be considered an art. Results are produced that are beyond the norm in their particular fields and that gives them the reputation of an artist and it is well deserved.

A great example of that talent and dedication making someone an artist is an interview with Michael Gray of http://www.wolf-howl.com/ (a blog well worth your time by the way). You can find the interview at http://www.linkjuicy.com/blog/michael-gray-interview-advanced-link-strategies/ and you will quickly get a feel for the difference from someone who can talk about links and someone who takes it to a level that can only be seen as an art.

By the way, http://www.linkjuicy.com is another great seo blog that is published by a man who is fast becoming an artist in his own right in the field of SEO interviews, Peter DaVanzo. Do yourself a favor if you have any interest in SEO or online marketing and make these blogs a part of your learning routine.

The science of SEO is more about proven techniques applied in a systematic way that can be assigned to software or staff and then monitored and managed. These techniques are meant to do the most good for the most sites with the least expense. The science is more about mass production where the art is more about custom solutions to specific sites.

Of course there are more ways to describe the art of SEO compared to the science but I’m referring to both strictly from a business online promotion perspective that should serve both the SEO selling services and the client trying to decide what he needs for the money he can afford to spend. 

Hiring an artist to provide SEO services can be expensive. I refuse to insinuate that the fees may be over-priced because it is difficult to put an across-the-board value on the artistic ability of those who truly possess that mixture of talent and in the trenches experience. When someone can truly practice their craft with stellar results for your specific business that is worth a lot. What would you pay if someone could actually double or triple your profits within 90 to 180 days? Well, that figure you just thought of is very likely a bargain.

Of course the artistic approach isn’t for everyone from either side. For my own experience, when I have taken on jobs where the client was paying for my undivided focus and expecting me to use all resources at my disposal to get the results they were wanting, I have to not only charge for my time but for the time of my staff as well as all the resources needed to support the entire operation.

I don’t really like the artistic approach to SEO for several reasons but the main negatives for me are having to charge enough to cover the expense of not only me devoting so much of my time to one client or one project putting my services beyond the reach of most small to medium size online businesses, but also because of the demands that exclusivity puts on me. I have always had a problem with authority figures and I simply don’t like anyone, (even clients), telling me what to do. Also when it comes to SEO and business, it is never enough. Every business always needs more traffic, more sales and more profits. Oh yeah and yesterdays success means very little today. It’s a lot of pressure and frankly I‘ve worked myself into a position where I just don’t have to do much I don’t want to do.

I much prefer the science as a process. To me the very definition of business is to find a demand for a value driven product or service that you can provide at a profit. Develop a set of procedures that can be managed to provide that product and service and then do it faster, cheaper and more efficiently. Once you have the process hitting the objective, just keep doing it. As long as it works for more people than it doesn’t, you have a solid business model.

The process allows you to offer a service that provides value to a much broader market at a greatly reduced cost expanding the market.

I still take on projects where the client is expecting, (and paying for), my artistic approach for the sole benefit of the client, but I am much happier training my staff to develop specific processes that produce value for the most clients at a very attractive rate.

Over the next few days I will be discussing the exact processes I have developed enabling my company to offer SEO services at a price that almost any business of any size can afford and expect to see positive results with. This will also give insight into how you too can set up the techniques that you know work way more often than they don’t into processes that can be easily duplicated and monitored reducing the cost of trying to perform those tasks on a site by site basis.

In other words, I’ll try to help you decide when you need the exclusive focus of an artist and  what you could expect to pay for such attention and the results that could bring, as opposed to developing a process for performing the tasks that bring small results time and time again. Do you want a lot once for a high price or a little a lot of times for a low cost?

Once I explain a few of the processes I have developed, (born out of the artistic approach turning it into a science), you’ll also understand why I made the move to India. What is significant about my decision to go to India to set up my company is in the way it deals with training staff and managing expenses to keep cost down. The online promotion industry is very competitive and finding the right price points can make all the difference in the world.

Y’all say hey to your mom’n’em for me

Peace Y’all