Someone asked me today at a client whether they could allow their sales and marketing people to watch the web stats in real time as they sent out their latest email broadcast.

So what we set up was a nice big plasma screen in the meeting room, a buffet lunch and Get Clicky on the plasma live.

GetClicky for those who don’t know it is a fantastic and very accessible web analytics service that allows you to put the power of analytics in the hands of the people who use it.

One great feature in Get Clicky is the ‘Spy’ feature. This allows you to see in real time as people hit the site.

As Clicky is so friendly to view and tries to resolve the IP of the visitor to the company who owns it we could often clearly see a known customer or prospect coming into the site from the email and watch them as they browsed the site.

One sales guy even stopped eating the buffet to run and get a pad to take notes of a prospect browsing slowly through products he didn’t even know they used.

Its a geeky way to have lunch but I think it paid for itself and my time easily.

If you haven’t tried it yet why not go grab a free 30 day trial of GetClicky now?

If you haven’t tried it yet why not go grab a free 30 day trial of GetClicky now?

Well its been a mental few months over here. So much so that against my better judgement we may be looking at hiring someone.

Working with us on a part time or possibly full time basis you will need: -

Some SEO experience (Real SEO please not cut and paste agency stuff)
Some examples of your own work
An ability to handle technical webmastery tasks (FTP, server side things etc)
Experience of the following would be a great advantage too: -

Wordpress
PHP
MySql
Css

Would be happy to work with someone on a short term basis and as a contractor instead of employee if that suits…

I am more than excited to say that I will be speaking once again on my favourite topic of automation, this time at SES New York.

As a thankyou to people who attended “Automating Twitter’ in London and who will attend in New York we will be releasing a free tool for everyone in the week after the conference.

Looking forward to it and hoping I won’t get lynched for the slightly risky way that we approach this subject…

See the panel on Automating Twitter

As many will know I tend to try and outsource most of the business and many of the personal tasks I have to do each day. It allows you to build a system that will scale and in a time limited business like consultancy thats the path to real profit.

So I thought I would do a quick post of tips on how to get started in outsourcing your tasks.

The service I tend to prefer is oDesk

The reason I prefer them is that as you build your ‘team’ on the service they give you a team room where you can click to see the work diary of each team member.

The oDesk software also provides you with screenshots at intervals during their day so you can visually see the progress each of your team is making. They even have an iphone app to see that too.

1. Posting an opening

Post a clear and easy to understand description of the tasks involved. Bear in mind that many of these openings will remain open long term so try not to be specific on tasks. For example “PHP coder with experience of PHP, MySQL, xHTML, CSS, Jquery / Javascript, Wordpress and Api’s” is better than “Someone needed for development of a wordpress site”

2. When you get applicants filter down to a few possibles.

I use the following criteria: -
English skills of 5 (Very very important)
Feedback score of 4.5-5 (I rely on the feedback quite a bit)

3. Choose providers affiliated with a bigger provider.

I have used independent providers but find them often more hit and miss and unless you can justify employing them full time from the off then they will get dragged off onto other peoples projects. Its also good to have a manager above them who can allocate work to others in their organisation if needed. Here is an example of a great provider.

4. Don’t interview.

I tend to just narrow down to a few and then hire them explaining that I will give them a small paid task to test if they are what we need, the best result wins. The paid task is important as it measures the quality of their work and it gives you a chance to check communication is good – communication in outsourcing is the secret to success.

5. Set an hourly limit.

I need to make sure I know what my exposure to costs are, sure I can see the progress as we go but I need to be on top of what this is going to cost me (Watch out for anyone billing off odesk hours and ask them to stop)

6. Don’t employ people without a way of paying for their time.
I have 9 people on oDesk now and only one of them is doing work that I cant invoice out again to a client or is for a business I own equity ain and is paying for itself.

7. Use Basecamp to manage your team.

As soon as someone joins my team I set them up a login for our company Basecamp account and assign them tasks via that system rather than oDesks. Basically this means I keep on top of the total project and provides all we need to keep the tasks on time and all the files in one place.

8. Get a feel for what to expect and break things down for them

Its not surprising that people based thousands of miles away get the wrong end of the stick when you dont define what they need to do. Break each task into tiny little tasks and assign them, I like to do a project scope at the start so they get the context of what we are headed towards.

9. If you can try and get to a scale where you have someone managing your team whos communication skills and ability is excellent.

I have most of my team now reporting to one person who acts as a projects manager and understands the projects better even than me, I would like to get everyone reporting to them as soon as possible as there are always a stream of clarification questions to sort each day.

10. Get the iphone app

9am Monday morning…. roll over bleary eyed and reach for the phone…
Check email – NOPE
Check twitter – Maybe
Check the slideshow of work done overnight by the team – YUP

Its a great feeling to see that before you have woken up you already have an invoiceable days work or more done, suddenly the daily treadmill is an optional one!

Go sign up to oDesk today

I have had a lot of people asking me questions about my Adsense flat since I posted the pictures a while back.

It should go on the market at around £90,000 in a few weeks so we are just getting it ready for sale.

New carpets due in, hall to be decorated and some cosmetic work left to do.

Heres a quick video of what it looks like, not much of a place but a nice little flat for someone retiring to the seaside here…

Adsense Flat by SEOidiot from seoidiot on Vimeo.