OFW Speak

You have heard us recommend that you outsource your work to the Philippines.  So, why the Philippines and why Filipinos?

I may not be the best person to write about this.  No wait, on second thought, I think I am.  Shameless promotion of my country, race, and trade aside, I seriously believe that the Philippines is the best country you can outsource your work to.  And why do I think that?  Let me count the ways…

Filipinos are the best English-speakers in Southeast Asia – I even daresay that Filipinos are the best English-speakers in Asia.  The Philippines was an American-administered territory from 1898 until 1946 and was the site of American air and naval installations until 1991.  Because of this, the country is heavily influenced by the American culture and language.  English is the primary language of instruction in schools.  It is not difficult to find a Filipino that speaks very good English with little to no trace of a native accent.

Most Filipinos are well-educated – College education in the Philippines is relatively cheap and since you can never find a decent job in the country unless you graduate with a degree, a lot of Filipino students go to and finish college.  The educational standard in the Philippines is also competitive with other more developed countries and in fact, the country is seeing an influx of foreign students from neighboring Asian countries like Korea and China.

Filipinos love to please other people - Sometimes, to a fault.  Filipinos will put other people’s needs over their own.  If they have a guest in their home, they will give the guest the best room, the best linen, never mind if they end up sleeping on the floor.  Seriously.  Filipinos are weird that way.  Maybe that’s what our ancestors hammered into our subconscious.  We reserve the best china for guests and use cheap, ordinary dinnerware the rest of the time.  My point is, if you hire a Filipino, they will do what you ask them to do to the best of their abilities because they would want to please you.

Filipinos are very loyal – Treat them well and you will have a worker who will be willing to work with you until they are no longer able to.  Hiring a Filipino will lower your worker turnover.
Filipinos are familiar with Western business practices – Business practices in the Philippines are very similar to Western business practices, it is almost eerie.  However, being an American colony for almost 50 years, it is hardly surprising.  And did I mention that our accounting and legal systems are similar to America’s as well?

Filipinos have lower wages – I did save the best reason to hire a Filipino for last.  Filipino wages are, on an average, only about 12% of American wages for the same area of practice. That in itself is reason enough why a lot of work is being outsourced to our country and perhaps, you should too.
Now, it’s time for my shameless promotion:  Whenever you decide to outsource work, do think of Filipinos and the Philippines first.


This article was wittingly written by Ms. Honey Amabelle D. Young of Easyoutsource site entitled Why Outsource in the Philippines. I just impressed by how well she lifts the Filipino spirit by her simple yet compelling words. Yebah Pinoys!

Ever wondered what are the things you can make in order to find a suitable and satisfying job online? Because of lack of knowledge and out of connections, most people land in paid to click sites, scamming review sites, survey sites and other scam online schemes that waste not only time and effort but also our peer job hunter's hard earned savings just for the assurance of earning.

Or as an outsourcer, do you even know the things you could delegate to your workers?

Well people, here are the list of things(for starters) that can actually be outsourced online(Addressing to the outsourcer):

• Market research – Want to collect information about your competitors’ marketing activities? Need a report on market trends over the last 3 years? How about a list of businesses in your area that could use your product or service but don’t currently have it? Hire an assistant to do the research and produce a nice report.
• Data entry – Have you ever needed a bunch of information reorganized or put into a spreadsheet? Don’t spend your whole morning on it — hire a data entry assistant and do something more impactful.
• Accounting – Hire a trained, experienced assistant to manage the books. You can even find CPAs on EasyOutsource who are completely familiar with American accounting practices.
• Writing – Blog posts, website content, reports, emails, sales materials — almost any kind of writing you need can be done by an outsourced writer.
• Personal assistants – Hire a personal assistant is like cloning yourself. Sort of. It’ll change your world.
• Lots of little things like document editing, transcription, email filtering, QA testing – All these things could eat your day, but could be more efficiently handled by letting a subcontractor do them at a good rate.
• Answering phones – Set your assistant up with Skype, Google Voice, or VOIP account, and let her answer calls for you. Many of our job seekers have been trained in Western call centers, and are probably better on the phones than you.
• Appointment setting – This can be time consuming and frustrating. Share your calendar with your assistant, and let him book your meetings.
• Sales calls and emails – You can show your assistant how to find leads and make contact over the phone and email. Give him some time to get the hang of it, and pretty soon he’ll be generating usable leads and maybe even some sales.
• Responding to customer inquiries – Yeah, I know you like to keep a finger on the pulse of your customer base. But odds are you could do your customers a lot better by spending your time improving your product or service, rather than personally responding to their every query.
• Website management – Updates, upgrades, moderation, content creation — all this is the perfect type of stuff for your assistant to take off your hands.
• Order processing – Does your website take orders, process payments, and handle shipments and delivery? Get your assistant involved to handle the routine work and smooth out kinks before they become problems.
• SEO – You know you’d make more money if your website came up in the top of search results. But you don’t have the time to figure it out, and you don’t have the cash to hire a full-blown SEO agency. Good news: it ain’t that hard. Get an assistant with some SEO experience on the job.
• Link building – The most tedious and time consuming part of SEO. You don’t have 4 hours a day to spend trying to get other websites to link to yours. But there are job seekers who are good at this and would love to help.
• Adwords campaign management – With Adwords, you pay by the click for people who have searched terms related to your business. It can be lucrative, but it takes some time to set up and monitor.
• Web design – I’m a web developer myself, and I don’t do the web design. I hire great designers in the Philippines.
• Web programming – Is your website not quite doing what you need it to? Have you thought of a cool widget or function you could put on your website to help your customer base fall in love with you? Hire a programmer.
• Progress reporting and client updating – Your clients will wax affectionate when you’re sending them handsome monthly reports showing all the progress you’re making with their money.

trust is earned, not given

Trust is the commodity in any offshore or outsourcing business. And as a virtual staff, you are expected to be honest as well as trustworthy at all times.

Of course, in return, we, as virtual workers also need an assurance of our trust. Below could be some useful tips for you to keep in mind in order for you to work harmoniously with your foreign boss and have a peace of mind at work.

1. On your first month of work, basically trust is being built. Outsourcers usually call this period as 'trial period' like testing the waters. It is also a way of investment fool proofing. Make sure you agree on at least weekly basis of payment for the first month or so. Agree maybe to have the pay be released Friday evening or Saturday morning, since western time is lagging by 12 hours or so.

This way you get an assurance that this person really does pay. And as well, the person paying you gets a short assessment of his investment.

2. Keep an open communication between the two of you. Make yourself available in skype, gtalk or any platform of communication at least 8 hours a day. This way you get a chance to know one another personally.

Some people call it micromanagement, but for me it's called 'keeping abreast'.

Make yourself comfortable with your boss. He might be paying you, but that doesn't mean you need to have a tall wall between the two of you. Be up close and personal

3. Don't be afraid to add your boss with your Social Networking accounts. One way of showing trust and gaining trust is to invite someone be a part of your circle of friends.

After all, you are no criminal or a serial killer to hide something, right?

SEO or Search Engine Optimization Specialist is the one tasked to do in-depth offsite and onsite optimization of a site to make it highly visible in search engines like Yahoo, Bing and most especially Google.

For starters, onsite optimization is a basic know-how of what keyword or keywords should a page be ranking for. With that, the SEO specialist will make sure that the h1 to h6(if applicable), meta keywords, meta data, and anchor texts are all properly done according to a defined keyword or sets of keywords.

As long as you are not optimizing your own site or page, then that is called offsite optimization. Usually it is called link building, back linking, link wheeling, or reputation management. Since search engines, most especially Google, rank the importance of a page depending but not solely on the number of links pointing to the page that is to be optimized. Every link is counted as a vote.

Are you for it?

In my experience, it was a cool experience to see your website rank in search engines. It is also cool seeing its SERP(Search Engine Result Page) rise as well as its PR(Page Rank).

But then again, you must be ready for a bunch of repetitive tasks. It is quite boring as it goes. So I switched to a more unpredictable-dutied job position.

2 Mbps and 2 MBps are two totally different internet speeds after realizing that the latter is the real deal while the former is a mere marketing gimmick by most ISP's to sell subscription packages to uneducated public.