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I am at the point where I need to outsource some work. I have been looking at a site called www.peopleperhour.com and I have got some responses on there. In fact I am meeting up with someone I accepted for a job this evening. Does anyone have any experience with this? What kind of work is ok to outsource or not? I am creating published materials.

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Outsourcing brings several challenges; my experience is with proprietary business information. Sometimes the contractor will attempt to take the technology/customers/design and appropriate it for himself. Outsourcing to another country may leave you without some legal remedies to protect yourself.

Specific examples of outsourcing gone awry include:

  • Technology development where the outsourcing developer/manufacturer made and improved electronics that ultimately beat out the U.S. originating company in the primary markets

  • Textbooks sold under license to a foreign distributor for sale in that country who turned around and sold the books back to customers in the source country

  • Foreign web design where the foreign contractor solicited customers
    directly, causing loss of some clients in the home country

Consider limiting access to any proprietary information; review copyrights and contractual provisions, and have a plan for if the contractor does the worst.

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Sounds like you're having creative work done.

Make sure that any images are royalty free (or provided by you) and that you have the appropriate contact in place (here is a link to several designer oriented contracts to consider.)

As for what is appropriate outsourceable work - the best answer is - it depends. It depends on your budget, your internal resources (money + skills + time) and your tolerance for risk. Engaging with outside resources has an element of risk, but you balance it against other resource constraints and make the decision. Review the related questions on the right side of this page - lots of good discussions there.

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If it's really just grammatical edits and tweaks, your risk is pretty low. In general, grammar has some hard and fast rules and if you pick someone that doesn't follow them, it should be pretty clear pretty quickly. If you wanted them to write articles or design things from the ground up, that would be different simply because there's more room for things to go wrong. – CaseySoftware Jan 23 at 15:40

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