One of the secrets of running a large internet operation is outsourcing. If a person wants to have a nice website or two, a single person can probably handle most of the jobs by her or himself. But if a webmaster wants to develop many websites, wants to run a larger operation, the solution that is preferred by many people today is outsourcing.

There are many educated people in countries all over the world who are willing and able to do every aspect of building and running websites. For example, there are many talented programmers in Eastern Europe and India who can be found on job boards and can be hired to write good programs at prices that are much lower than most American or European programmers charge.

Some tasks having to do with setting up and running a website are interesting and challenging the first time a person does them. It appeals to a person’s sense of discovery and adventure to design and build a good website. But, again, if the goal is to develop many websites and run them – for example, by adding new posts several times a week – then again the modern solution is outsourcing. There are even some websites that are so happy with their outsourcing experience that they brag about working only a few hours a week. The outsource workers do the work, while the webmaster pays them and spends his or her time playing … or thinking of new projects.

This seems like an ideal set-up for a webmaster with enough money to pay the low fees for outsource workers. Perhaps. But there can be one big problem: quality.

This writer is in no position to judge the quality of programmers and many other kinds of outsource workers. But a recent experience with outsource work opened his eyes to some serious potential flaws with the outsource model. That experience left a very bad taste.

One of the ways to get visitors to a website is by adding new content. Someone has to write posts to be added to the website several days a week.. Some webmasters consider this a kind of drudgery. But it’s fairly easy to find willing writers in countries outside the US who have a reasonable command of English and who are willing to write posts at low prices per post. Not a problem.

Or is it. Writing short posts four or five times a week is one thing. Writing an ebook is another. An ebook obviously is a lot longer than the usual post. But it sometimes consists of many short posts put together as a book. So in the end, the skills needed for the two are the same.

Outsource Writing Services – The writer of the post you are reading now recently contracted with a service to have an ebook written. The topic of the ebook was something I knew about well. Actually, I had taught the subject matter in college courses. Call it lazy, but I figured it was simpler and faster to buy a prepared ebook from the service than dig into my old course lecture notes and write. What I assumed would happen is I would get back a bunch of written material which I could polish off a bit and package as an ebook.

I got back many pages. They were shocking. Let’s put it this way: if the ebook that was sent to me would have been a term paper handed in at the end of a course I would not have passed the ebook writer. Not only was the writing bad. A big fraction of the content was just plain wrong. Another big fraction of the content was dangerously wrong.

Honest, I’m not a stickler. I can tolerate less than perfect stuff very easily. If the ebook I received from the service were let’s say 75% decent and close to the truth, I would have spent a couple of hours fixing it up before putting it out to the public. But the monstrosity foisted on me was maybe 50% of what it should have been – or less.

As I wrote above, I got this ebook not directly from the actual writer but from a service company. I emailed the company. Can’t you do better than this, I asked?

The reply was that I’m a perfectionist. An ebook doesn’t have to be perfect before it’s put up for sale on the net. Thank you and don’t bother us with your complaints anymore.

I draw two lessons from this experience.

If you want to outsource to a writer to write fluff or very light stuff you might get what you want easily. But something technical or where there is a standard of truth or correctness requires more than the skills of many outsource writers.

I cannot know for sure, but I suspect the writer got an assignment from the service company to write on the selected subject. The writer probably spent a day or two surfing the net to find material. Based on that quick research the writer probably sat down and wrote for another day or two or three and filled the assigned number of pages. As far as the writer was concerned, as long as the finished product came close to the research that was done a few days before, that’s fine. The “standard” the writer was shooting for was probably just getting a number of pages filled with stuff close to the target subject matter.

As someone who knew the subject matter (but was too lazy to write a whole ebook) and who has taught it, I could compare the ebook with the many term papers I graded in college. I would not have given a passing grade to the stuff I got. The writer knew less than the average undergrad, as far as I could tell.

I have looked at a few ebooks recently to see whether they were well written or well researched. Some were. But I happened to find quite a few ebooks that were very weak. If I would have paid money to get good information I would have been quite annoyed at these ebooks. The level of writing and of information in many ebooks is low.

Outsource vendors – The second lesson I drew from this experience came from my interaction with the service company. Their attitude seemed to be that anything goes in the ebook market. Just put out a product, sell it, get your money and to hell with whether what you just sold is worth what you charged. I could detect no pride or professionalism or standards in the attitude of the service. Just an ear for the cash register.

That attitude obviously doesn’t say a lot for the ebook market. I’m willing to cut corners a little here and there, but if the service company’s attitude expresses what it takes to survive in the ebook market, my aspirations lie elsewhere.

Outsourcing is obviously not an answer to all questions. If you do outsource, do it with care.