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by Francis
(July 23, 2009)

Here is the 2nd job I ever outsourced in my life. I still was very cautious about the whole outsourcing process and I did not want to risk anything financially or my time. So I thought of a very small project that I could outsource to oDesk.

At that time, the minimal budget that was possible for a fixed price job was as low as $1. So I went for it.

(Now in 2012 oDesk has raised the minimal price for a fixed price project to $5. But at that time in 2009, it was really cheap to experiment.)

There was a song that was really stuck in my head. I loved to hear it up and down all day long. I was thinking: “what if someone could research for me several variations of the same song? Specifically, several electronic remix variations.”

Let’s take a look at my job description:

I know that I could have done this research myself. Perhaps it would have taken an hour or two for the same results, but I was curious about the outsourcing process and I was a little bit short on time.

So, I posted a job to the category “Design & Multimedia” and hoped that someone interesting in multimedia and music would pick the job up.

If I would do the same job today, I would have placed it into “Administrative Support”, “Web Research” or a similar category. It is a very simple job and many providers who do data entry jobs could have done it.

Design and Multimedia typically has more people who are better paid and therefore do not take a second look at my job opening for $1.

Still, I got two replies within a few minutes, perhaps an hour. The two applicants were called “Ronald” and “Nevelyn”.

I went and hired Nevelyn because I liked her application better. She seemed a nice person. It’s only now that I realized that my very first virtual assistant for a mini task has been from the Philippines.

I had some very specific ideas about the results I wanted to get. I wanted original and special versions of the same song “Heaven”. You can have a look at my job description if ever you thought about hiring someone to do a similar job for you.

Perhaps you have a whole list of favorite songs that you want to get every song variation on YouTube that you can get your hands on?

When I got my results, I was so happy that I was encouraged to continue outsourcing.

If it was so easy to make my life more fun and easy for the nominal amount of 1 small dollar, then I was hooked. I got at least twenty variations of the song which was five more than I asked for. So this provider even over delivered on what was asked for her.

Although some songs were live recordings on YouTube and their quality was not so good to listen to, there were still enough songs that would quench my thirst for this special song for a long time.

Look forward to the next outsourcing case study, where I will show you what else I did on oDesk!

If you liked the idea of outsourcing from this case study, I’d really love it if you would leave me a comment here.

And even if you find it silly that I had outsourced a small task as this, let me know!

There are many tasks that can be outsourced. This was a very very small one.

Comments for Case Study: Outsourcing Music Research. I Liked a Song and I Wanted More of It