Their service is easy to use, fairly priced, and I have to give them credit for being very diligent about maintaining a no-spam policy. They monitor and report on your e-mail deliverability and act on spam complaints (if this sounds like a bad thing to you, then you might want to look elsewhere). But this attention to detail is one way that Constant Contact works to keep their customers e-mail deliverability relatively high for a low cost service provider.

Also See:

• Choosing An E-mail Service Provider

Outsourcing, the process of hiring outside (typically remote) contractors, for tasks or projects, is no longer a trend. It’s become the standard for many businesses who are looking to keep costs down. Crowdsourcing is just a form of outsourcing whereby you put your project out to bid by multiple providers. But is crowdsourcing always better than just plain outsourcing? Or vice versa?

To answer this question I’ll share some specific examples about technical, creative, and administrative tasks that I have outsourced and crowdsourced. Below are some of the Virtual Assistant (VA) firms (for outsourcing) and Freelance networks that I either have used in the past, currently use, or plan to use. Some of them have proven to be great resources for some tasks (like Elance (review)). Some I would never use again (like BPOvia). I’ll tell you which is which and post reviews as I get enough experience with each of them to share a useful opinion.

Freelance networks (like Elance, Odesk, etc.) are crowdsourcing directories, where you can post jobs for technical or creative projects (usually limited-complexity web design, development, and copy writing projects). The freelancers listed are all independent, with varying specialties and expertise. Virtual Assistant (VA) firms are outsourcing companies that employ individuals whose time they rent to you as an assistant. Although they will tell you they handle the same types of tasks as the freelancers in a freelance network, in my experience it’s best to outsource more technical or specialized tasks to the specialist freelancers, and leave the administrative task to the VA’s, who tend to be more generalists. With that said, know that you can find independent VA’s, and even some VA firms listed in the freelance networks!

Now, here is an evolving summary of my personal experience with various freelance networks and Virtual Assistant firms

Crowdsourcing on Freelance Networks:

These sites are great for more specialized or technical tasks that are beyond the expertise of more generalized VA’s skillset (ie: graphic design, copywriting, or small programming jobs). The websites below allow you to post job descriptions to describe the work you need done, set a budget, and have freelancers bid on the job. In my experience, these networks are best for smaller tasks (fewer than 40 hours of work).

• Elance – Simply the best professional services outsourcing website I have used. Elance has been around since the late ’90s (that’s a long time in internet years), and their experience is reflected in the both the vastness of their offerings, the number of freelancers listed on the site, and the well developed project workflow (the process you, as a buyer, go through from project creation, to bid selection, to deliverable acceptance, to payment). If I’m being nit-picky, their user interface could be simpler, but overall it is very good (especially compared to competitors like Rent a Coder and WriterLance) – and they keep making improvements. The real strength of the service is their user base; thousands of service providers bid for jobs large and small. And if you take the time to carefully explain the work you want done and review the bids you get (they give you good tips how to do this), you can find very competent and fairly priced providers to do your work. They also handle 1099 tax forms for you (only necessary if you spend more than $600/year with any one provider), and offer an escrow payment service that ensures that you don’t have to pay the provider until agreed milestones are reached. Like most of these services, Elance makes their money by charging service providers to be listed on the site, so the website is free for you to use.
  Search Providers on Elance >> | Full Elance review >>
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• oDesk – The concept is very similar to Elance, in that this network handles all kinds of projects, from technical to administrative. The oDesk interface looks nice, and I know a lot of people swear by this network, but for me response to the job I posted didn’t yield the results I was hoping for. Honestly I’ve only posted one job on oDesk…it was a small web-page design project. So I can’t claim to be an expert on oDesk. But I posted the exact same project on two other sites, including Elance and Joomlancers (a specialty outsourcing site dedicated to the Joomla content management system (CMS))…and got better responses on both of the other sites. I was impressed with the oDesk interface and usability (very intuitive) and the number of responses/bids I received from oDesk was high (about 15 bids). But respondents indicated a very low level understanding of my project’s requirements, they under-bid the work, and ultimately the bids I received on both Elance and Joomlancers were much better. I awarded a Joomlancers provider this particular project, and it’s worth noting that the winning provider was also an Elance provider…but is not on oDesk. My one-off experience notwithstanding, I continue to hear from people who prefer oDesk to Elance. It’s free to use, so what do you have to lose to try it for yourself? Here are some links to popular services on the site.
  Virtual Assistants on oDesk >> | Web Developers >> | Graphic Designers >> | Full Odesk Rview >>
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• vWorker (formerly Rent a Coder) – RentaCoder feels like it was created for programmers by programmers. If tech talk makes you queezy, this site is not for you. Need a programming project completed, but don’t know how to define it very clearly, in programmer lingo? Then look elsewhere. If, on the other hand, you know the tech lexicon, and understand how to talk to programmers, then there are some extremely talented individuals to be found on this site. [Update, 10/14/2010]: By re-branding as vWorker I have to assume that RentaCoder is making more than just a name change…revamping their user experience and targeting more of a business audience as job posters. This is a good thing in my opinion – their previous .
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• WriterLance – This service is supposedly one of the more popular freelance network sites just for writers. But a clunky interface is all it took for me to say goodbye to WriterLance. I just didn’t want to spend any more time trying to make sense of their limited workflow features and communication interface. I have only published a couple jobs on this site – both generated disappointing results. If you have had good experience with WriterLance, by all means let us know by commenting on this post. Based on my own experience, however, I just can’t recommend the service.
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• Do My Stuff
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• Kasamba
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• Guru
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• iFreelance
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• Get a Freelancer
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• ScriptLance

Virtual Assistant (VA) Firms:

VA’s can be great resources for ongoing, repetitive tasks (such as weekly reports) or well defined administrative tasks (such as data entry). Technical, creative, or otherwise subjective work is best left to the freelancers (see above)…but a good VA can save you a lot of time on admin work. Keep in mind that you can find VA’s on some of the networks above, too.

• Brickwork India (India) – Still one of the best VA firms in India. If you’ve been doing your VA firm homework you’ve probably heard of Brickwork. They’ve gotten a lot of press in The World is Flat, The 4-Hour Workweek (review), and countless blog posts like this one. I’ve had quite a bit of experience with multiple Brickwork VA’s, and I’ve written much more about my experience with them in another post >> read more about Brickwork >>
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• Get Friday (India) – I had mixed experience with these guys. Get Friday’s parent company, Your Man In India (YMII) told me they’re no longer handling tasks for customers outside of India, and I was referred instead to their Get Friday division. Apparently the volume of work they were receiving from stateside customers justified the new division, so they must be doing something right. But my Get Friday VA was just so-so >> read more about Get Friday >>
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• BPovia (China) – I previously knew nothing about this firm. I just saw it included in a list of VA firms on another website, so I figured I’d give them a shot. They beat me to the punch, contacting me for a free trial. The drawn-out experience was less than exceptional >> read more aout BPOvia >>
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• AskSunday (US?) – After seeing Tim Ferriss speak in October, 2008, and hearing that the only virtual assistant firm he still uses is Ask Sunday, I had to give them a shot. They specialize in small, short timeframe, objective, well-defined tasks. I have yet to figure out whether I’ll have a use for such a narrow area of assistance. Update 1/19/2009: I signed up for the free trial month with these guys, and I didn’t find a single opportunity to take advantage of their services. The types of tasks that they offer to do are simply too small to justify the time it takes to make the request. It’s so easy to book a flight these days; it’s so easy to make a restaurant reservation; it’s so easy to order flowers for someone – how could a remote assistant save me any time on these tasks? I mean, in order to have someone do tasks like these for you, you still have to take the time to describe the requirements of the task. Unless you’re doing the same type of task over and over, you might as well just do it yourself. These types of tasks are well suited for a personal assistant who works closely with you, understands your needs and preferences, and can ask clarifying questions in person. For me, a remote assistant like AskSunday wasn’t the answer.

• Catch Friday (Philippines)
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• Tasks Every Day (India)
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• Hi Tech Export (India)

[Tim]: Do you happen to know a good, reputable outsourcing company for SEO/Link Building? I read your reviews of outsourcing firms, Brickwork and Get Friday, with interest, and visited both sites (including the parent YMII) – not really suited to this work, as far as I can tell. Any info is most appreciated.

[Jeremy]: Hi, Tim. I’ve spent a good bit of time working with outsourced link builders, and to be quite honest I always find that it’s work that’s best done in-house (with the exception of content syndication (ie: article and press release syndication) which, after the actual article writing (which we do ourselves), is fairly mechanical). Bottom line, effective link building (like writing) requires an understanding of the client that overseas contractors so often don’t have.

Don’t get me wrong, there are people in India and China, and elsewhere, who will charge you for SEO and link building services, but the links they create are very often worthless. They don’t cost much, but cheap junk is still junk.

Wish I had a cheap SEO provider to refer you to, but SEO and link building is hard work, and because of the subjective nature of the work, in my experience it hasn’t been well suited for overseas contractors.

If you find a good, cheap SEO and link building contractor, let me know. But I bet they won’t be cheap for long!

The main difference between the two is that the “.com” version of the software is hosted by WordPress for free (meaning not only the software is free, but so is the hosting). The “.org” version, also called the “self hosted” version, is the one you download and install on your own web hosting server (or one that you rent). This might sound like WordPress.com is more appropriate for newbies or smaller websites, and while is probably the case, both versions are equally capable of handling the needs of very busy web properties. With that in mind, here are some other notable differences that can help you decide which would be best for you.

A quick comparison…

WordPress.com:

• Little or no technical skillset required – incredibly simple to get started with a basic website or blog that is hosted by WordPress
  • The site can be styled like a blog (that’s the default layout), but what more people are now taking advantage of is that you can also change the layout to look more like a business website, with a home page, service description pages, and a blog
  • By default your domain will include ‘wordpress.com’ in the URL (ie: mysite.wordpress.com), but you can purchase a unique domain name from WordPress (about $15) and use that as your website domain, which does away with the ‘wordpress’ part of the address (ie: mywebsite.com)
• No upgrades or maintenance required! Any time WordPress upgrades their software, your website gets any new features or bug fixes automatically.
• You have access to hundreds of themes (predefined visual styles) that you can use to make your WordPress site look unique and represent your brand. By default, WordPress.com themes are less customizable than their “self hosted” cousins, but you can upgrade your WordPress.com account (for a fee) to have full CSS (what is CSS?) editing access. Basically this means that, with the proper technical know-how, you’ll be able to do more creative customization of your site design.
• You’re limited to using features included in the ‘core’ version of the WordPress software (you can’t add new features called ‘plug-ins’ or customize the code of your website beyond what is allowed by the ‘theme’ you use). This makes WordPress.com less optimal as a CMS, and more appropriate as just a blogging platform.

WordPress.org:

• Requires more technical skill to install than does WordPress.com. To get started you have to download the software and install it on a web server of your own. The software is free, but hosting costs from $10/month on up. As web development goes, the WordPress install is very easy…and some hosts actually offer a “one click install” of the software, which virtually eliminates this technical requirement.
• All the basics of the ‘core’ WordPress platform are included, just like on WordPress.com, but whenever a new version of the software is released, you have to do the upgrade yourself. The good news is that even these upgrades have been made easier in recent versions – with a “one click upgrade” now available.
• You can use any WordPress theme you like – the ones that come included, ones that you buy from 3rd party designers, and even themes you design yourself. With design knowledge (or a design budget), you or your designer can make your site look and function however you like.
• There is a massive library of ‘plug-ins’ (pre-built customizations) that are only available to WordPress.com users. You can tap into the collective knowledge and experience of WordPress users all around the world, and download the fixes and customizations they’ve made publicly available for use on your own site.
• Maintenance required. The ability to make all these customizations does come at a cost, however. As with any customized software, maintenance is generally required to keep everything working smoothly together. That maintenance cost typically corresponds to the amount of customization you’ve done.
• You can also develop (or have some develop) original custom features just for your site! The WordPress.org platform is incredibly flexible – giving you the ability to build any fancy features you want. This makes this self-hosted version of the software more appropriate for custom websites that publish much more than just blog posts.

Both Versions Offer:

• Multi-user capabilities: you can have multiple contributors, authors, editors, and administrators, with different levels of authority for adding or updating website content.

Wordpress.com is an awesome web publishing tool that provides you with an easy to use platform to build a simple and functional website on your own, or with the help of a consultant. It is often the choice for those who are budget contrained, or who don’t have access to design or technical talent…but there are some incredibly large websites that run on WordPress.com (see: iCanHazCheezburger and GigaOm). On the other hand, WordPress.org gives you the ability to fully customize your website and add the types of advanced functionality that you may need to distinguish yourself from all the rest. If you opt for the latter, we highly recommend getting help from an experienced WordPress development team (we recommend us to help).

Visual Comparison:

This ‘info graph’ from wpbeginner.com illustrates much of what we outlined above. However, we don’t fully agree with the conclusion at the bottom, that businesses must use the self-hosted version of WordPress (see previous paragraph). This is, however, a nifty graphic that gives you a quick overview comparison.

ScreenToaster videos are very easy to record and they are available for use incredibly quickly. It uses a Java interface (which most people have downloaded on their computer anyway), so there isn’t any additional software to download and you don’t even have to create an account to test it out. You can share a link to the video with others, upload the video to YouTube, or embed the video on your website or blog.

Key features of ScreenToaster:

• Add a voice recording so your video has a narrative
• Add captions throughout your presentation to provide descriptions or further explanations
• Choose to record your entire screen or isolate a specific rectangular area
• Works with webcams

The best way to illustrate how ScreenToaster works is to simply show you a quick screen video that I have ‘toasted’:

If you can’t find the right words to describe exactly what is happening on your computer screen, ScreenToaster can help you convey your message visually.

from flickr.com/skizo

After what seemed like a forever of waiting (really it was about 3 weeks), I finally received my invitation to join Google Voice. I was anxious to test it out and see how it compares to RingCentral, whose virtual PBX system we have been using for the last year.

Since RingCentral is a paid service, I would expect it to have more features and functionality than the free Google Voice product – and it does. That said, there are actually some features that Google Voice offers that RingCentral does not.

The two services do overlap a bit, but they probably ultimately serve slightly different audiences – with Google playing to the individual or solo business person, and RingCentral aiming for small and medium sized business clients.

Where Google Voice distinguishes itself:

• Voicemail customization: Users can customize outbound messages played for callers based on the contact group in which the caller has been placed (friends, family, colleagues) or even play a specific message for any individual contacts
• Voicemail transcription: Would you rather ‘read’ your voicemail? While the transcribed voicemails aren’t 100% accurate, they’re pretty darn close.
• Mobile integration: includes applications for Blackberry and Android and the ability to use Google Voice with just your mobile internet browser. The mobile integration lets you not only make calls from your cell phone that appear to others as coming from your Google Voice number, but you can also change your settings from your phone.
• Call recording: can record entire phone calls or just pieces of a conversation with the touch of one button
• SMS messaging: can send texts from the web, mobile phone internet browser, or mobile applications
• Call pick-up options: upon answering a call, Google Voice announces the caller and you can either accept the call, send the call to voicemail, listen in on the voicemail as it is being left (with the option of being able to accept the call mid voicemail if you so choose), or accept and record the call.
• Blocking calls: you can block unwanted callers so they hear a “number is not in service” message

full list of Google Voice features

Benefits of RingCentral:

• Toll free or local number: you can choose either with RingCentral (Google Voice only offers local numbers)
• Multiple extensions, a dial by name directory, and detailed answering rules: If you have multiple people receiving calls at the same number, these features are among the ones that may sway you to RingCentral
• Manage your phone calls and faxes in the same place (Google Voice just does phone calls)
• Microsoft Office and Outlook integration allows you to dial a number from your Outlook contacts or send a fax directly from most Office programs
• DigitalLine VoIP product allows you to make phone calls using your internet connection (although have had so-so experience with it)

full list of RingCentral features

If you are looking for one number that connects all your different phones, then Google Voice is a great solution, at the right price (free). If, instead, you are looking for a more business oriented PBX system that can manage multiple extensions, then the paid RingCentral service is currently a much better option for you. I’m sure RingCentral is keeping a close eye on Google Voice, but for now it looks like there’s room in the market for both of these players.

There are many short videos showing how Google Voice works with your phones, and from what I can see Google has done it yet again. They have successfully provided calling features that go above and beyond making a simple phone call while simultaneously creating features that I never knew I needed, but instantly want.

The Google phone number isn’t actually attached to a specific phone, instead you decide which of your existing phones (work, home, cell, etc.) will ring after someone calls your Google number. You can designate which phone rings based on the group they belong to or on an individual basis, and there are a wide variety of other features once the call has been connected.

Some of the key features that will be offered with Google Voice are:

• Ability to put certain callers into a ‘Spam’ folder or block their calls entirely
• Conference calling
• Call recording
• Can switch to another registered phone in the middle of a call
• Transcripted Voicemails
• Listen to your voicemails online and ability to download or forward them
• Customize your voicemail greeting for different callers

One thing I didn’t see available is the ability to place and receive calls using the Internet, like we do with RingCentral. It will be interesting to see how long it takes them to adopt that feature as well (I figure it is inevitable – just a matter of time). Also, I have heard that while Google Voice works very well with your Gmail account, it doesn’t yet integrate with Google Apps accounts and I haven’t seen if that is on the horizon.

I have requested my invitation for the Google Voice service and look forward to testing it out as soon as I can. If you have already tested it out, let us know what you think!

by flickr.com/dashka

We recently evaluated the pricing of the survey offered by email marketing service providers VerticalResponse and Constant Contact – and now, after doing a trial of both products, we have found that the customization options in Constant Contact’s ListenUp! survey product are far superior to those of VerticalResponse. Want to poll your clients, but want to make sure the survey reflects your brand? Constant Contact makes that easy – and goes above and beyond with available formatting options.

Both VR and CC provide the ability to create a survey from scratch or work from existing templates that have pre-written questions you can edit. If your survey questions are pretty standard or if you just don’t have a need for much design customization, then the provided templates from either service are a fine starting point.

But if you prefer to create your survey from scratch or need to create a more stylized and visually engaging survey that reflects the design of your website, for example, then we recommend Constant Contact’s Survey product. The formatting options Constant Contact offers for their survey product blow VerticalResponse out of the water.

Here are some formatting features you can utilize only with Constant Contact to help increase your response rate and get the most from each survey blast:

• Create emphasis on important words and phrases by having the choice of formatting font by type, size and color universally throughout survey or per question
• Hyperlink single words or phrases in question text so you can link to the product/service you are referring to or for more information
• Add images on both questions and answer choices to help with any necessary clarification or even just to break up large amounts of text
• Easily drag and drop questions to rearrange the order
• Avoid typos with Spellcheck
• Use Skip Logic to allow respondents to skip over irrelevant questions based on answers they select
• Start with a landing page or have the user begin the survey immediately once the link is clicked on
• Have a closing page or just have the user forwarded to a promotion page upon clicking ‘Submit’

While Vertical Response has a solid, easy to use survey product, the additional features that Constant Contact offers makes it the obvious winner in terms of flexibility of customization. CC provides the tools to create a professional appearing and visually appealing survey that your respondents will notice and engage with.

On Wednesday Google announced a new product they’re planning to launch later this year – called Wave – which they sort of implied has the ability to replace email as the most dominant form of communication on the internet. Let me repeat that – they think that with this new tool they can make email a thing of the past. And based on their 80 minute technical video demo (below), I honestly think they might be able to pull that off – that’s how amazing Wave looks.

Try to imagine a communication tool that is like Email, but allows instantaneous conversations like instant messenger (IM), and more detailed document collaboration than Google Docs. Imagine that this tool integrates with Twitter, your blog, Google maps, and more – and that’s just the stuff Google is including in the plain version. Wave is going to be “open source” software, which means non-Google engineers will have access to the code, and will be able to create their own features, including wiki’s, private label versions, games, and an infinite number of other add-ons to share with other users.

You can sort of get a feel for what Wave is intended to do by just watching the first 15 minutes of the demo video, but if you can suffer through a few geeky jokes, and a bit of tech talk, then the whole 80 minutes is actually worth watching.

Since relatively few people have been able to use Wave (most online reviews are based on the same video demo you see below, rather than hands on testing), you might as well just watch this demo and see for yourself what the fuss is all about. Personally, I was blown away.

Typically I don’t write much about new technology announcements on this blog, but when you’re dealing with something that affects as many people as email does, I figured some of our readers might be interested. If you want some more technical reviews, check out TechCrunch‘s and Mashable‘s coverage.

The calendar makes it easy to see previously sent campaigns and also those that are scheduled to launch. Past months’ calendars show the campaigns that went out on a given day and time, while also providing a snapshot of campaign statistics once the email title is clicked on. You can even export your Vertical Response calendar to Outlook if you like.

That being said, here are a few suggested improvements for the Vertical Response calendar:

• While it is nice that national holidays are added to the calendar, it isn’t possible to delete or hide any of them particular one. You can either hide them all, or have them all displayed – I want to be able to pick and choose which holidays are displayed.
• A reminder feature would be a nice addition. If reminders popped up upon logging in, that would help me keep scheduled email blasts from slipping through the cracks.
• The fact that the calendar is exportable to Outlook is great, but a ‘sync’ feature would eliminate the need for frequent export/import updates, and help ensure that the Vertical Response calendar in Outlook was always up to date.

Overall, though, it’s a nice feature to help get a high-level time-line overview of email campaigns. And if you’re currently using your Outlook calendar to track that stuff, this could be a nice compliment.