Ok I understand the whole outsourcing thing for business, but when you start outsourcing personal activities, then you are reaching on the weird category. The Wall Street Journal has more on this…………
When David San Filippo decided to create a tribute video in honor of his sister’s wedding, he could have gotten a recommendation from a friend or looked up video editors in the phone book. Instead, he did what big corporations have been doing for more than a decade: sent the work offshore.
On the Internet, Mr. San Filippo located a graphic artist in Romania who agreed to do the whole thing for $59. The result was a splashy two-minute video with a space theme and “Star Wars” soundtrack. It won raves at the wedding.
Offshore outsourcing has transformed the way U.S. companies do business. Now, some early adopters are figuring out how to tap overseas workers for personal tasks. They’re turning to a vast talent pool in India, China, Bangladesh and elsewhere for jobs ranging from landscape architecture to kitchen remodeling and math tutoring. They’re also outsourcing some surprisingly small jobs, including getting a dress designed, creating address labels for wedding invitations or finding a good deal on a hotel room, for example.
Such “personal offshoring” is still new and represents a tiny fraction of the more than $20 billion overseas outsourcing industry. But management consultants and economists say it’s likely to evolve into a larger niche as offshore workers identify the opportunities. Thanks to instant messaging, computer scanners and email attachments, any work that doesn’t require meeting in person has the potential to be done overseas.
The approach relies on the same model that drives corporate outsourcing: labor arbitrage, or benefiting from the wage differential between U.S. workers and those in developing countries. In the U.S., tutoring services charge $40 to $60 an hour for math help. Some skilled tutors in India are paid $2 to $3 an hour. In India, $20 is enough to buy a week’s groceries for two people.
Sending personal work offshore requires Internet proficiency, and some patience as well. Though a few firms have begun tailoring their services to consumers, most deal primarily with businesses. Tapping this bargain work force means knowing about the online bazaars where workers abroad compete to bid for small projects.
Some big free-lancing sites include Elance.com, Guru.com and Rentacoder.com. In a recent study on the growth of offshoring services to small businesses and homes, market researcher Evalueserve found more than 90 such online marketplaces, with 500,000 vendors from low-wage countries using them.
