A short story about my Internet marketing life

I have been in the Internet marketing business since 1998; these are the days of search engines such as Altavista, Webcrawler, Excite, Lycos, Dogpile and PPC (pay-per-click) pioneer Goto.com and a bunch of other smaller pay-per-click search engines.  Goto.com was the first PPC campaign I got involved with.  And yes, I was getting targeted clicks for 1cent per click and conversions was through the roof.  I also ran my first ad campaign with Google Adwords the very first week they started their PPC program.

My business was doing well but I can honestly say that it was taking so much of my time trying to do everything by myself.  I was trying to learn everything from internet advertising to HTML.  I knew nothing about outsourcing back then.

In 2005, it came to my realization that to grow my business I should only focus on the things I really like doing and that was Internet advertising.  I decided to search online for a Freelancer who I can trust and can do web design.  I found someone but that did not work out well for me because most of the time he was not available when I needed him.  Although our mutual understanding was that he would work for me for three hours on a daily basis from Monday to Friday, he was always difficult to locate and contact. My emails were not responded promptly and most of the time answered two or three days later.

If you are working a 9-5 job, would you not notify your employer in advance that you cannot report for work per company policy?  

In my business, constant and regular communication is of the utmost importance and after way too many unacceptable excuses, I decided to part ways with him.

This experience did not stop me from searching for the right Freelancer. In the same year, I found another web designer from the Philippines, her name is Joy Reyes.  Aside from her great talent as a web designer, Joy was such a joy to work with.  She was always available for me and her impeccable work ethics always impressed me.

In the past 6 years, I have also used Freelancer.com to hire freelance writers for producing website content and writing articles.  I’ve hired a number of writers on different topics and have always been satisfied with their services.

In 2008, I had some projects that required the service of a programmer and was introduced to Mark Archer Balberde, a freelance programmer also from The Philippines.  Aside from his good work ethics, Mark’s talent was not limited to programming alone. While working for me as a programmer, I also witnessed how he developed into a talented web designer over a short period of time.

Why I started this site

Mark and I have been working together ever since that day in 2008 and he is one of my motivations for why I decided to develop this website.  We both want to be able to educate people on the process of outsourcing.  He designed and developed eOutsource.com, and the two of us are currently working as partners in this endeavor.

Also, some the images that we use on all our blog posts here were personally designed by my son, Mark Julian Pragides.  Mark currently is a Junior College student at DePaul University here in Chicago, working on his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree majoring in Animation.  He is very talented and really passionate at what he does.

It is through this website that we want to be able to offer valuable information in choosing the right outsourcing company or freelancer.  There are a lot of benefits in outsourcing but the two main ones are cost and the unlimited pool of available talents. Unfortunately, there are also pitfalls and they will be discussed on this website as well.

Please feel free to send us an email if you have any questions, or if you need information regarding outsourcing or hiring a freelancer for both your business and personal needs.

Bernard Pragides Partner – Team eOutsource.com