Outsourcing Work You Consider Trade Secrets? - Page 2 - GoFuckYourself.com

woj · 08-29-2005, 08:18 PM

50........

Hustlin Entertainment · 08-29-2005, 08:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WiredGuy

I'm looking for opinions from people who have outsourced in the past. A lot of the repetitive work that I've considered outsourcing I'd consider a trade secret (keyword filtering, keyword list generation). Anyways, from the internal scripts I have here onsite, we generate hundreds of thousands of keyword suggestions and the repetitive portion of the work involves manually going through the keywords and determining if they are relevant to the niche / market being targetted. Once this list is filtered, I consider the final list a very valuable resource or trade secret.

In the past I have hired students to do this, but for some smaller niches, the market size is not worth the cost of hiring locally but it is for outsourced operations. I'm wondering what are your thoughts on outsourcing a resource that you consider valuable should it fall into the hands of competitors? Also bear in mind the persons working on this would have to be very proficient in English.

Thanks everyone.
WG

WG have you ever considered cutting pieces of the project,and splitting them among different outsourcing companies and have someone you trust compile it....If it's something like a programming project this can be done easily..

WiredGuy · 08-29-2005, 08:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NetRodent

You'd be asking for trouble outsourcing this sort of work, especially if its through an agency. Of course, if its a small niche, it might be worth the risk.

You can mitigate some of the risk by dividing the keyword list for a niche over several workers. You're also less likely to get screwed if you hire low end data entry types and mislead them somewhat about the nature of the work.

For example, don't tell them you want them to clean a list, rather you want it to be categorized. Tell them you're working on a thesaurus project.

Now those are good examples. The categorizing one I don't like so much because I think that would take more time than just approving/denying. If you don't mind me asking, did you guys have an inhouse person manage your list's QA or was it up to each PPC / campaign manager to deal with it?
WG

WiredGuy · 08-29-2005, 08:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by slapass

2 weeks from now all of the outsourcers on here will be selling key word lists. That is how they work. So no need to give them the keys to making a good one.

Do you do your keyword filtering yourself slapass?
WG

WiredGuy · 08-29-2005, 08:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BoNgHiTtA

I dont really like you, and most the shit you have said about anything remotely SEO is BS in my opinion, but heres a tip.

Spread the work around. Then no one knows too much.

1) Perhaps that's intentional given that I don't want more competition.
2) It would need to be spread amongst multiple outsourcing firms if this route is actually used, otherwise its rather simple to just merge the portions together from different staffers.
WG

WiredGuy · 08-29-2005, 08:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hustlin Entertainment

WG have you ever considered cutting pieces of the project,and splitting them among different outsourcing companies and have someone you trust compile it....If it's something like a programming project this can be done easily..

It's a possibility I'm considering.
WG

Slacker · 08-29-2005, 09:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jayeff

Isn't it a paradox that you consider the list too valuable to risk it being exposed, but not valuable enough to pay someone you can trust to prepare it? Sometimes you have to think beyond saving a few dollars just because superficially the nature of the work is such that you could...

In fact in this case, if you weren't so focused on dollars per hour, you might get someone better educated who could get through the list faster and more accurately.

Hit the nail on the head...I like the way jayeff thinks.

But what do I know.

Ninja Scripts · 08-29-2005, 09:03 PM

Been robbed, will never do it again. NDA won't help shit when they are on another continent.

WiredGuy · 08-30-2005, 07:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ninja Scripts

Been robbed, will never do it again. NDA won't help shit when they are on another continent.

Was this for something SEO related or something else you had a bad experience with?
WG

cherrylula · 08-30-2005, 07:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raven

Some of our staff is outsourced from all over the world...but not SEO..WG...not SEO.

Seriously. Already as it is this thread has some nice SEO knowledge in it.

teleblade69 · 08-30-2005, 07:47 AM

SEO is all about knowledge and reading and testing some shit out ;)

but there is some good SEO info in this thread

DarkJedi · 08-30-2005, 08:57 AM

WG is a black hat

Ninja Scripts · 08-30-2005, 08:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WiredGuy

Was this for something SEO related or something else you had a bad experience with?
WG

Wasn't SEO, was a traffic source we were working with.

cherrylula · 08-30-2005, 09:03 AM

but hey maybe you should just ask someone here to do the work, since you already explained it all and stuff.

Linguist · 08-30-2005, 09:05 AM

Have you considered hiring a first/second year english/history student for a few hours a week?
They'd present minimum competition and would be glad to work a few hours a week for 10 bucks an hour - pizza money goes long way when one's a student.. you're in a prime location for that too.

I'd never use an outsourcing company for this though, too risky.

Brujah · 08-30-2005, 09:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WiredGuy

In the past I have hired students to do this, but for some smaller niches, the market size is not worth the cost of hiring locally but it is for outsourced operations.
WG

If it's that valuable, you just answered your own question. That means it IS WORTH THE COST.

Brujah · 08-30-2005, 09:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jayeff

Isn't it a paradox that you consider the list too valuable to risk it being exposed, but not valuable enough to pay someone you can trust to prepare it? Sometimes you have to think beyond saving a few dollars just because superficially the nature of the work is such that you could...

In fact in this case, if you weren't so focused on dollars per hour, you might get someone better educated who could get through the list faster and more accurately.

Oops, same thought process I had.

WiredGuy · 08-30-2005, 09:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkJedi

WG is a black hat

I wear many hats.
WG

Rui · 08-30-2005, 09:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WiredGuy

1) Perhaps that's intentional given that I don't want more competition.
2) It would need to be spread amongst multiple outsourcing firms if this route is actually used, otherwise its rather simple to just merge the portions together from different staffers.
WG

so basicly you admit what you say here is justo t alieanate the other people and in the same time expect truthfull advices...talk about double standarts

WiredGuy · 08-30-2005, 09:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rui

so basicly you admit what you say here is justo t alieanate the other people and in the same time expect truthfull advices...talk about double standarts

I'm not sure what bong is referring to exactly, but I meant it in a humouristic way, such as the quote in my signature.
WG

NetRodent · 08-30-2005, 03:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WiredGuy

Now those are good examples. The categorizing one I don't like so much because I think that would take more time than just approving/denying. If you don't mind me asking, did you guys have an inhouse person manage your list's QA or was it up to each PPC / campaign manager to deal with it?
WG

Initially we didn't really care. The only filtering we did was to remove obviously child-related words from the list. When we started none of the ppc's checked for relevancy, which was how we ended up with such gems as "Gaza Strip" (strip club related) and "Legal Briefs" (underwear related). The philosophy of the time was that irrelevant listings wouldn't be cost effective and would fall out on their own accord. Most of the PPCs would take and list anything we gave them. Overture would do a cursory review but I think the size of our keyword lists intimdated the editors. I don't know for a fact but I'm pretty sure Overture's authorized adult keyword list was in response to some of our shenanegans.

Eventually the ppcs figured out that relevancy couldn't be achieved by bid alone, and started setting various guidelines. Overture in particularly got quite harsh with us and if they found more than a few inappropriate words would just reject the whole submission. It was tedious and time consuming but cleaning the keyword lists really wasn't that bad. We had various people in our company do it, sometimes even having all office categorization parties. Usually it fell to the new person to do this since nobody else wanted to do it, and we figured it was a good way to increase their vocabulary. Getting to explain the word 'bukkake' was always a treat.

These days we're a bit more cooperative with the search engines so the relevancy checking is sort of shared between our campaign managers and the search engine's people. We also don't harvest keywords in the same way we once did so there isn't too much garbage in our lists.

NetRodent · 08-30-2005, 03:31 PM

Since I got a bit nostalgic writing that last post, I decided to poke around in some of my old files. I guess there won't be much harm in releasing this "trade secret" now.

adult
porn
porno
sex
smut
breasts
tits
bobs
ass
arse
hahahaha
pussy
cock
dick
fuck
suck
cum
sperm
semen

The was the original keyword list that we thought up, to prime our GoTo and Altavista keyword harvesters. After we finished running these words through AV/GoTo and feeding the results back into AV/GoTo it turned into a list of about 100k phrases of which about 25k were adult related and made semi-sense. I hope nobody copies our technique.

Gottis · 08-30-2005, 03:46 PM

I love the smell of SE spam in the morning

Tam · 08-30-2005, 03:52 PM

There are those of us who run outsourcing companies that value the clients far more than the clients trade secrets. It would NOT be in the best interest of the outsourcing company to take the things they are doing for one client and use it for another client, simply because things like this always get back and when they do, you have lost not only one but TWO clients. Losing long term business isn't near worth it to me in my opinion. To anyone that would abuse this, they aren't serious about what they do and shouldn't be in business anyway, much less in a matter such as this.

This is how I think anything should be though, it should just be a given that there is a measure of confidentiality, whether it is for outsourcing companies, designers, mainstream, porn or any other business, it should be held at a standard that shows respect for BOTH parties involved.

WiredGuy · 08-30-2005, 03:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NetRodent

Initially we didn't really care. The only filtering we did was to remove obviously child-related words from the list. When we started none of the ppc's checked for relevancy, which was how we ended up with such gems as "Gaza Strip" (strip club related) and "Legal Briefs" (underwear related). The philosophy of the time was that irrelevant listings wouldn't be cost effective and would fall out on their own accord. Most of the PPCs would take and list anything we gave them. Overture would do a cursory review but I think the size of our keyword lists intimdated the editors. I don't know for a fact but I'm pretty sure Overture's authorized adult keyword list was in response to some of our shenanegans.

Eventually the ppcs figured out that relevancy couldn't be achieved by bid alone, and started setting various guidelines. Overture in particularly got quite harsh with us and if they found more than a few inappropriate words would just reject the whole submission. It was tedious and time consuming but cleaning the keyword lists really wasn't that bad. We had various people in our company do it, sometimes even having all office categorization parties. Usually it fell to the new person to do this since nobody else wanted to do it, and we figured it was a good way to increase their vocabulary. Getting to explain the word 'bukkake' was always a treat.

These days we're a bit more cooperative with the search engines so the relevancy checking is sort of shared between our campaign managers and the search engine's people. We also don't harvest keywords in the same way we once did so there isn't too much garbage in our lists.

He he, Chuck told me about the gaza strip example. That one was rather funny, seeing your sites coming up for that listing. And as I recall, yes, Overture used your initial lists as their master adult lists because of the sheer size. Although OV's editors have become inches away of being nazi's, their quality sure has increased. One thing I did like about doing the keyword research myself though was the vocabulary, learning tons of new words I would have never thought of. Hell, it was an accident I discovered what hentai was and now it makes up a nice percentage of media buys.

Thanks Brian

WG

WiredGuy · 08-30-2005, 03:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NetRodent

Since I got a bit nostalgic writing that last post, I decided to poke around in some of my old files. I guess there won't be much harm in releasing this "trade secret" now.

adult
porn
porno
sex
smut
breasts
tits
bobs
ass
arse
hahahaha
pussy
cock
dick
fuck
suck
cum
sperm
semen

The was the original keyword list that we thought up, to prime our GoTo and Altavista keyword harvesters. After we finished running these words through AV/GoTo and feeding the results back into AV/GoTo it turned into a list of about 100k phrases of which about 25k were adult related and made semi-sense. I hope nobody copies our technique.

Similiar strategy here, going from a handful of seed basewords and then exploding into hundreds of thousands of keywords. Its the manual labour of removing those useless keywords that's the time consuming part. I'm surprised you kept over 25% of your initial phrases though, I typically keept 5-7%.
WG

NetRodent · 08-30-2005, 04:21 PM

I was glossing over some of the details. Our first havest which was based on the list above found about 100k phrases which certainly didn't yield 25k cleaned words. 25k was our peak adult list, we didn't achieve that until a year or two later.

rebel23 · 08-30-2005, 05:43 PM

fgrep -v microsoft inputfile | fgrep -v yahoo | (... more bad keys ...) > outputfile

that will help you clean your list quicker

WiredGuy · 08-30-2005, 05:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rebel23

fgrep -v microsoft inputfile | fgrep -v yahoo | (... more bad keys ...) > outputfile

that will help you clean your list quicker

I already have white and black lists that are run against many regexp's to help automate some of these steps, but there's no replacement for the human brain to evaluate if something is relevant or not.
WG

Nysus · 08-31-2005, 09:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkJedi

WG is a black hat

I must say it's impossible to know how he functions simply because of anything he's said so far.

Matt

Nysus · 08-31-2005, 09:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WiredGuy

Similiar strategy here, going from a handful of seed basewords and then exploding into hundreds of thousands of keywords. Its the manual labour of removing those useless keywords that's the time consuming part. I'm surprised you kept over 25% of your initial phrases though, I typically keept 5-7%.
WG

I definitely understand and agree with your concerns of outsourcing; I have the same. It's a lot of work ...

Oh, and I don't think keept is a word.

Matt

RogerV · 08-31-2005, 09:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WiredGuy

I'm looking for opinions from people who have outsourced in the past. A lot of the repetitive work that I've considered outsourcing I'd consider a trade secret (keyword filtering, keyword list generation). Anyways, from the internal scripts I have here onsite, we generate hundreds of thousands of keyword suggestions and the repetitive portion of the work involves manually going through the keywords and determining if they are relevant to the niche / market being targetted. Once this list is filtered, I consider the final list a very valuable resource or trade secret.

In the past I have hired students to do this, but for some smaller niches, the market size is not worth the cost of hiring locally but it is for outsourced operations. I'm wondering what are your thoughts on outsourcing a resource that you consider valuable should it fall into the hands of competitors? Also bear in mind the persons working on this would have to be very proficient in English.

Thanks everyone.
WG

Be carefull or everyone will be saying there is no money in SEO

Nysus · 08-31-2005, 09:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RogerV

Be carefull or everyone will be saying there is no money in SEO

There truly isn't for most people; just following the white logic Neo.

Matt

Matt Collins · 08-31-2005, 10:01 AM

The question seems to come down to should you outsource it to a college student or to an outsourcing company. Either way, you are outsourcing the work, so no matter the option, you will have certain risks.

I personally think the outsourcing company works best because of more natural barriers to entering as competition (though none are a major obstacle) such as language, connectivity, skills, etc.

Of course, the cost savings may make it easier to have multiple people doing different tasks. I personally trust Rick and iWebmasters. However, there is no way to eliminate risk in any business endeavor (there's your free legal advice!)

Just my

Matt

Nysus · 08-31-2005, 11:01 AM

IWebmasters is still based somewhere, in the Philipines specifically, and they have managers, and even the emloyees have access to the lists / copies of them. I had a bad number of ordeals with outsourcing, and now I just don't trust it because of how much I thought I knew the person in question and trusted them; maybe I'm just unlucky though.

I am doing everything critical to myself, and I actually hope anyone who knows what they're doing do the same; so there's less actual competition, and if there's a top 5 SEOs that join up ... can do a lot with that much.

<- WiredGuy - Do you understand what I mean?

Matt

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matt Collins

The question seems to come down to should you outsource it to a college student or to an outsourcing company. Either way, you are outsourcing the work, so no matter the option, you will have certain risks.

I personally think the outsourcing company works best because of more natural barriers to entering as competition (though none are a major obstacle) such as language, connectivity, skills, etc.

Of course, the cost savings may make it easier to have multiple people doing different tasks. I personally trust Rick and iWebmasters. However, there is no way to eliminate risk in any business endeavor (there's your free legal advice!)

Just my

Matt

Nysus · 08-31-2005, 11:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cutetwink

Outsourcing is good for basic design, submitting, and other bullshit. For something like this you would have to double check their work losing you more time and money. You remember what happen with topbucks and their outsourced gallery descriptions.

It's not even about double-checking the work, they could do a good job, because they want the best list possible for themselves as well ... they want to profit / benefit from the information you provide them.. not all, but honestly no way to know who.

Matt

08-29-2005, 08:18 PM	#51
woj <&(©¿©)&> Industry Role: Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Chicago Posts: 47,882	50........ __________________ Custom Software Development, email: woj#at#wojfun#.#com to discuss details or skype: wojl2000 or gchat: wojfun or telegram: wojl2000 Affiliate program tools: Hosted Galleries Manager Banner Manager Video Manager Wordpress Affiliate Plugin Pic/Movie of the Day Fansign Generator Zip Manager

08-30-2005, 07:47 AM	#61
teleblade69 Confirmed User Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Belgium Posts: 1,063	SEO is all about knowledge and reading and testing some shit out ;) but there is some good SEO info in this thread __________________

08-30-2005, 09:05 AM	#65
Linguist Confirmed User Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Toronto, ON Posts: 1,706	Have you considered hiring a first/second year english/history student for a few hours a week? They'd present minimum competition and would be glad to work a few hours a week for 10 bucks an hour - pizza money goes long way when one's a student.. you're in a prime location for that too. I'd never use an outsourcing company for this though, too risky. __________________ 315-310

08-30-2005, 03:31 PM	#72
NetRodent Confirmed User Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: In the walls of your house. Posts: 3,985	Since I got a bit nostalgic writing that last post, I decided to poke around in some of my old files. I guess there won't be much harm in releasing this "trade secret" now. adult porn porno sex smut breasts tits bobs ass arse hahahaha pussy cock dick fuck suck cum sperm semen The was the original keyword list that we thought up, to prime our GoTo and Altavista keyword harvesters. After we finished running these words through AV/GoTo and feeding the results back into AV/GoTo it turned into a list of about 100k phrases of which about 25k were adult related and made semi-sense. I hope nobody copies our technique. __________________ "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." --H.L. Mencken Last edited by NetRodent; 08-30-2005 at 03:34 PM..

08-30-2005, 03:52 PM	#74
Tam Confirmed User Industry Role: Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: In your face Posts: 8,484	There are those of us who run outsourcing companies that value the clients far more than the clients trade secrets. It would NOT be in the best interest of the outsourcing company to take the things they are doing for one client and use it for another client, simply because things like this always get back and when they do, you have lost not only one but TWO clients. Losing long term business isn't near worth it to me in my opinion. To anyone that would abuse this, they aren't serious about what they do and shouldn't be in business anyway, much less in a matter such as this. This is how I think anything should be though, it should just be a given that there is a measure of confidentiality, whether it is for outsourcing companies, designers, mainstream, porn or any other business, it should be held at a standard that shows respect for BOTH parties involved. __________________ "Want to get listed on The Porn Map? Email [email protected] or message me on Skype (TamboSpr)!"

08-29-2005, 09:03 PM	#58
Ninja Scripts Confirmed User Industry Role: Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Retired Posts: 1,032	Been robbed, will never do it again. NDA won't help shit when they are on another continent.

08-30-2005, 08:57 AM	#62
DarkJedi No Refunds Issued. Industry Role: Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: GFY Posts: 28,300	WG is a black hat

08-30-2005, 09:03 AM	#64
cherrylula lol Industry Role: Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 15,969	but hey maybe you should just ask someone here to do the work, since you already explained it all and stuff.

08-30-2005, 03:46 PM	#73
Gottis Confirmed User Join Date: May 2004 Location: VIP NO ID Posts: 1,746	I love the smell of SE spam in the morning

08-30-2005, 04:21 PM	#77
NetRodent Confirmed User Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: In the walls of your house. Posts: 3,985	I was glossing over some of the details. Our first havest which was based on the list above found about 100k phrases which certainly didn't yield 25k cleaned words. 25k was our peak adult list, we didn't achieve that until a year or two later. __________________ "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." --H.L. Mencken

08-30-2005, 05:43 PM	#78
rebel23 Confirmed User Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 817	fgrep -v microsoft inputfile \| fgrep -v yahoo \| (... more bad keys ...) > outputfile that will help you clean your list quicker __________________ ICQ: 37378183 Last edited by rebel23; 08-30-2005 at 05:45 PM..

08-31-2005, 10:01 AM	#84
Matt Collins Confirmed User Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 1,060	The question seems to come down to should you outsource it to a college student or to an outsourcing company. Either way, you are outsourcing the work, so no matter the option, you will have certain risks. I personally think the outsourcing company works best because of more natural barriers to entering as competition (though none are a major obstacle) such as language, connectivity, skills, etc. Of course, the cost savings may make it easier to have multiple people doing different tasks. I personally trust Rick and iWebmasters. However, there is no way to eliminate risk in any business endeavor (there's your free legal advice!) Just my Matt __________________ Check out Globally Translated!-Translate your sites and join the global economy! MattLaw -The law firm for webmasters and site owners! ICQ: 254-829-586 Who is this Matt guy? Check out the Ambush Interview