Well said.

Beat me to it! :thumbsup

It's annoying when people troll and throw shit in an actual business thread. That's what all the other useless (tho at times entertaining) threads are about. Anyway, got some solid advice here so that's what's important.

Now get me some curry in a hurry! All this indian shit has made me hungry. :D

exactly what work do you entrust to offshure staff for $3hr. data entry, but what for?

feel like I'm calling you out a lot lately which is not my deliberate intent, you're one of my fav posters here due to your insight and willingness to share info about biz. you also crack me up (70's soap dialogue as most recent) on the daily. 'nuff respect, hope you know that.

that said, wtf is up with valuing work based on living wage of nation of residence? prob super-sensitive to this due to working with EE cammers who are constantly devalued for no reason other than location, but either way this is total bullshit. Work is work, value is value.

would you do your best work for $3 per hour? would you consider that fair?

I live on an island where the average wage for men and women who bust their ass day in and day out (working far harder physically than anyone here who does adult for a living, including me) cleaning rooms -not easy- and doing road work under the blazing sun is $6.25 per hour. Across the board. One of the few places I've encountered where there is parity between male/female quote unquote 'unskilled labor' pay rates. Unconvinced this is a victory.

I hate laundry and recently moved into a bomb place that lacks that facility. Turns out that a sister of a friend runs a laundry where you can pass her $20 to do the washer-to-dryer stuff for you. She's in a grey area here legally but is working her azz off while she can. Walked in and she had added fabric softener and had everything folded. Paired socks that hadn't been matched since I moved in with my guy.

My laundry fairy, but either way tipped her an extra $40 for her work, for what it meant to me/my guy time-wise in not having to do it. She did something I didn't have the time to do/monitor as I was taking some time from earning to enjoy life and do my own work, was not charity.

refuse to benefit unfairly from econ inequities where I can.

My point; pay peeps what your time is worth. Guessing more than Upwork rates.

Peace and joy and keep killing it with your business.

missed this - I disagree mate, almost all successful business owners often tell you to take care of your employees, including paying them a fair wage based on what they are worth to you, not based on what they will earn in relation to others :thumbsup

Ummm sort of I guess.

I can see some thinking that way - but also others (who are just as successful) thinking it's fair and fine to get away with what they can.

All businesses that I stopped going to drove me away with dumb employees.
The employees aren't really dumb; just untrained.

The reason for this is that employees keep quitting because the pay sucks, so no one is
ever there that is trained well.


Bottom line : If TPN was really happy with the work he has been getting then he wouldn't care about the $25.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo fucking way.

:2 cents:

I get that. For me sometimes it's the employees and sometimes it's the business owner's policies that drive me away.

Disagree here. That's true sometimes for sure, but I've also spoken to many local business owners who complain like hell about employees not showing up cause they partied too late, forgot to show up, or because they just didn't feel like showing up that day without even a phone call to boot! Some of them were paid more than the average for that type of worker in the area.

Some business owners suck and some employees suck regardless of pay.


Disagree there.

I think it's okay to complain. People complain about something 'some' of the time and that includes everyone in this thread. In fact, people in this thread are complaining about TPN complaining.

Now if every single thread TPN started had him complaining endlessly like VenusBlogger and others like that, then I would understand and would probably tell him off myself :) ... but so far that isn't the case.

He wants to save $25 a month on employees but I bet he pays $250 a month in paypal fees.

:1orglaugh

I think there is a middle ground to be had here.

You absolutely don't have to pay everyone what your time is worth. Then you might as well just do it yourself. However if someone does a very good job for a low price, it's nice to give them a bonus. And if it's someone who is actually consistently great, I'm sure that he'll recruit them full-time and give them a little more money to keep them onboard.

I think if The Porn Nerd gives work to those people at a higher hourly wage than the local, he's already doing a positive thing. This is how wages rise in poor countries, slowly, but steadily. (Although I'm not familiar with how much UpWork takes from them.)

Fiddy rim jobs

exactly, this is why you pay them what they are worth to *you*, regardless of what their next door neighbour earns in some factory, and regardless of what their other neighbour earns as a rocket scientist :)

Everyone wants a cheap price of course, and you have to factor in your other costs, ROI, and all the rest... the difference is what you base that price on - your transaction(s) and costs, or some other irrelevant reason(s).

It's one thing to be savvy, it's another to cut your nose off to spite your face, because of a perceived mismatch that actually doesn't matter one iota.

I agree with you. I used to use Upwork and had someone on a lower hourly wage who told me it was 3 times what he made in his country, and that he was very happy to stay home and do half the work he otherwise would have had to. AND, he could help take care of his kids when they needed it because his time was flexible. After he finished working with me for a year I gave him a huge bonus which almost gave him a heart attack :)

That depends on whether you are ok being 'that guy' - you have to be quite a hardass to knowingly be shitty to an employee just because you have them over a barrel. Even then, the bottom line will ALWAYS be: is this deal worth it to *me* from the employers PoV. Nobody who is a success will every deviate from that. Their resources may be much larger, they may be able to employ a ton of other people to make that decision for them, but it always comes down to ROI... always.

Your other post - that's going off topic slightly - it's actually something separate, in that the employees are doing something else that you factor in, when deciding whether to keep them on or sack them. As you say, any employee can be shitty regardless of pay, so whatever that guy pays, even if it was half the wages, if at the end of the day the employess aren't turning up, that's a bad ROI and they have to go. That instance(s) you gave are related to ROI, but not to the actual pay he dishes out for the deal he wants. Tbh it sounds like he pays well, but hasn't set correct or clear boundaries... why would any employee feel like they could get away with partying and missing work because they are fucked the next day... that says more about poor employee choice/man management than what this thread has evolved into - how much is your time worth, and how much do you pay someone else to free up more of *your* higher-earnings time.

*disclaimer... as always, I don't write too well, and rather than take the time to make sure my points are easy to comprehend, I get lazy/bored and try to finish the post as quickly as possible... I get the little nuances of reasoning, I just don't take real time on a message board to state my differing opinions as eloquently as I could :upsidedow

Some good points ... the last I understand the most :)

The first depends a lot on what our definitions are of the situation. There is a wide range to talk about which is too much trouble for a simple thread like this.

Lots of debate over $25. lol.

I used upwork (oDesk) for pdf slicing.

Either way, you can't beat the price you pay vs someone you'd hire here.

I would tell porn nerd to just live somewhere cheaper. :)

The workers submit videos to tube sites, that's it. They open a browser, fill out the upload form, hit submit.

No worries. I understand where you are coming from! But let me point out a few things (and this is for Jel and Mopecki, too):

* If a worker in a particular field is earning x amount then why should I pay more than that? If the going rate for cleaning your apartment in your city is $100 then why pay $200? Sure, maybe you would pay a little more for a good housekeeper you can trust but 2x? I wouldn't, maybe you would. :)

* My workers are simple data entry workers. Meaning, they open a browser, go to a website, fill out the upload form and hit submit. Really hard work. LOL PLUS I write the Titles, Tags and Descriptions myself since their English is bad so I am already doing half the work for them!

* The reason Western companies use out sourced labor is because of taxes, insurance and other costs in the US that makes a $10 an hour employee more like a $18 an hour employee due to the above. So if there are places in the world who will do the same work for 1/5 of the cost guess what? LOL

* The average hourly rate for what I need (in The Philippines) is around $1 per hour. As an American I feel guilty as hell paying human beings such a lowly wage so I pay them 3 times what the going rate is now. PLUS all employees get Birthday and end of year Bonuses. My workers have been with me for as long as 5 years now and they love me. Why? Because I pay more than most, I hardly ever communicate with them, and the work is easy and simple AND allows them to have other jobs while files are uploading. PLUS (I bet) they themselves are outsourcing their work to a fellow Filipino, thus making $80 a week for doing absolutely nothing. LOL

* Having said all of the above, the day is coming (soon) when I will pay for a custom script to do what they do, therefore eliminating 90% of my labor costs.

Adapt or die. :)

I hope nobody that hires people for $2 per hour from 3rd world countries is planning to vote for Trump ;)

LOL never! I am from New York City so I am well aware of the clown Trump. :)

good - cause that would be the ultimate hypocrisy :1orglaugh

Dude, if Trump wins I am moving to Brno. :D

you're still mixing up 2 different things (imo anyway, I should clarify - I'm not the authority on that of course).

the question isn't whether you are simply 'paying double', it's whether you are getting value, and in turn making a profit on top. A more apt question would be: if a cleaner's average wage was $2 an hour, would you pay someone $4 an hour for that same job, who you could trust, to enable you to free up your $100 an hour time. There is no $100 an hour or $200 an hour in the equation here, it's irrelevant to this specific issue :winkwink:


You are doing the classic 'optical illusion' thing of maths (like that famous pick from 3 doors, take one away, do you stick or swap that I can never remember the name of offhand) and letting what you perceive as logical reasoning interfere with the numbers. By taking an actual case scenario, and saying 'what if a cleaner etc etc', you bring imagination and emotion into a numbers-only decision.

If the numbers *were* $100 vs $200, then you go only on *that* case scenario to come to a decision (which quite obviously would be a different one, 99% of the time). So what I'm saying is basically, is deal/contract A viable for you, do you get value. Make your decision based on that alone, and not on what a cleaner in new york might earn, what the guy's next door neighbour earns, or anything else that isn't specifically the issue at hand.

Do that with the next decision, and all the ones after that.

That's not to say you might not want to see if you can get someone cheaper, I'm saying that just keep an eye on your reasoning for wanting to do so - it comes from a 'fear' of missing out/feeling conned/etc, which are emotion-led, rather than purely 'is this good business for me' which is numbers-led and of course free from emotion. That's not a good long term strategy, whether it be on the hardass-fuck-them or the moral-crusader-pay-way-too-much side of things.

Of course even then most people (including myself) don't stick to that 100% of the time, and like most everything, it's more of a guideline for decision-making... there will always be variables where humans and their emotions are involved :)

I might be talking complete horseshit of course, or at the very least not make sense lol, but I love these types of discussions, they get me thinking about mindsets, and I have a fuck of a lot to learn in that area!

Another nice thread from one of your OPs :thumbsup

No worries mate, I get where you are coming from. :) From a pure numbers perspective, or ROI, a $3 an hour worker (or $120 per week) gets me about double that in revenue, sometimes more. In terms of time saved it's absolutely worth it to me. :)

But when I use contrast I am doing so not emotionally but rather to judge a market. These are essentially "unskilled" laborers. Meaning, there is next to ZERO 'skills' involved in the job. To me, this means literally anyone with some basic intelligence could do the job. I could swap out Haji A for Haji B and see absolutely zero difference. The only metric would be: are the videos getting uploaded correctly? A simple check either confirms or denies this.

So if anyone could do a job there's no incentive to find "the perfect person" because none exists. Your Grandma or a homeless person could do this work. LOL

So when I am asked to pay MORE for something literally a trained monkey could do I balk. Now if this were a designer, an editor, someone who did something either creative or technical, that would be a completely different story. I DO pay (much) more for that kind of skilled person.

It's called "grunt work" for a reason. :)

so many crying baby here :1orglaugh racist fuck pornnerdcock included

I get that totally, because there is a subtle difference there and your original reason about his factory worker neighbour... I think we're basically on the same hymn sheet anyway tbh :)

It's not racist to point out that your people heat their homes with cow patties thus making your entire country smell like shit.

Well the biggest thing is to treat workers, regardless of pay or location, with respect and to not exploit them. So basing salaries on what others in the field (or country) are earning, then exceeding that, is how I roll.

My problem is NOT with the workers or employees but rather the agency (Upwork).

Haha! I've been thinking the exact same thing. Where's Robbie? Where's Vendelzilla?