Outsourcing SEO Projects

I figured I'd post a semi legit (only semi) topic in the pro forum.

Outsourcing SEO Projects is something I've been considering for some time and am wondering how many have gone this route? With many 'firms' or individuals overseas charging 10-20% of the initial price points, it's worth a look IMO.

What steps if any have you done to facilitate outsourcing, and how many different comapnies do you work with? Any major snags?

I'm probably going to start taking in applications and go through a normal hire process, training people who are reliable/teachable, and moving from there..... Thoughts? Trials? Tribulations?

Really? What about a partnership?

I've been looking at how to take help on as the projects I'm getting are better and better. What I realized is there are 3 components to my business:

Admin - All the BS paperwork, billing and management (including project management). This is the most important part of the business, especially accounting and PM. Anyone I take on would fall under this catagory as well for "supervision" or management or whatever you want to call it.

Sales/Promotion - Sort of two parts but the promo leads to the leads that leads to the sales. It's all the same cycle so I tie them together. The problem with bringing someone on to do sales is I am still making so much crap up as I go along to create and refine the process I couldn't imagine having someone else in the mix yet. Also sales becomes the face of your company and I am not ready to let that go yet. Finaly the amount of training to get a rep prepared to understand and bid jobs just doesn't seem cost-effective to me.

Production - Actually doing the design, building the sites and promo work. Oddly in the heirarchy of the business this is the least important(!) and easiest to do. It's also got a lot of great opportunity for outsourcing. I figure this is the place I will bring on help first, but not whole projects just parts like KW research and link building. I can see taking those skills and training the employee to do competitive analysis from there.

FYI I had an AA for a couple months when I still had a day job. They were supposed to do a lot of stuff that never got done and I was left deciphering where projects were at, what billing had been done, etc. It was a mess that I just finaly put behind me. This is the type of help I could really use but finding someone dependable is tough.

Anyway, that's where I'm at. Right now I'm going nuts keeping everything going. I have too much to do myself but not quite enough to hire someone. These streches suck.

For SEO work I hear about a lot of success in bringing other SEOs on as part of "the team" for individual projects. The other SEOs may have a specialty they can help you out with and these things seem to go well. But I haven't heard much about "lateral" partnerships. Probably too much fear of stealing clients.

BTW if you interview someone ask them how they would change your site for better SEO. I mean "more"?

I'm thikning of outsourcing projects in pieces. If I can find some solid CSS creators I'll send them projects, have then send back. Same with KW research, or directory submission, etc. Having a team for each component may help me some place... this way I give deadlines and the items come back on time and for what I want.