Removing the background from product photos is an important but tedious job. Solution? Outsource!
As I prepare Sand Shack’s product line for 2009 I am faced with the tedious job of taking high quality pictures of every product followed by the brain numbingly tedious job of using Photoshop to remove the backgrounds from every photo.
I have always been the one to do this job, but this time I am on an extremely tight schedule as I have a tradeshow approaching in three days, and therefore, I have much better things I should spend my time on. A month or so ago I used a site called guru.com to find a freelance web designer to make some updates on sandshack.com. For that project I ended up finding somebody to make the needed changes for $65, a job that I would usually have to pay $800 for here in Philadelphia. Albeit, the freelancer I found was still located in the United States, the site allowed me to post a job and have people from all around the world bid on the project.
Yesterday I turned to guru.com again for another project. I titled the project “Product Photo Editing/Background Removal”, and within the same day I had over 20 bids on it. The highest bid I received was from some guy in Uruguay who wanted $2,000 to remove the background from 200 photos (somehow I don’t think he understood the project, or he wanted to use the money to fly to Philadelphia to do the job!) and the lowest bid was from a man named Suman in Kolkata, India who wanted $100 for the same job. After a couple emails back and forth we agreed on $0.35 per photo with a project deadline of 36 hours after sending him the photos. However, before I gave him my business I had him edit three photos I gave him, which he edited just as well as I would have (if not better). Just like that I outsourced a tedious, time-consuming job and got it out of my hair so I could work on more important matters.
Sites like guru.com allow small businesses to outsource jobs such as photo editing to experts who can do it quicker and cheaper than you can do yourself. Remember, time is money, and as an entrepreneur you need to spend your time wisely to grow your company.
In summary, don’t be afraid to outsource. It is cheaper to outsource many jobs than to do them yourself or hire a fulltime employee. If you do your research and go on sites like guru.com, you will be amazed at what type of jobs you can outsource.
Be cautious, do your research, and weigh the pros and cons of outsourcing a particular job. But in the end, when you make the decision to outsource and carry through with it, chances are you will find the immense value it has to offer.
