Content / Data Entry work

[Faulkds]

Hi,

Is there anybody out there who would be interested in doing data entry into my site www.4-motorcycles.co.uk

I simply dont have the time to keep it upto date.

I would like to be able to call on the person to do the work at short notice.

Let me know what you would want. Would be ideal for someone whos at home and needs some spare cash. We are looking at about £7.50 - £10 an hour.

Design experience would be helpful.

Thanks
Darren

[leehack]

Darren, don't be too hasty to dismiss designers, but you would have to up the rates that you are prepared to pay.

A pocket money worker might add 10 products in an hour for £10, a designer might add 30 in an hour for £20.

More for your money and done in a more professional and much quicker time.

[Faulkds]

Didn't think I did dismiss designers... I would love someone with design experience to work on the site but I'm not looking for a redesign of the site.

I believe its data entry work and don't see data entry at £150 a day /
£750 a week

However, I maybe wrong...

[Duncan Rounding]

All Lee's saying is that there are ways to enter product data faster than using the Actinic front end such as importing the data in larger quantities which is faster. So although it may cost more for a designer you would get more products added/updated etc in the same time. A day at £150 might get you 200 products added, but might take 4 days of manual entry.

I suppose it depends on the volume of changes, the time frame you'd need it done and who you can find to do it. There are some designers around that offer store management services.

[Faulkds]

Hi Duncan,

I here where your coming from.

However, the bottom line is I can only afford to pay £7.50 to £10 an hour.

Perhaps this is why companies like mine tend to out source to other countries.

Baring in mind if it was a full time job that would workout to be approx 19k a year...

Hmm

[Jan]

You could always quote per product ... that's what someone I'm working with for a friend of mine has done.

Regards,

[leehack]

However, the bottom line is I can only afford to pay £7.50 to £10 an hour.

Perhaps this is why companies like mine tend to out source to other countries.

Darren

Apologies if i have annoyed or not made myself very clear, but you have missed the whole point of what i was saying. By wanting to pay £7.50-£10 an hour, you HAVE chosen to not use a designer. By 'designer' i do not mean someone to 'design your site', i mean somebody experienced in actinic that can do things in a much quicker fashion than a plodder.

You are focussing on an hourly rate, which is plain madness, you should be focusing on how many products are done per hour and THEN calculating what is best. I shall explain below to avoid any further confusion:

Which of the following would you rather employ:

Web designer on £100 per hour and can add 200 products in an hour
Part time processor on £10 per hour and can add 10 products per hour

To add 200 products, this equates to:

Web designer = £100
Part Time Processor = £200

Hope that explains it better, we are not talking about employing a web designer to design your site, we are talking about employing a web designer as they are often quicker, more efficient and cheaper, EVEN though their hourly rate may seem extortionate to you. It has nothing to do with hourly rate at all, your part time processor is the most expensive data inputter you can employ most of the time.

Designers don't input manually into actinic, plodders do, that is a massive difference in time, so often a false economy.

I recently added 1365 products to a site in 5 days, that involved formatting images, product descriptions and the pricing. The guy i did this work for had managed to add 52 in 6 weeks. 30% of his sales each week are now on the products i added, so although he forked out for 5 days work, he is now making money almost straight away, where by his own admission it would have been 18 months at least to get them on himself.

I am not touting for business here at all by the way, i hate the data input side, just illustrating to you a much better way of looking at the process.

[TraceyHand]

i hate the data input side,.

I looooooooooove data input...it's my passion (I'm sad that way LOL) but I'm still a "plodder" (goes along with being a hobbyist )
Lee makes a good point..you should be looking at the bigger picture. The overall cost to input the data and not the per-hour cost.

Using Lee's example..not only would it cost you half the price to use a designer, it'd also take 1/20th of the time which has to be a good thing, surely

[leehack]

I don't think you class as a hobbyist bumpsy, so you can drop that label, you know more than me nowadays.

Glad i seem to have explained it clearer, i think some people would rather pay £10 per hour than £25 per hour, even if in the long run it meant that things would cost twice as much. Must be a psychological thing i guess.

[Faulkds]

I understand what your saying but the type of work that needs doing isnt supplied in a CSV file but taken from customers hard back catalogs or straight from their website. If it was done via a CSV file I would have done it myself. Baring this in mind and the type of industry where the supplier hasnt a clue what a CSV file is would you still be able to do 1300 products in a week?

[Faulkds]

Also, I've put the request in a actinic forum....

Therefore the people that look in this forum have experience of actinic.

If i can find someone whos reliable and trust worthy then the rate maybe open.

I know the time it takes to do data entry as i have two sites with over 7000 products. Wish my suppliers we geared up to give me the information in a nice little file that I could import.... :-(

[leehack]

I understand what your saying but the type of work that needs doing isnt supplied in a CSV file but taken from customers hard back catalogs or straight from their website. If it was done via a CSV file I would have done it myself. Baring this in mind and the type of industry where the supplier hasnt a clue what a CSV file is would you still be able to do 1300 products in a week?

A lot of the time it is dependant on what you have to start with for sure. The real life example i provided you with, was pictures grabbed off a website (then had to be resized and optimised), the descriptions and names of the products also copy pasted off a website. The prices were from a supplier provided spreadsheet.

It didn't need to be in csv at all as you create the csv yourself. Here is a prime example of a page that was included into that equation i provided - http://www.hpieurope.com/parts.php?lang=en&partNo=868. Product name and description on the front page and then the image you want to use is sitting behind 2 clicks if you click on each thumbnail. So you grab the name, grab the description, grab the larger image (not the thumbnail), format and optimise the image and look up the price in a spreadsheet.

Scraping a website is much easier than copying a catalogue, but you'd still be surprised what can be achieved. The images are often the sticking point, not the copy, rally as hard as you can to get the images.

[Faulkds]

cool.

The only other thing is when you rip the description etc the content needs to be changed to get the ranking in google. Creating a duplicate site isnt really the best way of going around things.... Anyway, this thread could lead into all types of subjects....

I appreciate your time and help but at the moment we have to go for the cheaper option - me doing all the work ;-)

The annoying thing is our supplier releases a new catalog every year!!!!

[leehack]

The annoying thing is our supplier releases a new catalog every year!!!!

This is a BIG PLUS not a negative at all IMO. This gives you the option to get in quick and get your site up to date, where most sites will take 6 months to do so. If you're on the ball, you are in the money in other words.

Supplier catalogues changing is fantastic in my eyes, i know that any site i manage is guaranteed to be in the top 10-20% in it's marketplace, purely on the fact that it will be up to date. People are just too slow in general and do not move with the times. It's a long time since website info was static for years, those days are long gone.

[Faulkds]

I agree with you there....

Its great if thats your only commitment but alas i run an IT Consultantcy as well... Not enough hours in the day...

Back to the main point, I have now found somebody (through this forum) whos going to help me out...

Thanks for all the advise