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Four ways to ensure that you get the best out of your content provider
Yesterday I wrote a fairly dark piece about what it's like to be a provider of written work for Webmasters around the world. So today I thought I might write a more positive piece to help you when you have to deal with a content provider like me.

While yesterday's piece was written from my perspective I'm sure the same applies to graphic designers and code and script writers too. When everything goes well being a content provider can be a great business to be in but when there are hiccups and delays the business can become very frustrating and ultimately everyone suffers.

So what should you do to ensure that you get the best result when you're getting writers, graphic artists or coders to do work for you?

Have your ducks in a row.
Never get us to start work for you until you have all the details at your end complete. Sure, sometimes you can get us to start work on a project and then feed us more information as the project progresses and everything will go smoothly but then again, all too often it just doesn't work that way.

If we have to stop work on your project because we are waiting on information from you that means down time for us and that means lost income. Even the loss of one day can put a huge dent in our cash flow so we have to keep working. That means that you may well lose your place in the work queue if we have to wait for you and so the completion of your work will be delayed.

To avoid that make sure everything is in place before you get us to start work. Of course you can hit us up before you're ready to start to get a quote or some idea of how long it will take but be straight with us and don't get us to start work while you're still trying to get all the details finalized. Inevitably that ends up in a lose/lose situation and no one likes that.

Don't confuse us
Yesterday I recounted the story of the client who got us started on a huge job - and it really was a very very big job - and then changed his mind four times. We had been working from a list that the client had provided and he changed that list four times. In the end he didn't know which list was the right one and we didn't either.

The ideal job is one where there are no changes made while the job is in progress but all too often the ideal situation has to give way to reality and changes do have to be made. If you want to make changes and the content provider agrees to incorporate those changes make sure that you list those changes in an email and have only one contact person for the job.

Our client didn't like emails, he preferred ICQ messages and some of those messages came to me and some went direct to the writer who was working on the project and that's where the confusion arose. With one point of contact and with everything in emails there is far less likelihood of confusion arising.

Yes, I know instant messaging is so very convenient and writing emails can be a pain but it can be the difference between a job well done and a job that doesn't meet your expectations because the content provider didn't quite know what your expectations where by the time the job was finished.

Don't interrupt the job
Again yesterday I talked about the client who interrupted the flow of work with other things that he considered to be more urgent. Quite often we content providers will try and fit our work around the clients to keep them happy and to encourage them to come back the next time they want work done.

But again, that can lead to a very nasty lose/lose situation and neither you nor the content provider every wants that situation to arise.

If you do have other work that suddenly becomes urgent and you want it done before the provider has finished the first job then be realistic - expect there to be a delay in completion of that first job. Ask if there will be a delay and realize that we are not super-human; we cannot do the impossible even though we might like to think we can.

Give us plenty of warning
If you have entered into a long term relationship with a content provider then you undoubtedly will get some preferential treatment but don't take advantage of us. You know what's happening with your future projects, you know when you have work coming up that will need to be done so keep us in the loop.

Keep us informed and don't drop urgent work on us at the last minute. If you keep doing that then sooner or later you're going to find that the important job you knew was coming up last week but you didn't mention to the provider till an hour before it was needed doesn't get done because the content provider is away on vacation.

None of those points that I've talked about are anything major; in reality they are all really quite minor things but in this business it's often the small things - the minor details - that are the difference between a win/win relationship with your content provider and a total disaster that ends up costing you a lot of money.