Everyday I open my inbox to a flurry of emails. Not all of them are are spam, some are actually addressed directly to me, but for all their efforts they might as well be junk mail because they are partnership proposals.

This morning for example there were eleven emails, all from India companies trying to get my to outsource web development to them, which they would of course do for a few dollars an hour and could guarantee I'd be happy with the quality.

So why dont I take them up on their offer? Well for a number of reasons. First of all I don't trust them. I've never heard of their company before, nor do they have any form of business certification. Instead the email is a template they've used over and over, in fact they probably blasted this email to thousands of companies in the hope one would take them up on their offer.

They've taken absolutely no time to get to know my company or business, and that shows in the email. For example, if they had they would have known that we don't used Coldfusion, instead they've offered us "Great Rates".

So, my tip is this, you can only have a certain number of partnership, don't inspect to have hundreds. With that in mind target the companies you think would do best for you and write to them on a personal note, don't spam!

All partnerships must benefit both parties. By outsourcing the Indian companies think the monetary aspect is a good enough benefit, but it's not. They have to bring something heavier to the deal, an improvement that goes beyond finance that I can pass onto my clients.