It sounds like a bad beer commercial, but this is what the world of outsourcing has come to.

Tim Ferriss, a San Jose man who is a big believer in contracting out life’s little tasks, has successfully outsourced his dating life.

Think about it: Why should anyone spend hours embellishing his profile on Match.com when there are overseas contractors willing to handle the grunt work for him?

“I’ve been experimenting quite a lot over the past two years or so with personal outsourcing,” he says, “outsourcing your life.”

Hey, it works for business.

It was only after careful reflection and deep thought that Ferriss turned his relationship spade work over to contractors. OK, actually he did it after a buddy bet him there was no way in the world dating could be outsourced.

“I decided as a social experiment,” Ferriss says, “to see if I could pull it off.”

Yes. A social experiment. And, um, a way to meet chicks.

After failing miserably at online love, Ferriss took buddy David Camarillo’s bet. If Ferriss could land a date using contractors, Camarillo would buy him a glass of wine.

“That works out,” Camarillo, 31, says, “because my mom works for Gallo.”

Ferriss, who owns a San Jose nutritional supplements company, set out on a one-month mission to get a date. Call it inspiration from his new book “The 4-Hour Workweek” (Crown, $19.95), which is out this week. The premise: You can make better use of the time you have.

He started with a job description for a personal assistant to manage his dating life. He posted it on Elance, a Web site that connects freelancers with jobs.

It was all about eyeballs hunting for Ms. More-or-Less Right. And fingers e-mailing sweet nothings. A numbers game, he figured.

“With online dating, every reasonably attractive, smart girl gets a million e-mails,” he says. Terrible odds. “If male programmers were my ideal match, I’d be set.”

Ferriss lined up a half dozen teams in India, the Philippines, Jamaica and the United States.

Cultural divide

He gave the contractors his profile and an idea of what sort of woman he was interested in (early-to-mid 20s, college grad, slender or athletic, non-smoker, no kids).

He told the teams he was looking for quick “coffee dates” at joints along Lincoln Avenue. And he told them to handle all the pre-date correspondence (introduction, follow-up questions, requests for pictures).

He suggested the contractors say they were working on his behalf. And he urged them to be creative.

There were some problems.

An Indian team dropped out explaining they didn’t really get the whole Western-style dating thing.

“In some culture groups in India,” Ferriss says, “it’s just not really done.”

The woman in Jamaica quit.

“She didn’t really like the idea of, as she put it, picking up chicks online.”

Three out of four

One group was a little too creative, digging up their own information on Ferriss and using it to impersonate him in online conversations.

“Eventually, that moved from creativeness to creepiness.”

I wanted to talk to some of Ferriss’ potential dates, but he told me he couldn’t convince any of the women still speaking to him to speak to me – if you can believe that.

But Ferriss swears the contractors delivered more than 20 dates and Camarillo says he’ll pay up. And Ferriss says he’d like to continue seeing three or four of the women.

Which is another problem.

“I only date one person at a time.”

Seems he’ll have to choose. Unless, of course, he can hire someone to do it for him.