Outsourcing
TweetIf you want to make more money online then you have to learn how to leverage other people's time. The way to do this is through outsourcing. With this section of the site I am going to compile information on how to do it the right way so it's profitable for you and an enjoyable experience for your workers.
Why Outsource in the First Place?
You only have so much time so you have to allocate it wisely. If you want to get more things done you can either work more hours yourself, become more efficient, or hire additional workers. At some point you are going to run out of your own time and once you reach mass efficiency you can't really cut any more time off of your process. That only leaves you with outsourcing and hiring additional workers to complete additional tasks and get more done.
What to Outsource?
If you are just starting out with your business you may not have the money to outsource. You might want to start off by using your time to build your business. At some point you are going to hit a point where you "max out" what you can do and you will need to start paying someone to help you grow your business. So, when that happens where do you start?
Some key questions you have to ask yourself are:
1. What Do You Not Like to Do?
There has to be some parts of your business that you enjoy more than others. Personally, I do not like handling customer service. Most of the time it's dealing with negativity and complaints, which just put me into a bad mood. You have to constantly be checking emails or waiting for the phone to ring, which makes it tough for you to get in a rhythm when working on other tasks. One of the first things I outsourced was email and phone support for my products.
2. What Are You Not Good At?
I know a little bit of programming, but I'm not very good at it. For any kind of application that I need built I could spend a lot of time figuring out how to do it myself, but then it probably wouldn't be as solidly built as when I hire an expert.
3. What Can You Get Done the Cheapest?
Re-writing articles is kind of a brainless activity. It doesn't take a rocket science to summarize and re-phrase articles so they are unique. Instead of doing this myself I hire someone else to do it.
Key to Outsourcing
The key to outsourcing is building systems and processes for everything that you do. There are a certain number of steps that it takes from getting a project from start to finish. If you are talking about something as simple as publishing a piece of content on your site or building a massive application, it all comes down to a certain number of steps that need to be completed before you are finished.
For example, let's say we want to publish an article on our site. To start with you have to find out what to write about. You do research to see what your audience is interested in. After that you do keyword research so you can see what people are searching for around that topic and you can optimize your article. Next comes researching the topic to gather information. Then you write an outline of the key points that you want to cover. When the article has been written, you want to proofread the article to catch any grammatical or spelling errors. Then finally, you want to publish the article to your site.