What Should You Outsource?

Outsourcing is becoming very much a buzz word these days. Everyone seems to be doing it.

I used to get fed up hearing about how much other people were outsourcing.

Now I’m trying to find a company that I can outsource my sleep to.

Yes that’s right - my sleep. I figure that everything can be outsourced to India for pennies, so why not my sleep. I would get so much more done without having to do it myself!

I suppose in a way I do outsource my sleep, or at least my outsourcing work is getting done while I sleep.

So what should you outsource? 

To answer that question, you need to have the answer to another question -

What Is Your Time Worth?

This is a question that all the top internet marketing gurus suggest you need to work out. 

Here’s the concept if you’re not familiar with it: 

You work out how much your time is worth per hour and outsource everything that costs less per hour than what you are worth. 

To work out how much your time is worth per hour, use the following mathematical formula: 

Let’s say you want to earn $50,000 a year from your online business. 

Based on a 3 hour (productive) workday with 220 workdays in a year, not counting weekends, holidays and vacations, if you earn $50,000 per year then each hour is worth $76

Here’s the formula:

50,000 ÷ by the number of productive annual workday hours (220 days x 3 = 660) =$76

This is a great way to determine whether you should be spending your time doing a task yourself or outsourcing it to someone that can do it for less than your hourly rate. 

Even if you don’t work out what your hourly rate, you should have an understanding of how best to manage your time and what activities to concentrate on. 

Recently I have been learning all about using audio and video as a marketing tool. I love these mediums as a way of communicating and it seems like it’s the way internet marketing is heading. 

I want to incorporate audio and video in all of my websites as soon as possible and I am on a pretty steep learning curve to accomplish this. 

The other day I was experimenting with a couple of screen capture software tools. 

·        CamstudioPro

·        Camtasia

Now both of these products are excellent. Camtasia is probably recognised as the industry leader in screen capture software. CamstudioPro has most of the features of Camtasia but costs much, much less. 

To cut a long story short, I was playing around with the software and my computer decided to play a late ‘April Fools’ joke on me. 

For some reason, all of a sudden, I wasn’t able to view live streaming ‘flash’ video. I could still see those YouTube videos but they are set up differently. 

No problem I thought. I followed the on-screen instructions and re-downloaded/updated my adobe flash software… 

Nope, that didn’t work. The error still said that I hadn’t got the latest version of flash installed. (Even though I had). 

This is a familiar story right? If you haven’t experienced anything similar then you haven’t been in this business long enough. It WILL happen to you! 

Here’s what happened…I spent the next 2 DAYS trying to figure out the problem! I uninstalled software, I installed latest versions, previous versions, amended my internet settings, took off my fire wall, pop-up blocker and removed programs I wasn’t even sure I was supposed to remove! You get the idea. 

I became frustrated, angry and disillusioned, even to the point of wanting to give up the whole audio/media revolution and stick to the good old words on a screen or ebook. 

The problem with me is; I like to know how to do things. This is my business, so I need to know how it all works. Even if it means knowing how to fix a software problem.      

Now I am the least technical person I know. It takes me twice as long as anyone to figure out how to do something that’s even slightly technical. 

So why do I persist in trying to solve a technical problem when I haven’t even got a clue where to start?! 

The result of these 2 days of hair pulling madness…I gave up and cried my eyes out! OK, I didn’t cry that much. But I did give up trying to do it myself. 

On day 3 I decided that I needed help and I needed it fast. So I did a search to find the necessary help. I simply typed in ‘computer help’ into Google. 

Within 2 mins I had found a website that offered live 24/7 assistance to solve my computer problem. 

The company charge between £4.99 and £14.99 (double these figures for US dollars) depending on the scale of the problem, and offered a money back guarantee if they couldn’t fix it. 

They also offered one year worth of complete support for £54. This included a free PC health check. 

I signed up to the years support. I knew there were other things that would come along to trip me up. Plus they offered help with any ‘how to’ problems, not just software problems.  

Within 2 hours of subscribing, my flash software problem was solved. (I can now view my favourite John Reese flash streaming videos again!) Plus I can get back to the task of learning how to incorporate video into my webpages. 

My PC received a complete overhaul and is now quicker than before. I am now relieved of all that stress and tension that had built up inside me.  

Now that’s what I call, ‘money well spent’.

By the way, the company is called 'iYogi' - www.iYogi.co.uk / www.iYogi.net (for US customers)

So my question at the start of this post was: ‘What Should YOU Outsource?’ 

If you are just starting out in your internet business, you are probably working very part time and not earning enough, or even anything yet, to start outsourcing these various tasks. 

But understand this – “Know Your Limitations.”

Don’t spend days or weeks trying to figure something out that might cost you even more in money than it would have if you had hired an expert to do it in the first place. 

The simple fact is; an expert will do the job quicker and better than you. Full stop. 

If and when, you can outsource your work, then do so. It will be money very well spent. 

Here are some examples of work that you should really be outsourcing if you are serious about building an internet business: 

·        PC / Laptop Problems.

Unless you are very technically minded, then get an expert to fix your problem. You will also have peace of mind that the problem has been fixed and not just temporarily patched up. 

·        Graphic Design

Have you seen those ebook covers that have been designed using an ebook cover software? Don’t they look terrible? Don’t kid yourself into thinking you’ll save a ton of money by buying the software to do it yourself – it won’t look half as good as getting a pro to do it. (My Profit-Club Newsletter graphic was created in a few hours for $20 – looks good doesn’t it? - ‘money well spent’). This also applies to website headers. Let the experts design them. 

·        Content Writing

If you have a blog or a website that needs fresh original content on a regular basis, then paying for a content writer could save you hours of time. From 200 word articles to 50 page ebooks, you can outsource this work very cheaply. The secret is to find a good writer. When you find one, they can be worth their weight in gold! 

I just did a quick search for a content writing service and found two companies. 

Here’s what they offered: 

Company 1: Professional, original articles (400 words) for only 5$

Company 2: $250 per month for a FULL TIME WRITER! 

How’s that for money well spent? Yes the articles may not be brilliant, but it will only take a few minutes to edit them.   

·        Link building / Link Exchange

Link building is so, so boring. You spend your time writing to website owners/webmasters requesting them to link to your website in exchange for a link from yours. Doing it the right way can take up a considerable amount of time. 

This is a task that can easily be outsourced because it is easy to monitor and easy to measure. 

·        Submitting to Directories

For just $40 you can get your site submitted to around 600 directories. 

·        Article submission

Another great way to bring in a lot of traffic to your site. However, the task of submitting your articles to article directories can also be very time consuming and very boring. 

Here’s a service I found in 30 seconds: 

Your article submitted to 200 high PR Article Sites. 

Including: Free, 1 unique, 500 word article written for your keyword. A free variation of the same article for every 100 submissions and a free detailed report. 

Price - $30 

Of course there are other tasks that you need to work on in order to build a successful business, but the above list is some of the major components that need to be or should be completed and can be done so relatively cheaply. 

If you are just starting your internet business, the only task I believe you should and really need to outsource, until you start making some money, is graphic design. 

The rest you can do yourself until you can afford to outsource them. 

Outsourcing saves you time and ultimately makes you more money. What more benefit than that could you possibly need?

Peter