Outsourcing is an important part of working online. The most successful people delegate tasks to others to free up their time to do other things.
I have outsourced certain tasks for projects in the past such as writing and design. For new projects I tend to be a bit of a control freak and do everything myself. I realise this is not always the right thing to do as I would speed things up by hiring other people.
Simple tasks are something I need to look into outsourcing. I was reminded of this last week when I did some updates for my forum Black Belt Forums. I moved around some rooms, added descriptions and added some extra functionality to the site. I expected it to be a 30 minute job but I ended up spending hours getting everything right. It’s this kind of thing that can really hold you back from jobs that are more profitable.
If you want to make money online, you need to focus on the things that only you can do.
Which Tasks To Outsource?
Certain tasks are easy to outsource. For example, design, writing and promotion are all things you can pay for and have delivered to you via email.
You want to outsource most tasks to allow you to focus on where your strengths lie however I do think you should still do some things for yourself. You don’t need to be an expert at everything but you should at the very least you should have a basic understanding of how everything works. I was reading a book recently where the author suggested hiring a coder to copy and paste the Aweber registration form onto your website.
To me, that is stupid. You should at least know how to log onto your blog or website and copy and paste some JavaScript code. This kind of thing is something I would consider a menial task however it would take longer for you to email someone else to do it than to just do it yourself.
Being too hands on can be just as bad as outsourcing everything and losing control. You need to try and reduce the time you spend on basic tasks. There are lots of people who will do boring jobs on sites such as Fiverr and Elance. It might take you a while to find the right person but when you do, it will save you a lot of time in the future.
If you find yourself doing boring repetitive jobs that are not increasing your bottom line, you need to review where you focus your attention.
What tasks do you outsource? I’d love to know what tasks readers are hiring other people for.
Thanks,
Kevin
