17 Things You Should Think About Outsourcing

Not everybody can outsource out of the gate, but once you start seeing some returns from your efforts  you should try to start outsourcing various tasks to free up your time. This way you can spend time on “income producing activities” instead of “busy work”.

Here’s a list of 17 things you should consider outsourcing at some point (in no particular order):

1. Content Creation – content for your niche sites, article directories (link building), press releases, video articles etc.
2. Content Submission – submitting articles, press releases, posting to your blog, submitting videos…
3. Blog creation – setting up WordPress, installing plug-ins, configuring premium themes etc. At the very least, think about getting a Backup / Cloning tool that can help you setup your blogs faster (so you’re not setting everything up from scratch all the time).
4. Link Building – get someone else to do the tedious task of building links to your site. Whether it’s a link building service (like 3-way links or a 1-way link network); or a person / service that is creating blog comments; social bookmarks; or maybe some .edu or .gov links for you…)
5. Account Creation – need accounts created on a host of social bookmarking sites or article directories? The best use of your time is to have someone do it for you. There are people on both the Warrior Forum and Fiverr that will do this sort of work for you.
6. Transcribing audio or video – do you want to create a PDF file out of your audio or video? Instead of spending hours trying to piece together your audio into a coherent PDF report, have someone with expertise do it for you (I’ve found a couple of good people on the Warrior Forum for this sort of work).
7. Audio / Video recording – need to record some video footage? Or maybe record a Skype call or a conference call? You can actually hire someone to do this sort of thing very easily. (I’ve hired free workers for video recording and editing before… read on for more on this)
8. Customer support – especially people that can handle refunds and basic customer questions. (it’s better for your health to just outsource the refunds and negative comments as well…)
9. Customer Acquisition – if you’re an offline marketer, you’d be better off handing the lead generation and sales to other people. Hire free sales people (people you don’t actually have to pay… at all… read on towards the bottom of this post for more on this).
10. Moderating Forums – do you own a forum (or other socially interactive sites?). Have someone else moderate it for you (many active members will do this for free if you ask them).
11. Technical stuff – if you’re technically challenged, it’s more efficient to get help from someone who knows what they’re doing (instead of wasting time). Stuff like auto-responder integration, shopping cart integration and other complex (and even easy tasks) can be done quickly and effectively through outsourcing. Installing Scripts or databases – don’t know how to install a mysql database? Or perhaps you need a new membership script installed. The learning curve on many scripts and plugins are pretty high, so it can save you a ton of time to just get the help of someone who knows.
12. Programming tasks – outsource the creation of your own software, wordpress plugin, a simple php script or maybe even an iPhone app… there’s no reason to learn to code on your own when there are tons of programmers waiting for you to reach out to them.
13. Product Creation – outsource the actual product creation to someone else. Hire an expert in a subject to create one for you (like at Guru.com).
14. Copywriting – need copy for your new product? It’s not a bad idea to learn how to write some basic copy, but if you need it done “right” maybe it’s best to hire a copywriter… the Warrior Forum is a decent place to hire an up and coming (and veteran) copywriters.
15. Graphic Creation – need a header image for your blog; a new logo, or perhaps an ebook cover for your new product? There are plenty of graphic artists that will do this for you on the cheap.
16. Affiliate Manager – if you’re launching a new product, it can be more effective to hire an affiliate manager who can help you uncover potential JV and affiliate partners.
17. Niche / Keyword research – if you’re having trouble digging up niches on your own, it may be faster to just outsource the niche and/or keyword research.

Obviously, there may be some things on this list that you would never want to outsource… and that’s fine.

For instance, I personally prefer to do most of my own niche and keyword research (because I’m good at it and I think it’s fun), however I outsource most of my content creation and link building. I also enjoy video editing and image creation / manipulation… but end up outsourcing most of it because it can be very time consuming.

So, where can you outsource to?

Here are some of my favorite sources (in alphabetical order):

• Elance.com
• Fiverr.com (for simple tasks like article writing)
• Guru.com
• Odesk.com
• VWorker.com (formerly Rent-a-Coder)
• Warrior Forum – Warriors for Hire section

Once you have enough work, you may even want to hire your own Virtual Assistant… or hire someone locally… or even get someone to work for free (like an intern).

I’ve used interns quite a bit in the past (and still do for things like sales and photo / video editing).

If you’re interested in finding people that would be excited to work for you FOR FREE, I suggest you pick up this short report called “The Free Salesman”. While this report talks about how to hire a “free salesman”, you can use the exact same methods to hire students to do any number of tasks as an inter. This report gives you step-by-step on how you can go about hiring your own intern).

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Tags: crowdsourcing, outsourcing, va, virtual assistant