In that post I mentioned that I was seeking help from a friend who had experience doing what I wanted to do. The problem with using friends is that they are doing you a favour and so you're less likely to be go back for exactly what you want and also you can't push them to get the work done.
So what is the solution? Easy...outsource some of the tasks that are incredibly time consuming for you but that others have expertise in.
Outsourcing doesn't have to be complicated or expensive...
The biggest block that most people against outsourcing is it's cost. Most of us like to test our ideas out before really committing some capital to it. But outsourcing doesn't have to be expensive. In fact it is incredibly cheap for some things!
The problem is that most of us don't know
- What to use it for
- What we should be paying for different tasks
What should you outsource?
The first thing you need to think about is what you should outsource. If you are setting up a fairly simple business or website (like I was with Banker's Pitch) you want to outsource all those things which you find time consuming but which is not integral to your businesses success.
For example with a blog you can probably outsource a lot of the logo design and social networking design work...but you probably want to keep your content creation in house..because this is where your business value lies.
If you're looking at doing it on the cheap...check out Fiverr
Fiverr has been around for ages and the one great thing that it does is remove the confusion about what you should be paying for different tasks. It's pretty simple - people advertise things that they will do for US$5...and you may be amazed at the quality you will get for that price.
It's pretty simple to use Fiverr
- Search for the service that you want
- Select the rating of the service provider that you are looking for
- Have a look at their portfolio and see whether they are providing what you are looking for
- Contact them to make sure that they can do what you need
- Pay the $5 (or more if you want additional add ons) and wait for the work to be provided
You won't always get exactly what you are looking for and occasionally you will waste $5 but because the dollar value is so low you are able to try several people and still pay far less than you would in the real world
For more advanced work you may want to pay a little more...
Fiverr is not the only site out there and for more advanced work you may want to spend some time finding a person that can custom design your website or some other service you are offering. But to get things off the ground on a shoestring budget it is pretty hard to go past Fiverr.
I have used it and I can highly recommend it (note that I am not getting anything for writing this recommendation...I'm just a very happy customer).
Outsourcing frees up your time for the important tasks
Only you know what you are good and where your strengths lie so each of us will probably outsource different things for our own small business. I am terrible at design work of any sort and I will spend an age working on something that comes out looking pretty ordinary at the end so that is the type of thing I like to outsource.
Work out where you can gain the biggest benefits from outsourcing...it will free up your time to concentrate on the more important parts of your business.
Have you used any other outsourcing websites? I would love to hear about your experience and other sites I can try out!
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I've considered hiring a VA (Virutal Assistant) for my blog however the thing that sort of held me back.. am in the process of engaging one now, is that my site doesn't make money.. Until it starts making money, it's painful to justify spending money but it's the age old what comes first the chicken or the egg?
ReplyDeleteFiverr is pretty good however with a logo for example I was struggling with thinking about what I actually wanted to have as a logo, I probably need a creative person as well :) haha.. All part of the joy of the online/blogging world
I thought about a VA for a while actually but couldn't really work out what I would use it for. I'll probably look into it more when my blog gets bigger. Let me know how you go on that front...I'd be really interested to know what you use it for.
DeleteFiverr is really good for the creative stuff. I think I've spent $45 so far on things and saved myself HOURS of time and gotten a much better product at the end.
Yeah I agree but I suppose it's in actually loading the articles onto wordpress, completing all the tasks for this can be a bit of time drain but isn't too difficult..
ReplyDeleteFiverr is pretty good though :)