When you are starting a career as an online entrepreneur, one of your main objectives will be to manage your time effectively. By doing this, you’ll be able to work the least amount and earn the most possible.
There are only 24 hours in a day, and an endless amount of tasks you need to complete as a solo entrepreneur. As a one-man (or woman) business, you don’t have the luxury of relying on a team to get the job done.
However, what you do have is the ability to delegate certain projects or tasks to freelance individuals who are willing and able to step up and take some of the load off of you.
This sounds great, but for many first-time business owners, the process of outsourcing itself can be confusing and intimidating. You need to know which things to delegate, how much you should be spending, where to find the best workers as well as how to communicate with them for a positive and productive experience.
Be Selective About What You Delegate
You can’t (and shouldn’t) just outsource anything and everything. Most online entrepreneurs simply need a helping hand. But in some cases, it’s not a matter of time, but a matter of talent.
The first thing you need to outsource to someone else is anything you’re not skilled at. For example, you might know how to use a free or paid graphic design tool, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be any good at creating professional designs that will properly represent your business.
Or, you might be great at design, but can’t write content to save your life. Since this is a major part of your online business presence, you’ll need to outsource this aspect of your business to help you maintain a good reputation in the marketplace.
There are some tasks you don’t want to delegate to others. Networking, for example, might seem easy to pawn off onto another person, but sending someone else to represent you and form relationships isn’t always well-received.
It’s okay to hire an affiliate manager who can handle launch tasks and communications, but the overall friendship and relationship building should fall on your shoulders so people get to know you, and not a freelancer.
You can also delegate things that are tedious and time consuming or mundane tasks. For example, uploading content to your blog, answering hundreds of emails, or conducting research for products you want to review can be taught to another individual so they can work on those tasks while you work on other things.
Set a Budget for Your Outsourcing Needs
Before you go off the rails and begin hiring a bunch of people to do random things, you need to think about what kind of budget you’re working with. Your goal isn’t to simply say you have a certain number of dollars and you can spend it all.
You need to be earning more than what’s going out. Initially, you might have to set aside some funds if you’re new and not yet seeing any income. But it should never be more than you can afford.
You shouldn’t be going into deep debt to cover the cost of hiring freelancers. For example, some newbies come into this scene and figure if they can hire the same $10,000 copywriter that some other guru hired, they’ll be an instant success.
The behind-the-scenes truth might be that the marketer and copywriter are friends, and the copywriter is getting a portion of the sales, rather than a $10,000 fee upfront. You don’t want to invest in this level of freelance service until your incoming is significantly growing.
There are many ways to get good copy when you’re not skilled at it yourself. You can buy a sales letter template with private label rights to work off of. You can hire a freelancer who isn’t charging even a fraction of that amount, and tweak the final work when he or she is done.
You can even barter with another up and coming marketer and do a skill they’re lacking in return for them writing your copy for you. And worst case scenario, you can create the copy yourself and ask for feedback in a forum.
You want to get to know the fees for the things you might consider outsourcing. For example, ghostwriting can be found for anywhere from $1 per page to $100 or more per page.
Quality will be an issue, as will time for the project to get accomplished, and more. Those are all things to take into consideration. You want a good writer, not someone whose content goes for $1 per page for ghostwriting.
But maybe your budget isn’t set up for a $50 per page writer, either. You can set a budget range of $7-10 per page and work with freelancers who create content for that amount.
Find out what people are paying for various services such as graphics, copy, content, affiliate management, and other tasks. Budget for things you struggle with, and those tasks that take up too much of your time, and handle everything else until you can afford to outsource more.
As you begin earning in your online business, you want to set aside a portion of your earnings for future outsourcing. So that might be 5% or 20% of what you bring in, depending on your financial needs.
For some marketers, you might find that the more you can outsource, the more you can earn. For example, if you started a PLR graphics business and you made $10,000 every launch, you’d want to continue outsourcing as much as possible, as fast as possible.
Pick a Platform Where You Can Consider Freelancers
There are many different platforms where freelance individuals post their services and skills. Some have their own website where they seek clients from, so you can even go to Google and type in “freelance ghostwriter” or “freelance graphic designer” and find some individuals with sites of their own.
But normally, what many marketers do is either ask for a referral using word of mouth, or they head to one of the primary freelance platforms to find someone to do the job. If you’re asking people for a good reference to consider, you can do this by networking with people whose content, graphics, copy and branding you already admire.
If you’re on a struct and small budget, you may want to use Fiverr as a freelance directory to help you find the people you need to help support your business. On this site, you can find freelancers for a wide range of tasks.
They’ll create graphics, help you optimize your site, write your content, create videos and animation, do voiceovers, edit your podcast, install WordPress, develop an app for you, do data entry, act as your virtual assistant, provide customer service, handle bugs in your site, and more.
You can search for what you need and find people willing to do small projects from $5 and up. Sometimes, a project listing might say $5, but in reality, what you need will cost much more.
For example, a ghostwriter might say they do articles for $5. But their articles are only 150 words. So in order for you to get your 450-word article that you wanted, you’d have to spend at least $15.
There are many people who tack on the additional items as an extra fee. For example, they might be willing to create a graphic for you, but in order for you to have the PSD files, you have to pay another $50.
Just read the project listing carefully. You can also post a request with details up to 2,500 words long. Select a category and tell them how fast you need the project delivered.
You’ll also let them know what kind of budget you have so they can bid if it fit within the scope of what they normally charge for their services. Fiverr isn’t the only platform where you can hire freelancers.
UpWork is another one. Here, you’ll be posting your job listing at no cost. Freelancers will then bid on the project and you can consider which one you want to work with. You’ll collaborate on the site and pay through the site, too.
On UpWork, they handle things like logo design, social marketing, blogging, content creation, video editing, graphics, SEO, translation, eCommerce, ad campaigns, voice overs and more.
Check Out the Profiles, Portfolios and Feedback
Regardless of who you consider hiring or where you go to hire them, you’ll want to do some preliminary investigations to see who is the best fit for your business needs. Too many newbies simply hire the cheapest bidder, and this is never the right way to spend your outsourcing budget.
Sure, you can start by eliminating anyone on the bidding list whose price is outside of your budget considerations. But you may want to make note of them for a future project if and when your budget grows.
Secondly, look at the actual bid they have submitted. Many freelancers will be lazy and use a canned bid that they use across all customer projects, without even reading the specifics of what you need.
You want to work with someone who has taken time to read your listing and address your specific concerns. Some marketers even add a detail like, “mention the word flower in your bid so I know you’ve read my listing.”
Any freelancer who fails to use the word has likely used a canned bid. Once you see some bids you think sound good, you want to go a step further. You’ll need to analyze their track record and presence on the site.
Start by visiting their account to see what kind of feedback they’ve acquired. If they have a low rating, lots of complaints, and more, then weed them out. Sometimes, you’ll see a score like a 4.0 and it isn’t always the fault of the freelancer.
Marketers can be just as problematic, so judge the feedback and responses to it fairly. If they’ve completed 5 projects and one low score tanked their rating, you may not have to weed them out just yet.
But if they’ve completed 100 projects and can’t rise above a 3.0 rating, that’s a problem. If multiple people say the freelance didn’t listen to project specifications, delivered late, or ran off with their money, take your budget elsewhere.
Next, move to the person’s profile and see what they have set up in terms of their resume of sorts. Here, they should tell you a little about themselves, their skills, how they work, etc.
And one of the most important things to go over is their portfolio. This won’t be applicable for some projects, like customer service, but it will be important for things like ghostwriting and graphic design.
Not only will it help you gauge their skills, but if you do end up hiring them, you can point to some of their past work that impressed you as a reference, so they know which project deliverables you liked and which you don’t want your project to turn out like.
Set Up a Strategic Exchange for Success
Communication is one of the most important aspects of having a successful outcome when it comes to outsourcing your projects to a freelance service provider. So much frustration stems from a simple failure to convey thoughts properly.
Remember, the freelancer can’t read your mind, so giving them too much information is always preferred over not giving them enough. Start by clarifying any specifics you expect to be included in the deliverables.
For example, if you ask for a 50-page eBook, how many words per page is that in your mind? You might be thinking 400-500 words per page, but the freelancer uses doble spacing and size 14 point font and only gets 250 words per page.
Give them all of the specifics you want for your project. Do you have certain colors in mind? Don’t just say blue – give them an exact picture of the color blue that you want used in your graphics. Tell them which files and sizes you want, too.
If you’re hiring a ghostwriter, do you want content that reads like a scholarly article, or one that’s casual and conversational, like a blog post? Be specific and show them examples of the style of writing you like.
Set up milestones and an end goal for your project. If it’s a long project, such as something that may take a month, set up a weekly check-in or milestone that can be delivered so that you aren’t left in a lurch a month later when you’re about to launch a project and the freelancer hasn’t even begun because they’re behind schedule.
Outsourcing project tasks is an important and productive way to manage your business. You want it to go as smooth as possible, and you can achieve that by shopping smart, knowing what you want, and mastering the art of communication so that the other person is well-informed.