Understanding Outsourcing: How A Solo Entrepreneur Can Use Outsourcing To Grow Any Small Online Business and Income 5 Times Faster In One Year

Over 80% of your online marketing activities are not critical to increasing your income but they are gross, consume a lot of time, can be tedious and sometimes distract from the 20% few that bring the most results (and income). Top earning marketers are outsourcing these low impact 80% online marketing activities, and you too can. However, there are risks with outsourcing if you are not well informed first. In this post you’ll discover what outsourcing is, outsourcing benefits in online marketing, the online activities you should outsource, the reasons why many marketers do not outsource and the mistakes you can avoid when outsourcing. Read on and let’s discuss more about outsourcing.

How To Outsource To  Grow Your Internet Business And Online Income 5 Times Faster In 1 Year

Overwhelm has long been one of the major causes of online business failure and a top business productivity killer among online marketers. However, outsourcing has been the most effective solution (and trend) among top online marketers and bloggers, to escape drowning in the sea of online business activities and get things done – exactly when and how they were planned to be done.

Before now, outsourcing in the online marketing arena was a ‘luxury’ only for the ‘big boys’ – it was a matter of affordability. Although many online marketers do not yet know how outsourcing can drastically grow their businesses, of the lot that know, majority could not afford the cost of outsourcing while they were struggling to build their online home businesses on tight budgets.

As a result, many online marketers continued to remain solo-entrepreneurs, doing by themselves every bit of tasks (they know how to/ do not know how to do effectively and efficiently), so that ineffectiveness and inefficiency was one of the reasons why 97% internet businesses never tasted success – drowning in overwhelm and remaining ‘newbies’ for years.

Could outsourcing be one of the gaps holding you back from rapid success? Are there online business/ marketing tasks that you are not effective and efficient at, that are slowing you down?

In this post, you’ll understand better what outsourcing is, why you should outsource, how to outsource, what kind of business tasks you can outsource, real business benefits you can derive from outsourcing, common reasons why some marketers and businesses frown at outsourcing, many reasons why outsourcing can help your business grow income faster and many more. The whole idea of this post is to lay down the cards for you so that you can make an informed vital business decision – it’s all about results and growth not how long and hard you spend at business tasks. So, let’s ride on.

What Is Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is simply ‘delegating’ a business task to an external or outside resource person or freelancer (aka outsource service provider).

You know usually in office environments, tasks are delegated to internal resource persons (i.e. staff), although organised businesses also delegate (outsource) to external resource persons or firms those tasks that they do not have the competence or internal resources to execute.

Online outsourcing trends continues to be on the increase among small and large sized companies, and smart home and one-man online business entrepreneurs are always ‘copying’ strategies that are working for large businesses (online or offline). Why, you’d ask? Read on and you’ll soon discover the reasons why.

Again you may be asking ‘why outsource?’. The main reason why smart businesses outsource is to increase business productivity and output through focusing on their strengths and competencies.

Before you read on, I’d like to tell you that this post is a continuation of our Online Business Productivity series because outsourcing, as you’ll soon realize, is one of the strategies that smart businesses online (offline too) are using to increase their productivity – produce more by working less time (like 4 hours a week/ day, lol) without spending more.

 

What You Can Outsource In Your Online Marketing Business Process?

Here are tips to determine whether to delegate or outsource a task; they are also the top common tasks people outsource in their own business (online or offline):

  • Tasks that you are not good and take too long to complete
  • Tasks you do not know how to do
  • Tasks you find tedious and time-wasting
  • Tasks you hate
  • Those tasks that never seem to ‘get done’ on your “To Do” List
  • Small routine tasks’ that clutter your business day and distract you from the 3 critical online business activities that matter most
  • Outsource technical support or generally, the technical side of the business and setting up (e.g graphics design, blog setup and customization, look and feel of your blog – i.e. design works, plugins setup etc.). Marketing is not technical, you can let the techies do what they’re good at – after all if you were not a one-man gig, you’d have had all departments setup.
  • Specific examples of what you can outsource online include: outsource your marketing, sales, SEO work, advertising, PPC, outsource article writing,outsource backlink building, outsource graphic design works etc..

Top internet marketer, Kim Roach (whom I’ve learned so much from) always stresses not to let the technical tasks keep you from doing your core business functions ; she advises to let someone else do them so you can focus at giving your readers the best of you.

Benefits of Outsourcing Some of Your Online Marketing Tasks

In my post ‘How to Build a Highly Productive Online Business we learn that there are 3 critical activities in every online business, which make up 20% of the entire activities you should be doing but these 3 core online business activities produce 80% of income. We also learnt that when you do less of those 3 activities, your income would drop (that is if you were high above zero) and when you do them completely, your income would increase.

Again you know that speed of implementation matters – there are only 30 days in a month (to payday) and where you have any of the 3 core activities that you are struggling with, it’d be wise to let an expert freelancer do it on $5 budget, at Fiverr, while you take your time to get better at it.

Here are advantages of outsourcing or delegating some of your online business tasks to expert freelancers:

  • Saves time and money and increase production of more tangible (and intangible) outputs and results -especially if you use low cost freelancers who are good at what they do
  • Rapid business growth – when your business tasks are split with other people, you can accomplish so much (profit) in over half the time.
  • Cheaper: No overheads and no other parts of salaries paid to outsourced staff/ helper
  • High ROI: imagine if you paid someone $10 to write an article for you, then you spin this article (spend 20 minutes only) to get up to 10 unique versions, all with your affiliate links). Then you spend another 20 minutes to submit all articles on top high page rank article directories. Now, imagine that after two weeks, you start seeing sales of say, $30 daily so that in 5 days you make $150 – how about that profit of $140 (after deducting $10 spent on outsourcing).Now, that article is still going to keep making sales for you.
  • Frees your time to do only the tasks you love doing
  • You gain extra free time to enjoy the money you earn
  • Speedy business growth
  • More profit from giving out tasks at cheap price
  • You only pay for task you want done
  • The time and resources it will take for you to learn a new internet marketing skill (plus learning and mastering curve) far exceeds the cost of hiring a virtual freelancer. remember, earning does not produce earning (although it can increase your potential for increased earnings but it chops off your work/ income generation time).
  • Specialist experts at your beck and call for every ‘department’ of your business – they may even do it better than you ever dreamed of. Most  freelancers at are practicing online marketers or experts in various fields.
  • You have enough time to focus on your core business activities (marketing, sales, content development and developing growth strategies)

Super affiliate Lynn Terry says if she had to start all over again and with only 3 tools, a virtual personal assistant (outsourced staff) is in that list – to afford her speed of implementation, to get off the ground (see interview excerpt below).

outsourcing benefits interview
Source: www.sugarrae.com/interviews/a-conversation-with-super-marketer-lynn-terry

 

Common Reasons Why Most Online Marketers Fail To Outsource Or Delegate

Even some marketers and online business owners who are aware of the benefits of outsourcing do not outsource, not because they do not want to, but because they cannot afford the cost of outsourcing to freelancers. However, with Fiverr, now a lot more marketers who are building their business on a tight budget are now outsourcing to freelancers at Fiverr.

Another reason for not outsourcing is lack of understanding of the real benefits to business, and the cost-benefit break-down in a way that any small or start-up online business entrepreneur can relate to. Knowing that outsourcing is like ‘buying and selling’ – buy a $5 service to get your business to make $100 meaning you make $95 profit. If many online entrepreneurs can be helped with a simplified meaning outsourcing and where to get it dirt cheap, I’m sure many will start using it as one of their business strategies, especially those who are still keeping a full time income while building a part-time online home business.

Why You Should Outsource Or Delegate Some Of Your Online Business Tasks

You alone are only but one single person, there is so much to do in 24 hours, and in 30 days and speed of implementation has a direct impact on your monthly online business revenue (and income generation). Time is always not enough to do them all. The only marketers who cart away 80% of the money are those who manage their time effectively and efficiently – outsourcing is how they do that, they are not super-human.

At the end of the day, what matters is results, not how hard-at-suffering you got in a month.

Without outsourcing or delegating some part of your online business, you’ll see that you are putting in more time and more efforts than if you were in a JOB. Is that the reason you started your own business? What happened to the time freedom you wanted?

Outsourcing is the only ticket to speedily owning your life and escaping overwhelm, when doing your own business online as a solo-preneur. Outsource so you can focus your time on those activities that yield the most ROI. Without outsourcing, you’d be shocked that you’ll be getting holed in to your own business by working a lot more hours than when you were in a JOB. You see, prior to starting own business, many people had full time jobs but quit because they wanted to have more time freedom (some wanted to be stay-at-home-moms) but soon realize that they are spending more time (than on that JOB) while working on their own business. But that wasn’t the plan. More annoying is that even at that they are still struggling, months after to get the business to start paying the bills.

Outsourcing is an effective way of getting things done, in business, while escaping the risk of drowning in a sea of activities or overwhelm. With outsourcing as a growing business trend, most small and solo-home businesses have used outsourced freelancers and Virtual Assistants (VAs) to build highly productive and successful online businesses.

How Can Outsourcing Help Your Business Grow?

You should realize that departmentalizing your business is not entirely an affair for brick-and-mortar businesses. It’s a strategy to build wildly productive businesses, no matter the size. Outsource the department (tasks) in your business that take too much of your time and that you are not the best at – outsource them to experts that do not cost an arm and leg. Outsourcing is profitable when you get cheap resource persons and make more money from the speed of completion of the combination of the tasks they handled for you and those you did yourself.

You will make more money than you spent to outsource – that is strategic outsourcing, and we’ll discuss that in a follow up post where we’ll look at some dirt cheap sources of getting quality freelancers to assist you in your day to day online marketing business tasks.

Again, in the follow up post, we will look at the steps and tips to make your online business profitable by using strategic outsourcing principles while  delegating our tedious and time consuming tasks to cheap and quality freelancers. We’ll also look at where to find freelancers to delegate or outsource some of your tasks for, at a price of single dollar digit per task. To read that post, click here: Fiverr! The Poor Marketer’s Outsourcing Haven And Secrets To Profiting From Outsourcing Online Business Tasks Really Cheap At Fiverr.

What Do You Think About Outsourcing Some Of Your Online Marketing Tasks?

I hope this post has given you insights, with pros and cons for outsourcing and how you can significantly reduce the cost and overheads associated with doing business online, while gaining more family and fun time PLUS growing your business profits on cheap, quality outsourcing.

What do you think about using outsourcing strategy to build a bigger, more profitable online business faster? What online business tasks are you likely to outsource or currently outsourcing? Are there any reasons why you may not consider outsourcing some of your online marketing tasks?

I’d love to hear what you thing about working at home and outsourcing part of your online home business  – let’s have a conversation in the comments area.

By the way, this is one in part of 3 posts on the subject of how and what to outsource, for internet marketers and bloggers. Below are the other related posts:

I enjoyed writing this post and hope you did enjoy reading. Thanks for reading and before you go, kindly:

1.) Share it: Help a friend of yours learn about how to expand their business $5 – Facebook this post. Tweet it. Digg it. Stumble it. [Click the easy share buttons below]
2.) Comment: Leave me a comment below to let me know you were here, and of course share your thoughts – you know I’ll always respond quick

 

Yours in Fast-Forward Business Growth,

 

Stella

P.S: Online Marketing Outsourcing Blueprint: If you would like to learn how to start outsourcing for cheap, where to find tried and trusted freelancers and virtual assistants you can outsource to, a ready-made plan you can adapt “as is” or use as your own weekly outsourcing blueprint and so much more – a practical take-you-by-the-hand guide from someone who has built a successful online business with the help of outsourcing – then click that link to learn more.

31 replies on “Understanding Outsourcing: How A Solo Entrepreneur Can Use Outsourcing To Grow Any Small Online Business and Income 5 Times Faster In One Year”

Outsourcing is great specially for small business owners. Once you get the person you hired properly trained you should have more free time to be more productive with other things or to unwind. Make sure to interview and ask the right questions and look at the candidates feedback from previous clients. Aside from fiverr you can also check odesk and elance.

[…] small businesses need a staff to help it run smoothly. As the owner, you need to have a group of people you trust. In return you […]

Stella,

Great post!

I’m about to hire a VA – at least a part-time one – hopefully this fall and I expect that I get more time to do the important tasks because of this.

I know, it is an investment, but once you consider that you get more done (and especially those important things of yours), it justifies the cost.

Outsourcing requires some preparation though – writing/recording instructions, so that you VA can do the task by him/herself. But, once you train your VA properly, he/she can work independently much faster.

Timo

Hi Timo:

Good to see you around, as always:) How was your weekend?

1.) Youre on point – at a time in one’s business as a solo-entrepreneur, outsourcing becomes inevitable- especially if one must scale up outcomes of the small results obtained. That’s the only way to clone oneself, literally – while still keeping overheads low and profits up.

It is an investment but if you do a P&L (profit and loss) before outsourcing and also outsource from affordable channels, you can still keep costs low, within your budget – start small. You’re right – helps to scale up on “those really important/ core, must-do-to-succeed” activities (of mine). Lol

2.) I know you are a very methodical person, I’m not suprised you say this “outsourcing requires preparation”. Sure, that’s one area most people fail. To outsource right, you must first systemize your operations (record them), even a mind-map will do (that’s what I use to record my various operations, for now). Many small and home business owners outsource without giving the Virtual Assistant clear steps (they assume he knows it) and also not giving a detailed outcome/ expectations.

You really, as a productivity maven, understand the first steps before embarking on outsourcing. By the way, I wrote a post on Outsourcing guide for small and home business owners. I encourage you to read it – although it’s on Fiverr outsourcing but the principles are clearly the same – based on project management methodologies.

*Timo, I’m loving your newsletter series on online productivity tips for bloggers and marketers – I read all of them you email. Good job! I should find time to hookup with you one of these day – share ideas.

Stella,

Thank you for your reply and your kind words 🙂

I’ll check the article you mentioned. I have been using Fiverr myself for couple of times but I want to learn even more.

Idea sharing would be cool 🙂

Cheers,
Timo

This is something I have always been tentative about, but very interested in.

I think my main concern is that the tasks I would most like to outsource is link building, and a fear being labelled a spammer if I trust an outsourced person being paid 5 bucks to do it for me,

I’d love to see an article on specific tasks with the actual steps involved in outsourcing them.

Hi Jonathan, thanks for coming by to read and for your comment too.

For any job you want outsourced, online or offfline (even in an office), many people make the mistake of just ‘dumping’ a job or task to a resource person, without bothering to communicate exact requirements and specifications (best if written) and re-confirm that the resource person understands what you want, can do it as you want and has adequate time (availability) to deliver on promised date.

That is for every kind of task. With link building, I expect you should know the kind of links you want, sources and exact specifications like page rank and more. You can either put up a Fiverr gig request for your exact spec or seach for a freelancer that advertises tasks similar to what you want. Next would be to CONTACT that freelancer to ask specific questions on the “Can you____”.

During the probe, you should be able to filter whether he will build links the way you want. If not, find another person. Also mutually agree with your written specifications list.

A quick tip is to search service providers by key phrases for the job you want, then FILTER by RATINGs, read through user satisfaction and then note the providers you want to contact for ‘screening’.

*BTW, the follow-up post is a step by step guide to find the best fit freelancer at Fiverr and how an outsourcer can ensure that they do the exact job you want, how you want it. You may want to keep an eye on this channel or if you want me to notify you when it’s published, subscribe to get latest posts right in your inbox.
*Just checked out your blog – very cool theme and great stuff there:)

Wow, thanks Stella for the detailed reply! I’ll have to put some of these suggestions to the test ASAP.

Thanks for the compliments on my blog, I designed and coded the theme from scratch, cuz I am cool like that 🙂

Thanks Jonathan, for your comments again. I look forward to hearing your Fiverr test case, with following those precautionary measures.

I forgot to mention that the gigs offering several hundred backlinks for $5 in 1 day (example) are likely to be blackhat, spam methods – so be on the lookout for those (massive quantity) offers and again be clear and specific in your order, including if you want manual link-building and the sources you’re looking at.

You sure are ‘cool like that’ (seriously). That was a pretty cool theme, I like it like it:) Just read your post about the need to quit living to please others and loved it. Commented.

Heya,

I almost forgot to get back to you an reply, would have been very rude of me!

I spent ten bucks at Fiverr yesterday, paid a couple of people for some stunbleupon, facebook and linked in promotion,and I saw a modest and short term boost in traffic.

I did not come across any real link builders that gave me any confidence, but I will experiment more with this.

Hey Jon, thanks for visiting – always a pleasure to see you around.

No problems, reply when you are free to – you know sometimes we (bloggers) can have so much to do in a day that we forget to do some planned activities.

You know Stumbleupon traffic is very short-lived – you get an initial rush of readers. I think you should list the exact type of backlink or traffic you want and ask SPECIFICALLY that from a Fiverr virtual assistant. You know the long-term traffic / backlink type you want – don’t just outsource for backlinks or any micro-job without telling what you want -that’s why you may get disappointed.

I told you that I was going to write a follow up post and it’s up, where I gave 10 steps to finding the best Fivver virtual assistant that will do your job exactly how and when you want it. Here’s that post: Online Outsourcing Guide To Finding Good Business Services Freelancers At Fiverr. I suggest you read it and use those steps toward hiring your best backlink service provider at Fiverr.

*You know, I like your blog business model – you have it all nailed down to the Tee. Just read your post on availability of your photos. Good job, man

Akismet classified your, and a few others comments mistakenly as spam. I am glad you mentioned your comments so that I could approve it. I don’t know why akismet is doing it, maybe it detects a software or something?

Ah really? Wow – thank God you found it, BJ. You know I switched to G.A.S.P (Growmap Antispam) by the commentluv guys; it got a lot of plus reviews and has high deliverability of the ‘not spammy’ comments as well as strong on keeping spammers away.

Thanks buddy, for the update. Enjoy the best this weekend!

From the very beginning of my online money-making life, I knew I needed help. For one thing, I am not very tech savvy and for another, I just plain don’t want to learn to be tech savvy!! A VA has been a life savor for me. And, as I have learned more and more tech, she has been invaluable for other new tasks that have come up. If money is the issue starting out, I always suggest bartering your services. There is someone looking for that one thing you love to do and they love to do the one thing you hate! It’s a win/win. Thanks for a very informative blog post! You Rock, as always 🙂

Martha, thanks for dropping by and especially for commenting. I love that.

After reading your comment, all I could say was ‘wow’. Thanks for sharing your personal opinion about the importance of Virtual Assistants (VAs) for any online business owner that desires rapid success. Also, sharing your successful experience with VAs encourages me further to be confident in my decision to start using them on my clients’ jobs and mine too.

I also hate the techy side of online business, and you know when I just started I mistakenly shut my site down twice, while messing with codes at the back-end – not knowing that the codes I found on the WWW would not exactly fit for my hosting company. Thank God their support desk rescued me twice. I would never again do the techy side myself for any other site I setup up; rather I’d outsource affordably and focus on the areas I know best how to.

*Never heard about ‘service bartering’ among online marketers – that sounds exciting especially as most businesses are struggling to break even. Will contact you to discuss more on that, and something else I was thinking about.

Hey Stella,

What a terrific post! I couldn’t agree with you more.

When I first started my online business, I wanted to do everything myself. I wanted to be involved in everything. It’s my own business after all.

I soon realised that it was impossible to do everything. If you can afford it, start outsourcing the other tasks and really focus on the money making activities of your business. This will help you grow your business quicker.

Thanks for sharing your insights, Stella.

All the best,
Mavis

Good to have the “hottest blogger of the moment” around here today. Thanks for coming by, Mavis, and especially for leaving a comment.

I totally agree with you – as an entrepreneur starting up (especially if on a tight budget), one tends to want to do everything by themselves and the truth is that there’s so much that one can achieve in 24hours, and everyday’s achievement counts towards what a business makes in income on Day 30 of every month. Speed of implementation is the only way to make money in any business, no matter whether you are a one-man show or not. And if you alone cannot do all that is required to make a significant monthly income within 30 days, you won’t score any point by not letting other people handle some. The bottom-line, I always is the speedy results.

I’m glad Mavis, that you quickly leveraged on outsourcing to get fire up your business faster. I hope more small startup and growing online business owners will understand outsourcing better.

I admire your ‘humongous’ comment counts on your traffic generation blogging contest post. Definitely shows the value of being in a good network. But again, you deserve it – I see your posts and you everywhere I go; your contents are great.

Lol, thanks Mavis – it’s real, from the heart. I’m glad you enjoyed visiting my blog. Please do come back again, sometime.

Enjoy your day!

It really is the money that stops people. But, your benefits far out way the costs when you do get some cash flowing. This article is definitely a keeper for when you are ready to invest!

Thanks, Sherrie

Hey Sherrie – thank you for stopping by to read, and especially for leaving a comment. I appreciate greatly. I’m happy you liked this post and think it should be referenced for whenever anyone has the resources to start outsourcing.

You’re right, money is a barrier to outsourcing for the online marketers that know the benefits of outsourcing.

In the follow-up (part 2) of this outsourcing series (to be published very soon), you’ll discover the really affordable options that any marketer building business on a tight budget can get dirt cheap outsourced helps. I hope you’ll come back to read that, as I believe you’ll love the insights.

Thanks for clarifying the differences between ‘deserving wealth’ and ‘entitled to wealth’, in your last post.

Most people have a tough time outsourcing due to monetary or control concerns, but few have enough time to do it all. If you feel overwhelmed, pay someone to handle task for you. Even if you don’t feel stressed consider delegating tasks which others can handle so you can focus on creating and doing what you do best. Thanks Stella!

RB

Hey Ryan – good to see you around. Thanks for visiting and especially for leaving me a comment.

Yes, you’re right – money is the main reason why many online marketers are not outsourcing yet. A large percentage (part of the 97% struggling) are not aware of the benefits and the how to begin. Again I agree with you, it’s important to identify your strengths in your business and delegate areas you are not so good at; marketers who have children can consider delegating to their kids (especially if they cannot afford to hire an external hand).

Your ‘cash gifting’ post educated me more on that subject. I had thought it was a kind of affiliate marketing/ network marketing program, from the people I have seen promoting it.

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