How To Make $50/Day Outsourcing

Had a couple PMs asking me about hiring freelancers and what not so rather than explain it a few times thought I'd just put it here

You NEED to outsource if you want to make the most of your marketing online... there just isn't enough time in the day to do everything, and even if there was you should focus most on the tasks that are making you the most money relative to time put in. Of course, there are other tasks which are important too - and this is where outsourcing comes in.

What is Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is basically paying someone else to do work for you. This can be anything from copywriting and graphic design to coding and answering email. Yes, it costs money, however it will not just save you time... but can make you money as well.

Where to Find People To Outsource To?

There are three main places I go when I'm looking for people to work for me - Digital Point, Rentacoder and Elance. The first one is free, while the last two are paid. You can also use other forums and websites like the Warrior Forum itself or places like oDesk(.com).

How To Hire

There is an art to doing everything online... and this includes hiring people.

Many people say "you get what you pay for" - this can be true, but it usually isn't.

You want to start a thread (or topic) in the place where you're looking to hire, and lay out what you want (be it X articles, an eBook, a logo design etc). You'll have people contacting you soon enough, so look for a few things.

Samples. The more samples someone has, the easier it is to gauge their level of quality. You can see how much variation they have in their work (if they can only produce the standard gloss Web 2.0 logo for example, or different styles and different concepts) as well as just how capable they are for the job you want them to do.

Feedback. The more feedback someone has, the more you can trust them generally. Do not look at feedback and feel certain just because it is high, but good feedback means that people are happy with the person / company and you probably will too. Look for how happy people are with their work, whether they've had good turnaround time etc.

Price. I tend to pay an average of $0.01/word for article writing and double that for sales letters, around $10 for custom logos. Note that these are articles and design for niche content sites - which generally require little skill to do, so you should not look to pay much more than that (of course if you are ordering other kinds of services your price will vary). You should look for freelancers that are in your price range, as well as see if they have bulk discounts etc.

Professionalism. This can't really be measured, but it's another thing to use to see how good freelancers are. If it's a writer you want to hire for example, and their replies to you are littered with spelling and grammatical mistakes, that says a lot. If the freelancer constantly instant messages you and is generally a pain in the backside, you're not going to want to deal with them long term.

I like to build up a list of freelancers I'm comfortable working with, usually on instant messenger or email; this way there are always people available should I need anything done. Remember you don't need to hire anyone up front, you can always think about things before you do spend money.

Also, NEVER pay more than 50% up front for a project - you can pay the other 50% mid way or at the end.

How To Make $50/Day Outsourcing

I realized how much of a money maker outsourcing could be at the end of this summer - I had university starting, and thus not much time to work on IM, but I still wanted to make some spending money. I used do copywriting for pay before, before I moved onto things that were more profitable. Anyways, here's what I did:

If you build up a reputation on a forum, or conduct yourself very professionally, you can generally charge more than the average run of the mill writer. Anywhere upwards of $0.02/word is good enough for you. Of course, you're not going to be doing any of the writing yourself.

If you charge $0.02/word, and you pay $0.01/word, you're doubling your money. I've charged $0.05 or even $0.1 per word in the past, so you can see the amount you could potentially make.

You need to build up your forum reputation - you can do this anywhere, by making solid posts (around 1,000 total on most forums will be enough), a website that showcases your services, having plenty of samples etc. Basically everything mentioned in the 'how to hire' section above.

If you offer people quality, they'll be happy. Which is why you have to master the hiring of freelancers before you can do what I like to term 'outsourcing arbitrage'.

Basically, get an article order for $100, outsource for $50, keep the rest. All you do is take the order, and send it to a freelancer of your choice - little to no work whatsoever. At the height of doing this, I was making around $200 profit per day just from outsourcing, spending around an hour (simply because I didn't have more time).

Of course you will need capital for this, but you can start small - take an article order for $10, outsource for $5; take a graphic design order for $20; outsource for $10, you get the idea. Feel free to ask any questions and let me know what you think