What have YOU outsourced?

I outsource virtually everything that can be outsourced. What can't be outsourced I delegate to employees and what can't be delegated to employees I do by myself.

In my opinion, every successful IMer should, 90% of the time, focus solely on the development aspect of their business and therefore continuously look for ways of automating/outsourcing every single thing that someone else can possibly do.

We only have 24 hours in each day and it would be simply foolish to spend part of this on "simple" tasks.

I've had a good experience in hiring a developer from the Philippines. He also works a system administrator. Fixed a few errors from the site which turned out pretty well. Then I was looking for a web designer who's familiar with Concrete5 and found one. He was very confident when given the instructions and asked if he understood everything and said yes. Gave a deadline for 5 days but after 5 days, no result! Not even a question or anything. It was a waste of time! Gave the provider a bad feedback.

Outsourcing has definitely assisted me in my internet business quite a bit.

Besides basic keyword research, niche research, and web design (which I like to do), the rest like content and promotion I outsource.

But I have learn that outsourcing itself is a skill and there is a learning curve getting the right people (team) while keeping your cost as low as possible.

I do the same as the above poster. The things I really enjoy doing, like finding great niches and building new sites, I do on my own. The things I hate doing, writing content and building backlinks, I outsource. I get more than twice as much done this way with the time I put in.

Also for me, finding talanted people you can trust to outsource work to is a big deal. I have found that true quality costs a bit more but it is well worth it in the long run.

Here are things I have been outsourcing:

Wordpress install and maintenance including db backups
All graphics work
Reviews for amazon review sites
Article marketing including writing and submitting
Social bookmarking
Affiliate recruitment
Bonus product creation
Wordpress theme tweaks

I use Filipinos mostly because they are good at this stuff. I write about on my blog linked in my sig.

Recently I posted a freelance job on elance to redo my word press site template. I got bids that all seemed too high. So I posted the job to onlinejobs.ph and ended up with an awesome guy who did the whole job in a few days with graphics included. I paid him just over a hundred bucks. My lowest elance bid was $255.

Without outsourcing I simply could not grow at all. It is essential to learn. Too many people are afraid of it and worried about finding good people. If you let that stop you you will NEVER get anywhere!

Last project I outsourced was a How to Speak Spanish course via elance

I think most people probably outsource tedious tasks which most don't really like spending time on such as writing, forum posting, small SEO work such as social bookmarks.

I've outsourced writing in the past and most have less than satisfactory results for the price you're paying and getting grammar and spelling mistakes isn't very attractive. Even worse some just wasn't meant to be writers and the content wasn't very interesting or accurate. So now I've learnt to do most of the less than fun work myself regardless of how boring it could be. I still do outsource writing at times though especially when it's in bulk.

Another one that is highly outsource is blog commenting, forum commenting or forum posting. I've actually at once offered this service and I still do for website comments because if you know how to do it properly it can be a good small source of income and also slightly fun and enjoyable having a variety of things to do.

Finally I've also previously provided services which others have outsource for small SEO work for example someone would outsource their site to me and I'd get them 100s of buzzes, diggs or stumbles in a way that isn't spam. This is usually only capable when outsourced or when done by yourself might be too inconvenient or require more moderation. I was actually able to do it fairly easily because I mange to get it done by real people instead of me with 100s of accounts which won't be very adding of value.

I guess that basically outlines my outsourcing experiences.

I have outsourced Article writing...
And yes it was great decision as I did not have to worry about that anymore.

Mohsin

I've been outsourcing my article writing and submission for a while and I also outsource a lot of my backlink building. It's going pretty well, apart from the occassional quality problem, but it gives me more time to do the things I like - SEO, online coaching and website development.

Cheers,
Suzanne

I had some audio transcribed quite a while back and it went fine. The lady that did it was very professional and delivered when she said she would and did a great job.

Gary

- Outsoucing ventures that have worked well for me: graphic design, voice-over audios, banner creation, article writing.

- Outsourcing ventures that have been a hit or a miss (50/50): PHP coding, video creation, web research.

- Outsourcing I never got positive results with: traffic generation.

I pretty much outsource my article writing, blog post writing...basically anything that has to do with writing. The funny thing is I LOVE writing...just not that much! :-)

I do my own SEO still as I am not ready to let little aspects of that go to a VA...although I may have to soon.