Outsourcing

You are on the right track thinking about outsourcing. A lot of your top income earners in IM outsource part if not most of their building process.

If money is tight and you are new, I would recommend doing most of the work yourself in the beginning. This way you can learn and practice the steps needed to be successful. It will also help you to know if your hired help is performing up to par.

Absolutely! outsource all the way. Your job is to think up new business systems and products. Your staff can implement them for you and free you up to expand. Steve Jobs wouldn't have gotten very far if he was answering email all day. But like any job, I would build the system up to a profitable level first, and then outsource. One, so you have money coming in you can allocate for it, and two so that you can properly teach your employees what to do.

Also, I have had bad luck with the freelance networks and VAs. Just go craiglslist and find yourself an employee and think like a traditional business.

Great minds think alike . We just launched a service which lets you do just that...

Yep, you're on the right track. You can find a virtual assistant to do a lot of work for you. One thing to take note of is that you may have to pay for good quality. So, try not to look for the lowest price as some marketers do. You'll only spend much of your time redoing their work.

Good luck!

Yes, outsource all the work if you can. My philosophy is this, if someone can do the job for you such that you are freed to make more money, do it!

I always calculate my time in terms of the money I can make if I were to do something else.

For example, if I am making $1000 per day, and I break it down to 10 working hours, then my 1 hour is worth $100. So if a task takes me 1 hour and cannot produce more than $100 worth of sales or profits, I will outsource it.

So I practically outsource my social bookmarking, link building and article writing and submission jobs to others.

But in outsourcing, the most important step is to know exactly how to give good and clear instructions. And the only way you can do so is to have gone through the hard work initially.

So what I do is, work on an idea or do some work such as article writing and fine tune it till the point where I know what works and what doesn't. Then I pen down the steps, and requirements so that I know what kind of work I needed to be done. It makes things clearer to the people who work for me as well.

Outsourcing is ultimately delegation, a practice every manager has to adopt if that person wants to produce significant results. The main difference is that you delegate work to your employees while outsourcing is typically to outside agencies - hence the 'outsourcing'.

Outsourcing requires a system for ensuring quality of the work. Unlike in the case of delegation, you have much less control over the people who do the work. On the other hand, it is much easier to change your suppliers than employees.

The key is to find the right supplier of outsourced work. Suppliers differ hugely in the quality of their work. If you explore around, you can find excellent quality at surprisingly low costs.

Great answers. One thing I'd like to add is that outsourcing is not an all or nothing proposition. Start off small - maybe outsource just a couple articles, and write the rest yourself. Not only is this more affordable until you start making more money, but it gives you a chance to try out different people and put your team together.

Peggy

Hi there

I definitely recommend outsourcing, in fact I'd say it was my favorite word hehe!

Although there are definitely certain ways to do it right...

My rule is to try out your system yourself first then put together a team to do it for you. For several reasons:

1. Certain things you do will work, certain things won't. Don't waste time and money paying an outsourcer to do something you'll end up eliminating from the system.

2. I think its far easier to hire the right person (the first time) if you know EXACTLY what the job entails, what they'll need to do, how long it will take etc etc.

I use Elance or GetAFreelancer although another site that's been recommended to me alot recently is BestJobs.Ph

A few things to include in the job ad (saves you from working through inappropriate bids later)

* Price you are willing to pay
* Type of work involved including number of hours (too often people with full schedules will bid then not have enough time to follow through)
* Ask for samples of previous work

Check for reviews, taking 5 minutes to look at the comments of past clients might save you a lot of time and money down the track

Hope that helps! PM if you want more info

Agree with other posters, outsource is the best way to go. You can always develop your own concepts and products ideas to begin with, and then you can employ your staff to write articles and you products source materials, leaving you free you up to expand new concepts and ideas. However, its always a good idea when starting out to do the sourcing yourself so you can learn the basic concepts and ways to create your own products, and THEN shift to an automated process. This makes it easier for you in future to delegate your tasks to your staff, as you have an great knowledge of what to teach your staff and how to do it, saving you time and money.

wow you guys never seize to amaze me. Thanks for all the helpful advice. I figured I'm going do all the work for now so I know exactly how to teach my team to do the same I'll know what works and what doesn't

That's the spirit! Best of luck!