Time Management and Outsourcing
All successful marketers have two perfected two abilities: time management and outsourcing.
If you find that you’re running out of time in your day to do the actual work that moves your business forward, you need to step back and take a look at your time management. In my experience dealing with online business owners over the years, I’ve found that the biggest time-sink has to do with email. Specifically, checking your email.
If you’re having a problem getting the important things done on a daily basis, grab a piece of paper and a stop watch or clock and take note of everything you do during a full day at work. This will show you where your largest time-sucks are. Once you find them, simply limit your work on those to a set amount of time every day and schedule time for the important jobs that are critical to building your business, like building websites, promoting affiliate offers, setting up email autoresponders, etc.
As far as outsourcing goes, this is something you won’t be using much in the beginning of your online business growth but it’s something you should definitely keep in mind as your business grows and you find yourself working too many hours with too little (or no!) time left in the day for yourself and/or your family.
After we reach a certain level in your business, you’ll find that you can get much more work done delegating the things that you either aren’t good at or don’t like to do yourself. Depending on your bottom line, you may be able to afford to hire a full time employee or you might hire a part time assistant.
Many of the workers you find online will be from outside the USA and you may be surprised at how cheaply they will work. Don’t feel that you are getting inferior workers though or that you are somehow taking advantage of them. The amount of money you are paying, although it might not amount to much in the USA, means something entirely different in their country.
I would venture to say that there isn’t a super affiliate on the planet who doesn’t outsource at least a portion of his or her business. Fortunately, there are lots of websites where you can get find excellent workers at reasonable rates.
Upwork.com
Although upwork.com is far from the only site, I mention it here because it is the largest freelancing site on the web. Whatever type of work you need help with, you’ll find it here.
Here are some tips for finding the best outsourcer for your job:
- Supply as Much Detail as Possible: Decide exactly what you need before so you can explain it in great details when you write your project description. If you have a timeline you need to meet, be sure to include it. And at the end of your description, make sure you request that anyone who responds to your job posting refer to you by your name, whatever that is. This is a little trick that actually lets you know whether the workers you’re looking to hire have actually read your entire proposal or just sent out a blanket response to a ton of proposals without even reading them. You DON’T want to hire any of those individuals!
- Be Realistic About Budget – Although you can get excellent work at very reasonable prices when hiring workers from outside of the USA, don’t just accept the lowest bid for a job and expect high quality. Always compare workers on the number of jobs they’ve done against their feedback ratings before you decide.
- Interview Prospects – Part of comparing workers is to chat with them on Skype to verify whether you can communicate clearly with each other.
- Check for Samples – Every worker should have a portfolio of their past work. Ask to see additional samples if they don’t have anything relevant to what you’re requesting.
- Regular Communication – Communication is important, especially with big projects. Make it clear up front that you need regular updates throughout the project. You can back this up with escrow milestones. Split the project into 2–3 parts and the provider will have to contact you between parts to get paid.
If you can’t find what you’re looking for on upwork.com, simply Google it and you’ll find many more resources.
