In the first post of this three-part outsourcing series you started a list, a list of tasks that aren’t the best use of your time. Most people don’t have a problem creating this list, but if you got stuck here are a handful of common things people write down when doing this exercise.
adding content to website
formatting content
editing content
audio editing
video editing
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setting up/mailing out newsletter
scheduling podcast guests
social media advertising/Facebook ads
group moderation (community management)
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auto responder set up
And that’s just some of the things that can be outsourced! Your list could include some of those or none of them. It just depends on your business and what you’re working on. You should have also started tracking how long those tasks took and written down the amount of time you were spending on each one.
Now it’s time to ‘finalize’ (firm up) your thoughts on what you need help with. Grab your list and spend a few minutes thinking about the priority of each task you wrote down. Rewrite your list in order of priority (or number it – whatever works for you to keep track of the first priority, second, etc.) It’s also a good idea to add notes to your list about when and how often each one of those tasks needs attention. You’ll also need to jot down software used and skills needed to handle each project. The last part of this is to figure out how many hours it’ll take someone to handle these, each week, for you.
After you’ve prioritized the projects and figured out how long you’ll need someone to devote to a task(s), you need to think about an outsourcing budget. This is an important step when it comes to outsourcing. For example, if you only have a budget of $300 don’t expect to get 50 hours’ worth of work done. You have to be realistic. And this circles back around to why you prioritized tasks – make sure you pay to have the highest priority project completed first.
Having said that, hopefully when you were prioritizing your list you thought about things that would affect your bottom line and considered those more important than something else that needs to be done but isn’t a direct result to your income. For example, maybe you need a new Facebook cover to match new colors on your website. That’s something that would more than likely be considered a low (or lowest) priority task. It’s not going to affect your income. But if you have a small report written that can be sold but needs to be formatted, turned into a PDF and set up for sale, that is a task that probably would be considered highest priority because it will affect your bottom line. You don’t want to make the mistake of outsourcing just for the sake of doing it. When you do it, you want to do it effectively and strategically so it’s a benefit to you and your business. The whole point of hiring a service provider should be for a couple reasons already mentioned – to free up your time to do more of what you enjoy and to increase your bottom line. And that’s why it’s important to take the time to do the ‘leg work’ before you actually hire someone.
So now that you’ve done all this, what now?
It’s time to move onto the next step – finding and talking to several service providers to find one that will be a fit for your needs.
Rebecca Paciorek is an Online Business Manager specializing in assisting in the growth of your business through traditional and digital means.
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