One of the most common obstacles in the growth of owner operated small business is the inability to delegate and let go of some of the control. The do it all yourself ’control freak’ personality profile is the most common to fail in business.
Habits are hard to break but they are easy to form, so delegate from the start.
In a world where an office full of highly paid workers is a big liability, delegation means outsourcing.
There are 4 basic types of outsourcing
1. Piece Work
You can outsource an enormous number off tasks very cheaply but the problem with this is that you are micro managing and spending a lot of time placing these orders and monitoring them. The big upside is that it is also incredibly cheap as you outsource individual tasks for $5 – $15 which could be tasks like a 2 minutes audio overdub, a short video review or blog article writing.
This is often how online marketers start out and it is certainly useful to get those tasks done that you cannot do yourself or lack the equipment to do.
There are a number of online services offering these low rates:
- www.Fiverr.com
- www.Elance.com
- www.Tenbux.com
- www.Gigbucks.com
- www.Mturk.com
- www.Dealer.com
- www.Jobsfor10.com
- www.Gigswood.com
- www.Gighour.com
- www.Taskarmy.com
- www.MyCheapJobs.com
2. Larger Projects
If you are looking to build software, create a website, have an ebook written or even create entire products then there are various online sources to find these skills. Sources. You negotiate rates based on a guide price or you can put a project out to tender and see what prices you are quoted. These projects do need managing and payments and delivery should be staged so you can monitor the quality and progress. Also, you need to get a feel for the marketplace to see what you should be paying for a particular job and this can be time consuming.
When you are posting your project on a jobsite, do take some time to check out similar projects that are posted by other people. This will give you a good idea of what you should pay. Equally importantly, you must keep your own budget in focus when posting the project.
These are the main outsourcing websites currently available:
- GetAFreelancer – www.getafreelancer.com
- ScriptLance – www.scriptlance.com
- EUFreelance – www.eufreelance.com
- eLance – www.elance.com
- Guru – www.guru.com
- RentACoder – www.rentacoder.com
- PeoplePerHour – www.peopleperhour.com
- LimeExchange – www.limeexchange.com
- oDesk – www.odesk.com
- GetACoder – www.getacoder.com
Paid Tweets
- www.justretweet.com
- www.twitlead.com
- www.payperpost.com
- www.sponsoredtweets.com
- www.adretweet.com
- www.retweet.it
- www.retweeters.us
Paid Review Blog Brokering Sites
- www.Payperpost.com
- www.Smorty.com
- www.Blogvertise.com
- www.Sponsoredreviews.com
- www.Bigblogreviews.com
- www.loudlaunch.com
- www.Linkworth.com
- www.Socialspark.com
3. Full Time Employee Employed Directly
When you think you can afford $300 – $400 / month to get yourself a full time employee then DO IT. In the current economic conditions this is simply a gift and the best thing you can possibly do for your business.
However, you will be employing a real person full time with their family and commitments and so you must take your responsibility seriously. You will be responsible for somebody’s livelihood so this is a long term commitment.
What is equally important is that you will be getting a graduate educated, loyal, fluent English speaker that will make a huge contribution to your business.
Wages run from $200 – $800 / month depending upon the calibre of employee you need. The average wage in places like the Philippines is just over $300 /month and would be the entry level; graduate salary. An experienced mobile app developer or designer would come in at the top end of that range
If you are going to employ someone then one of the best recruitment platforms is www.onlinejobs.com, but before you visit that site I must recommend that you watch an excellent introductory video here. ReplaceMyself is a complete management package geared at finding outsourcers on the openjobs.com network. It costs $99 /month and gives you access to openjobs.com and provides a full library of training videos and support materials to help you as an employer and to take away the burden of having to do any training yourself. Click here to watch the webinar video and find out why this is such an indispensable service.
4. Full Time Employee Employed Through An Agency
If you do not want to build your own team with the associated responsibility then you can buy into someone else’s team. This is the idea behind 123Employee. They recruit and train from the same pool as ReplaceMyself, but they take on all of the management and training responsibilities and you buy a slice of their time every month.
It works out more expensive as a full time employee works out at $900+ /month but you can buy just a set number of hours per week and you have the option to cancel if it does not work out for you.