Outsourcing. Something that many of us dread to hear spoken about in our industry or in our work-place. The reason for it is pretty simple too, people don’t want to lose their jobs to someone who will gladly do the work for half the price. Oh no, this means that all the time you’ve been spending on Facebook and AddictingGames.com has caught up to you. I guess it really isn’t too much of a surprise now is it? We can’t expect to get away with doing the minimal amount of work just to get by throughout our whole careers, right?
This post is not going to be dissing outsourcing or telling you how sorry I am that your job has gotten outsourced. You may disagree with me about this, and I am 100% okay with that. The fact of the matter is that the world is becoming flatter and flatter and we are in a global economy now. This is great news for anyone in business who can understand the benefits of this, but bad news for those people who can’t understand the benefits of this.
So, I’m here to help you understand how you can start outsourcing some things in your life so that you can have either more free time or make more money.
Here’s a simple formula that I used when I first learned about outsourcing…hint, you can use it as well.
X = how much an hour of time is worth to you
Y= how long a task takes
Z= how much per hour it costs an outsourcer to do this thing
Say for example that your time is worth $20 an hour….you absolutely suck at graphic design and when you do it, it takes your 10 hours to do something. This means that Y = 10 hours. So that means that X times Y = $20 x 10hours = total cost of $200
The cool thing about outsourcing is that you can find people who have gone to school for graphic design(or anything else) and are able to do that same thing in 1 hour, for $10 per hour. So, we’re going to go back to basic math 101 and do the math
$200 (cost for you to do it) – $10 (cost for outsourcer) = $190 savings
Even if it took the outsourcer 10 hours to do this, it would still save you $100. So what’s the big deal about that? Well think about it. You doing graphic design might not be worth $20 an hour to you. In fact, it’s costing you money to do that when you could be doing something else that would make you $20 per hour. Say that it takes the outsourcer 10 hours to do this certain project for you.
Outsourcing Can Work For You
You can have them go do the project while you go do the work that pays you $20 per hour.I drew this super-fancy picture to show you. It’s called leveraging your time. For every 1 hour you work for that $20, you can hire 2 people to do things that need to be done to grow your business for $10 per hour. You don’t need to hire people all the time, but this is a great way to get things done 
What Can I Outsource?
Here’s just a few things that can be outsourced. A lot of the stuff is things that I personally don’t like to do, you may be in the same boat with me here.
-Keyword Research
-Article Writing
-Article Distribution
-SEO work (backlinking, etc)
-Checking E-mails (resource below)
-Household chores (want your lawn mowed or house cleaned? It works the same way)
The Master does nothing,
yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things,
yet many more are left to be done.
Tao Te Ching
Chapter 38
Where Do I Find Outsourcers?
At this point, most of the people I hire are from OnlineJobs.ph and I’ve had a lot of great success with hiring people from there. I also hire a few people here and there from Fiverr.com which you can hire people to do a task for $5, although it ends up being $6 with processing fees.
However here are a lot of other options.
Elance
American Express Platinum Concierge
Ask Sunday
ODesk
Get Friday (Your Man in India)
Do My Stuff
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk
Craigslist
Workaholics for Hire
Brickwork India
iFreelance
Scriptlance
Guru
Agents of Value
How Do I Get Started With Outsourcing?
You can get started today by finding out which tasks you have to get done to grow your business. A lot of the time it is things that you can outsource, such as the stuff I mentioned above. Find people on the networks mentioned above and give them a 7 day trial to accomplish tasks.
One of the best books for learning how to outsource is The Four Hour Work Week and you should buy it.
You can get started with outsourcing for as little as $20 and can get started as early as today. Write out some tasks that you need done and you will be able to find people to do these tasks for a lot less than you thought it would cost. Some people work for as little as $3-$4 per hour (check out the Philippines).