As a small business owner, running your business is more than a full-time job. The time you spend developing your business is extremely valuable. Since you are the only individual that knows how your business truly operates, you probably feel like you are a
“Jack of all trades.” Realistically your time should be focused on profit building activities and as your business grows you begin to find out that you have less time to devote to these activities and are in need of more time to just keep your business going.
You need to update your web site, make sure your pages are fresh, network with vendors and clients, generate orders and still perform your everyday administrative tasks like paying the bills, researching new products or improving existing ones. It’s no wonder you
find your day slipping away faster and faster while finding yourself getting further and further behind on your scheduled tasks. So, what can you do about it?
If this sounds like your business, you need to begin to leverage yourself. This is a standard business principle that when applied correctly to your business will allow you to reap the benefit of applying other people’s time to your advantage. Fortunately for you there are literally millions of people available to perform tasks that are taking your precious time away from your business. The answer to your issue is outsourcing.
Finding Quality Labor
Today it is as simple as writing a brief request of no more than a couple of paragraphs and posting it on the web and you will be immediately inundated with proposals from all over the world from people who are interested – and have the talent and skills – in
providing you with the results you need. Freelance providers are easy to find. There are several websites that provide the talent to complete those projects, allowing you to focus on the profit building portion of your business.
Writing a request for proposals is simple. You need only list the task that you are looking to have completed, provide some simple detail about it, provide the amount of money you are willing to pay to get the task completed and list your payment terms. For those that are a bit more detail oriented, you may want to list the rights that you expect the provider
to relinquish (if any) like the copyright on articles being written or rights to the publishing of software code.
To be sure you are getting a quality freelancer, like any good business owner you should request references and ask the provider to share their portfolio. If they have a website displaying their work, this is a great way to ensure that the work you are getting is being
performed by a professional. You may also want them to provide any professional certifications if the work you are asking for has any professional organizations attached to it.
Where to Look
Finding quality freelancers can be as easy as doing a search on your favorite search engine or listing your project on a site like Craigslist. You can also list your project on sites that promote freelancing. One of the most prominent sites for finding freelance
professionals is eLance.com. Or if you are looking for a budget minded solution to freelancing, outsourcing your work to “third-world” countries is one way to get your project done on a limited budget. Both GetAFreelancer.com and RentaCoder.com have great freelance programs that facilitate finding a professional to get the job done for a reasonable cost. These are only a few of the sites out there that provide this much needed service.
What to Outsource
With everything at stake in your business, you need to be selective on what you outsource to other providers. It’s best to sit down and list out all the tasks that need to be performed and then scrutinize them. Can you afford to have someone else do them? Does the task
you need done require specialized skills? If the task delivery is delayed, can you live with the result of the delay? If it is done incorrectly, what will the impact be to your business? These are only a few of the things you need to ask yourself.
In the end, once you have the determined what can reasonably be done by someone other than yourself, that you can comfortably assign to another professional and know what you can afford to pay to get it completed you can get on with the important things in
building your business – making more money.
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It’s definitely a good idea to outsource to freelancers whenever possible to reduce your workload and increase productivity.
Another good place to find freelancers is Craigslist (http://craigslist.org). You do have to be more careful because it’s not as regulated as any of the other places but it’s certainly a good option.
Delegating is definitely a huge time-saver for any entrepreneur. You will, sooner or later, reach a point when 24 hours are simply not enough to take care of every little task on your to-do list. Of course, delagating to the wrong people will only cause you to waste even more time and energy so that making a decision based on the right principles when choosing the freelancers you work with is a must.
Alan Johnson
Nowadays, there’re a bucks of online freelancers mediator, such Getafreelancer . com, guru . com, etc. Each Freelancer has their own ratings from previous service buyer. so we can filter which freelancer is good or bad. But this is only for Online Freelancers not an offshore one,,
How much you can trust overall ratings with such websites is highly debatable, after all, if I am interested in a programmer for a $10k project, I don’t really care if she/he has successfully completed a lot of $10 ones, I’d rather see a handful of good ratings from people who have hired that person for projects similar to mine.
Alan Johnson
Damn, you only make $1,500 a month? I figured you would be making 10 times that.
He has mentioned that he is making $10k per month in his most recent post (goal#3):
“Keep making 10k a month. Or more”
Alan Johnson
I make more than 10k a month. The 1500 is just from 1 project.
I found some at scriptlance.com… problem is that I am not sure if I made best decission to take cheapest offer
Hi, I found you from Court’s site. I had to click on that strange picture. Anyway, I completely agree that people should outsource. Like you said, looking at someone’s website is one way, as are references. But I’ve found some of my writing on other “freelancer’s” sites. So I would also look at their blog or blogs. That way you get an idea of their writing on a regular basis. If it’s not consistent, it may be that they’re stealing from other writers.
If you’re in the market for a freelance writer, feel free to check me out too!
that is nice, but i used to use getafreelancer.com witch is good to i hope you guys like it. Good Luck