Outsourcing a host of specific tasks and activities is an incredible opportunity for you to grow your business while you perform only your most valuable work you love to do.
That’s because if you try to do everything in your business all by yourself, you’re going to run out of time every day to do what you need to do.
Sure, your business will still grow if you try to do everything yourself… but very slowly. However a set of tasks you have and may take you months to complete may only take a few days or a week to complete when you hire professionals to do them for you.
But this doesn’t mean you can just willy-nilly toss your money at freelancers and expect your business to grow automagically. Truth is, you need to be smart about outsourcing.
Your business is full of hundreds of tasks, so you need to invest your resources in the tasks that will accelerate your business growth. These essential tasks fall into three categories:
- Identifying Gaps. These are the gaps in where your business is now versus where you want it to be.
- Creating or Upgrading Assets. These are items like products which generate profits.
- Improvements & Upgrades. These are the tasks you outsource which allow you to make better use of your own time.
Let’s look at each of these categories in more detail…
Outsourcing Category #1: Gaps
I don’t know a single business owner that doesn’t have gaps in their business, which is the distance between where they are and where they want or need to be. I’m sure you have gaps too, such as:
- Places where you’re stuck and can’t move forward. For example, you can’t finish the copy for a product until the product is finished. You can’t put the sales copy on a site until the website is up and running.
- Things you don’t know how to do. For example, perhaps you don’t know how to set up a WordPress blog or write sales copy
- Places where you face a deadline that you can’t meet. For example, perhaps you promised your partners a specific date for a product launch, but now you know your deadline was overly optimistic and you won’t be able to meet it.
- When life gets in the way. Perhaps something has happened in your personal life, such as a death in the family, illness or a new baby. Outsourcing can keep your business running and profitable while you deal with personal issues.
- When you face an unexpected crisis. Perhaps your website got hacked or your computer crashed. Outsourcing can help you get back up and running.
So as you can see, there are quite a few things you can outsource in this category, depending on your wants, needs and your business goals.
Let me give you some specific examples of tasks you can outsource that will help you fill in the gaps in your business:
- Set up a website. This includes designing the site and installing any necessary scripts.
- Manage the technical details of your website on an ongoing basis. For example, you could hire someone to manage your databases and update your scripts.
- Create an autoresponder series. You could have this person create a five-part mini course designed to promote a specific product.
- Plan a pay per click advertising strategy. This person could also manage your PPC advertising campaigns on an ongoing basis.
- Plan a social media marketing strategy. You might have someone plan one aspect (such as Facebook marketing), or help you plan and integrate all major social media platforms into your overall marketing plan.
- Find and recruit affiliates. This person could also manage your affiliate program on an ongoing basis, such as by running contests, sending out motivational emails to affiliates, sending payments (if you’re using a self hosting affiliate program), and other management tasks.
- Create content for your blog. This includes ongoing how to articles, tips articles, product reviews and other content.
- Write content for guest blogging. You can also hire someone to locate these sorts of lucrative guest blogging opportunities, and contact the blog owners on your behalf.
- Create a sales letter for your site. Your copywriter can also create other sales materials to support the sales letter, such as a video sales letter script, solo emails and pay per click ads.
- Write a report. This could be a freebie to get people into your sales funnel, a paid product, or a bonus product to go along with your main offers.
- Design an infographic. You can hire someone to put together the design only, or you can hire someone to do all the research as well.
- Develop an app. This could be a lead magnet or a paid product. It might even be a web-based app you offer to members of your membership site.
- Improve conversions. This person could test, track and tweak your sales letters, ads and overall marketing campaigns.
- Scout out lucrative advertising opportunities. This person can find ad venues and report back to you about the cost, the site’s demographics, as well as their impressions of the overall quality of the site.
- Arrange interviews and other publicity opportunities for you. For example, your person can land interview spots with local media, as well as national outlets such as talk radio. This person can also create and submit regular press releases.
- Convert your text products into other formats. For example, this person could convert a book into an audio, video or even a Kindle book.
- Optimize your website for the search engines (SEO). Your SEO specialist can optimize your site’s structure and content, as well as do a link-building campaign.
- Plan a viral marketing campaign. Your consultant can help you design content and campaigns that are likely to go viral. Some freelancers even have connections or networks to help kick start the initial viral effect.
- Plan a sales funnel. If you tend to get caught up in the small details and not see the big picture, you may want to hire someone to help you plan your entire sales funnel.
- Do market research. This will help you identify profitable niches and products.
Think of it this way: outsourcing in this way allows you to reach a place where you make money that you would otherwise miss out on. Why not spend $25, $100, or $500 in order to make two, five, or ten times more?
Example: Perhaps you pay someone to create a report that costs you $300. Over the next couple of weeks you sell a couple of hundred copies of this report for $10 a pop ($2000 total), which builds your customer list and nets you a profit of $1700. That’s a good way to grow your business.
Now let’s look at the next category:
Category #2: Assets
These are the aspects of your business that directly turn a profit for you today as well as over the long term. If you were to sell your business, you’d be able to sell these assets as part of the business.
Your assets include things such as:
- Reports
- Ebooks
- Videos
- Audios
- Apps
- Websites
- Your mailing lists (customers, prospects and joint venture/affiliate lists)
… and any other products or properties you own.
This category is all about your return on your investment (ROI). You pay $X for a particular asset, and then you make $Y in profit. Let me give you specific examples:
Example 1: A Video Product
Let’s suppose you’re creating a step-by-step “how to” video product in your niche. Let’s suppose you get someone to create the script for you for $500, and you get someone else to create the video for $1500. That’s a $2000 investment.
Now let’s suppose you sell this product for $40. Once you hit 50 customers, you’ve recouped your investment. Every customer thereafter is a $40 frontend profit, and everything you make on the backend is yours to keep.
Example 2: A PLR Package
There are two ways to go with this example.
· The first way is to create a PLR package that you sell to others. For example, perhaps you get a product created for $1000, and then you charge $100 for the PLR (private label rights) license fees. After the 10th license you’ve recouped your investment, and every sale after that is profit.
· The second example is to purchase PLR content and then hire someone to tweak the content. This example has a bigger potential for long-term profits, since you can sell the content for as long as you want. (E.G., there are no license limits.)
For example, you purchase the content and license for $100. You pay someone else another $100 to tweak the product so it’s more unique. That’s a $200 investment. Now you sell this product for $15. By the time you’ve made your 14th sale, you’ve already more than recouped your investment.
Example 3: An App, Plugin or Other Software
Software products tend to be among the most expensive to outsource, due to both the skill involved and the time it takes to code and develop this sort of project. However, you can often charge a premium price for these products as well.
For example, let’s suppose you get a piece of software developed for $5000, and you charge $197 for the end product. It just takes 26 sales before you’ve recouped your investment and you’re starting to pocket a profit.
Example 4: A Turnkey Package
Let’s suppose you want to sell a new product and outsource the whole enchilada. Below you’ll find an example of the cost for each piece of this package:
· The main product (an ebook), $1000
· Two bonuses, $700
· A freebie report to get people onto the prospect mailing list, $300
· The sales letter to sell this package, $1000
· Someone to set up the website (such as installing WordPress), $200
That’s $3200 total.
Let’s suppose you sell the product and bonuses for $50. You just need 64 sales to recoup your investment. But the cool thing is you’ll have all these assets that you can profit from for years to come, including the product, two bonuses, the freebie, the customer mailing list and the prospect mailing list. Together, this collection is darn near priceless.
Do you see how this works?
So now let’s have a look at the final important category…
Outsourcing Category #3: Upgrades
The idea here is that you outsource so that you can “upgrade” the use of your own time.
For example, you can outsource:
- Things you don’t know how to do. Sometimes your time is better spent working on high-value tasks as opposed to learning how to do certain other tasks.
For example, maybe outsourcing an infographic is smarter than taking the time to learn how to do it yourself. Or perhaps you’d rather hire someone to develop your site as opposed to learning the coding language yourself.
- Things you don’t want to do. If you really just hate a task, you may find yourself procrastinating on it, or you may find yourself rushing through it and not getting a very good end result. This is the sort of stuff you can outsource.
For example, if writing a blog posts is worse than pulling teeth for you, then outsource it to someone else. Or if you hate messing with the accounting and tax end of your business, then get yourself an accountant to keep the books.
- Things you’re not very good at. Maybe you know a certain task just doesn’t fall in your skill set, in which case you should outsource.
For example, you can hire someone else to create the graphics for your site. Or perhaps you find that your sales copy couldn’t sell shoes to Imelda Marcos, in which case you can hire a good copywriter to do this work for you.
- Low-value tasks. Even if there are certain things you know how to do, your time would simply be better spent elsewhere.
For example, hiring someone else to deal with the day-to-day customer service inquiries frees your time to focus on a high-value task, such as finding joint venture partners.
So, the bottom line is that you can outsource many tasks to grow your business. However, be smart about it, because your business will grow even faster if you focus on Gaps, Assets and Upgrades.
I’d love to hear how from you in the comments below on how you are outsourcing tasks and activities in your business.
Talk soon,
Rocky
P.S. Outsourcing your list building activities are are great way build your email list, but as we’ve discussed in other posts, running a Product launch is one of the fastest ways to not only build your list, but generate Social Proof and make a large number of sales quickly. To learn how to launch your product successfully, check out Jeff Walker’s free Product Launch Masterclass here.
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And don’t forget to check this out 🙂
How to Earn $20 in 20 Minutes With Any Topic, Niche or Hobby
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