Copyright 2005 Richard GradyA few weeks ago I touched on subject of getting other people to do your work for you. I want to cover this topic in a bit more detail as outsourcing is a superb way of saving yourself both time and money.
By way of example, let me start with a short story :-)
At 8.30pm one night last week, I started to wonder whether it would be possible to automate a particular part of one of my website design processes. At present I do this task semi-manually and it takes me about 4 hours to generate a multi-page website.
Anyway, by 8.45pm I had scratched out an outline of what I would need a new custom piece of software to do to automate this task and by 8.59pm 'project' was advertised on one of main freelance websites....
Within 2 minutes I had first bid from a programmer....
Within 15 minutes I had four more bids....
Within 45 minutes I had accepted a bid and programmer was working on project.
Two days and $75 later (and with less than an hours work required by me) and I had a brand new piece of custom software which can complete task in question in seconds rather than hours!
With several excellent freelance sites around nowadays, it is very easy to find a programmer/web designer/writer/whatever that will be happy to work with you and cost (as illustrated above) will often be far less than you might expect.
If you spend some time thinking about type of tasks you could outsource, I am sure you will soon come up with a fairly substantial list. The following are just a few ideas:
Website design Website maintenance Copywriting General writing - for example of an entire eBook! Software design/creation (for your own use or resale) Graphic design Script installation (and creation) Dealing with your support emails Finding new affiliates Finding new link exchange partners
And so list goes on....
Of course, as with anything, there are a few things to be aware of when outsourcing so here are my top tips for a successful project:
1. Only post your project on main freelance sites (list below). This will give you best exposure and highest level of competition from bidders. This means keen pricing and a good range of expertise from which to choose from.