One philosophy has always been true with me – work hard and work fast. Maybe it’s learned behavior from working as a chef in a busy Italian restaurant for a number of years but there is a poisonous disadvantage of holding this view. The fact is, sometimes others don’t like to work hard or fast and you don’t want to develop the limiting belief of – “if you want something doing, you should do it yourself”.
Our lives are so busy and as just one person we can only physically achieve so much with the time we are given. As my career develops into a management focused role I have learned to slowly let go of the reigns and train others to take my place; I can now serve five tasks at once thanks to the fine art of delegation.
When to OutSource? The Fast Lane.
The more I read about those in the financial fast lane, the more I realise I need to evolve from working hard to working smart. I am currently reading The Four Hour Work Week which is a guide to making more money whilst outsourcing your life; very fitting for the experience I’m about to share!
I love to learn and hate to think there are things I can’t do with my current knowledge and capacity but a successful entrepreneur should have the vision to allocate their weaker and less crucial tasks to those who are more skilled and/or have the time. You should look to outsource a project when:
- It becomes clear that the time it will take will far exceed the benefit it provides
- You are unsure of how to complete a project and can’t invest the time to learn how to do it
- You have more critical tasks that you should be working on whilst the task in question can be done by someone else
- You are on a tight deadline and need to clone yourself immediately!
Posting a Job on Elance
My main side hustle is freelance digital marketing for small businesses, this involves a range of skills, one of which is web design. The first time I outsourced a task I had some coding trouble; after spending over six hours trying to fix the issue I finally decided it was time to enlist some online help. There are many outsourcing platforms available out there but for such a specialist request I chose Elance. On my first attempt, posting a job on Elance was a very quick and painless process.
Here’s how you can outsource a task on Elance in around ten minutes!
- Create an account – You can sign up here
- Post your job/project – Detail exactly what you would like to be done. From Writing and Programming to Legal help and Manufacturing!
- Freelancers will pitch their response to you almost instantly!
- Check the prices and reviews of each freelancer; find a good balance between price and proven competence in your task type
- Hire your chosen freelance – Provide then with any login details or documents that they will need to complete the job
- Pay when they’ve finished! – Your funds will be held with Elance until both parties are happy with the transaction.
In my particular case I managed to post a job, get a great price and have it completed within 24 hours! A fantastic experience with an individual I would certainly hire again!
Top Tips!
- You are likely to receive many offers for your job as soon as it is posted, if you have the time, leave the job for an hour or so to ensure you have a greater chance of finding the perfect freelancer
- Be specific with your request to ensure you get exactly what you want from the task
- Don’t ‘babysit’ your freelancer by checking up on them too regularly, you’ve outsourced the task to save time so spend it doing something more useful!
Outsourcing tasks is a great activity for those that want to take their side hustle to the next level. Once you’ve worked out a solid formula for outsourcing you can really start to scale your hustle and take more profits at the same time!
Have you ever hired help online? What sort of tasks have you outsourced to others?
I’ve outsourced a few different things to online freelancers. Outsourcing is great because you can sit back and start focusing on things that are more important to you while having an expert in another area provide a valuable service that you might not be able to complete as well.
I think the tricky part with outsourcing is knowing which tasks you should be looking to pay a premium for. You can always find very cheap prices for a task but sometimes you need to look elsewhere for a quality (and higher price) service especially when it comes to programming or design 🙂
For small tasks I use Fiverr, it is pretty impressive what you can get for $5. My VA works monthly and she does blog maintenance, finds pictures, promotes my posts on social media… small tasks that do take her 20 hours a week I am happy to have back.
Social scheduling is certainly a great use of outsourcing for your blog, I’ve never done this myself but I’m certainly looking to do it in the near future! Fiverr has been a great platform for me too, I tried using it for a side hustle venture a struggled to find a service I was happy to produce for just $5; however, I have received some great work it in recent months 🙂
I’m thinking of revamping my blog layout/design and I think this would be an excellent way to do it. I’ll check out Elance to see what my options are and go from there. This is a great idea because it will take me way more than 24 hours to complete that job, saving me a lot of time and frustration.
Yes, I’m a big fan of Pat from The Smart Passive Income Blog and understand that he had his redesign done through Elance. Certainly a great option and like I say, I was very happy with my experience 🙂
Thanks for stopping by Lauren!
These are great tips. I’ve often had a hard time letting go of tasks, because I feel like I’m working to make money, not spend it. However, sometimes you have to spend money to make it, right? Especially when you can be using your time for other stuff.
I felt the same! Certainly felt like I was spending because I was lazy the first time around but some tasks will take you much longer than someone else and others just aren’t worth your time 🙂
[…] was timed almost perfectly to a situation that could have cost me hours of headache – instead I outsourced the work to a freelancer, had the work completed in 18 hours and profited from the […]