As a webmaster, you should be viewing your website as an online business if you ever hope to make any money from it whether that’s from affiliate marketing, advertising revenue, etc. Developing your online business involves regular and oftentimes daily tasks of SEO, link building, perhaps maintaining a PPC/paid advertising campaign and your email list as a few examples.
Eventually you may find that you simply don’t have time for many of these daily routines, especially if you’re managing multiple websites. I personally outsource very little and much of that is because I’m a control freak in most walks of life, but a lot of webmasters regularly outsource a number of the above mentioned tasks; so let’s consider the pros and cons of outsourcing if you’re thinking about it for yourself and your business along with what you should NOT be outsourcing no matter how much time it saves.
Pros
- Obviously it’s a time saver. It saves you from concerning yourself with mundane and time consuming trivial grunt work tasks so that you can focus on the things which really matter such as creating content and other things which affect people’s direct perception of you.
Cons
- You’re giving up control, meaning you’ve got someone else out there representing you in whatever it is that they’re doing for you. This makes you potentially responsible for someone else’s potential mistakes.
- It cuts into your revenue stream; though you can make a case against this if you work out your time versus money value ratio.
Things to NOT Outsource
Email Marketing – A lot of work goes into developing an email list. You can learn the fastest way to successfully develop your list among other things by immediately downloading my free Complete Email Marketing Blueprint. Whenever you send out an email, you’re developing a relationship with that person as they grow accustomed to a number of things about you which includes your own unique voice. You want to treat your subscribers with the utmost precision care, so outsourcing this aspect of your business is not something I recommend.
PPC – Any instance in which you’re spending your own actual money to make something happen (excluding outsourcing itself) is a case in which I wouldn’t trust someone else to take the reins. PPC is a prime example of this, so unless you’re hiring out to a professional PPC person who knows what they’re doing and who will pay attention to your PPC campaign frequently, I wouldn’t recommend outsourcing this aspect as a PPC campaign in unsure hands can end up costing you a lot of money. Do it yourself, checking out my Google Adwords Tips or Facebook Advertising Strategy as helpful resources.
Your Site’s Content – One thing which I would also never outsource (save for possibly in the form of guest blogging) is the actual content on my site. This includes doing keyword research, as well. While it’s time consuming creating new content for my sites on a regular basis, this is what people most identify with me, so I want to make sure it’s written by me.
Press Releases – In a similar vein, I recommend writing your own press releases unless you’re on the level where a professional PR company is doing it for you. You should be choosing the words which you want to describe your site which people will read; don’t leave this in the hands of someone who is any less familiar with your business than you are.
Things TO Outsource
Article Marketing – Article marketing is one thing which you can generally feel safe outsourcing. This can simply entail someone reposting your content on article directories or writing fresh content for you. If you have someone knowledgeable in your niche and whom you like the writing style of, outsourcing is appropriate here so you can create lots of articles to distribute across the net.
Social Networking – Posting your content on social networks is pretty simple to do. Actually it can be outsourced to an automated program, so you’re likely fine with relying on technology rather than a person; so whether you’re trying to build your Twitter following.
Support – If you have a product which you are selling yourself then outsourcing support for that product is a MAJOR time saver. Only do this with people who are fully familiarized with your product so they can deliver the highest level of quality support to your customers.
Blog/Forum Commenting – While people become accustomed to your voice on blogs and forums just as they do in email marketing, the stakes aren’t nearly as high. Blog and forum commenting can be great sources of traffic and link juice when used correctly, so assuming the person you outsource to has an understanding of what you’re doing on your site then this can save you a lot of time while building up your reputation at influential blogs and forums in your niche.
Technical Things – Anything technical or related to web design is a fine thing to outsource especially if you’re not especially knowledgeable about these things yourself.
And one last point – Make sure your system is working perfectly before you start to outsource. You want to know that what you’re instructing your contractor to do exactly works to a “t”, so assuming they stick to your specific instructions there won’t be any issues.
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