Last week I said the I was planning on writing several posts on lessons learned in creating my Niche Adsense Themes for WordPress project. Well, here is a really important one — don’t try to do everything. Some stuff you should simply hire out.
But I Can’t Afford That!
I know what you are saying. You cannot afford to hire someone. You are not making any money right now, and until you do, you have to do everything yourself. I know the feeling, but I am going to argue that you cannot afford not to hire stuff out.
What Is Your Time Worth?
See, you are making the assumption that your time is not worth anything — that it is cheaper to do it yourself (whatever it is). Well, what is your time worth? Let’s say you normally make $50,000 per year. If you do, your time is worth about $25/hour. Seriously, when you spend an hour on your business, your business, you are essentially investing $25.
Let’s say that you had an employee named Joe that you were paying $25/hour, and that Joe was very busy. So busy, in fact, that really important stuff was not getting done. If everything does not get done, your business does not make money. Problem is, some of the stuff that Joe is doing can easily be done by a $10 high school student. But you are paying Joe $25/hour to do that work, and not getting other stuff done at the same time. You are paying Joe too much for non-critical work, and more important stuff is not getting done.
You are Joe
Guess what. You are Joe. So am I. There were a couple of things that I needed done for Niche Adsense Themes that I could have done if I wanted to, but it would cost me more to do them myself than have them done. And, I did not want to do them. I did not want to do the theme graphics, and I did not want to do the HTML version of the templates. I also needed some CSS help. Cost to me was under $200. The Themes generated $1000 of revenue in the first 10 days (and it was a simple narrow product with a bad sales letter — more on this later). And, the time saved was measured in DAYS (or maybe weeks).
How to Outsource
I recommend that you try outsourcing right away with something (anything) simple. Give it a try, and you can get a feeling about what is possible. I personally perfer ScriptLance.com, but there are tons of services out there, including eLance.com and RentaCoder.com.
Software is a really good thing to outsource. I outsourced the creation of www.thebigworldproject.com, for example. I knew how to code that project, but I did not have the time. Likewise, anything that sounds like WordPress maintenance is easily outsourced.
Just go to scriptlance.com, sign up, post your project and see who bids and how much. Read their qualifications, talk to them on the private message board, make sure they understand the requirements (good specs are critical to outsourcing) and let it fly. You will enjoy the freedom of having some guy in Malaysia work for you while you sleep for $5/hour. He will be thrilled to have the work, and you will be thrilled to have the work done — win/win.
If there is interest, I will post a “how to use scriptlance” video to the Free Stuff area.
What are your experiences with outsourcing? Let me know by dropping a comment.
Regards,
Mark
photo credit: Aaron Escobar
