The term “Outsourcing” has been used and applied to small, medium and large companies for many years, over the past decade and increasingly in the last three years, a new area of “e-outsourcing” is emerging and being taken much more seriously as businesses develop throughout the ever changing market place.  The idea of passing your somewhat annoying, even time consuming projects onto eager third party companies or individuals that are ready and waiting to get the job done sounds… well far too good to be true don’t you think?

Everywhere you look these days on Google, forums and blogs companies and individuals are promoting themselves and their services to up and coming businesses who are looking to ease work load, lower costs and free up valuable time, allowing them to focus on more rewarding areas which in turn boosts revenue.

Here is a short list of jobs you can outsource, which should help you think of more ways to delegate important tasks that you don’t necessarily need to do:

Research
-Get thinking… or pay someone else too!

• Wholesalers, products that you would like to sell, this can be a painstaking task for any business owner
• Fact checking, checking information is legit and all legal documents are handled correctly
• Products or services that may help with business expansion
• Holiday destinations, need to run off to a meeting in L.A?  Well get someone to get the cheapest flight for you, hotel accommodation, places to go for a drink, there are no limits
• Statistics for business plans and proposals

Data Entry
-The possibilities are truly endless

• Accounts, figures and number crunching to help you stay on top of your books and stop paying those ludicrous bookkeeper fees
• Sales figures that are not being accounted for
• Prospective buyers and addresses
• Marketing campaigns

• Blog posting and commenting to increase brand awareness and social traffic towards your website or blog
• Social bookmarking to keep you current, in the now and hot topic amongst avid we readers
• Article submissions to the most popular article directories for massive exposure
• Natural link building within blog, forums and other websites.  Using a reputable company or individual with a proven track record is the best option for this, always opt for quality over quantity
• Find WHOIS info for authority sites you wish to link to, this is a huge stepping stone for any website wanting to jump up in the rankings
• Forum posting for gaining authority and expert status amongst competitive markets with increasing interest

Administration / Assistance
- Painful administration jobs that need attention, not anymore!

• Follow up emails for sales, customer enquiries, media enquiries
• ‘Thank you’ emails and up sells for when you want to increase sales on a more personal level
• Customer service emails for questions that you don’t need to hire in-house employees for, this will cut down costs and free up a lot of time

Wow and that’s only a short list which took 10 minutes to create, could you just imagine how many other activities your little team of outsourcers could handle for you?

Costs Involved With Setting up

So how much are you looking to spend handing over tasks to other people?  The majority of your dealings if done via the major freelancing platforms such as Elance or oDesk will be paid in dollars so you may want to think about an hourly rate that you are comfortable paying.  There are many independent companies that we will cover in future articles.

For short and sweet tasks such as data entry you would be looking at a generalised role that many individuals can do, so it would be around $5 to $15 an hour, depending on the country you outsource to or level of expertise.  On the other hand if you are looking for researchers for complex business plans or flight destinations your pricing range should be around $30 to $60 per hour.  All in all you can get someone to take on your project for any price you are willing to pay, but be prepared to sacrifice quality.  Remember the old saying - “You get what you pay for”.

Managing Your Outsourced Tasks

There are two routes which you can take when managing your outsourcers, so that you make sure all tasks are completed on time and in the order that you specified.

Route One - Set up a dedicated email for all of your freelancers and outsources so that you keep all correspondence completely separate from your personal emails.  Within this email account you should set up folders which allow you to organise your progress for all projects currently under way, doing so will keep you on top of what’s gong on.  *A quick tip for staying current, make sure you ask each person to send you a weekly progress report so that you can analyse which are the best performers.

Route Two - Hire a virtual assistant to handle all of your outsourcers, what this does is help you concentrate on one person instead of several and leaving all of the managing up to the VA.  Some people will hate this route as they love being in control were as others will flourish due to their laid back attitudes, you know who you are!

Time Vs Money in The Long Run

So what it comes down to is this, how much money are you spending on outsourcing as opposed to other vital and equally important tasks such as marketing and sales?  If the money you spend on freeing up your time is much more important than cutting costs, then outsourcing is for you; but if you much prefer saving a penny or two rather than slicing a few hours off your busy schedule, then you are the perfect person for the job and shouldn’t opt for it.

Pros and Cons of Outsourcing

With everything in life there are the good and the bad, so here are the pros and cons for outsourcing your jobs to others:

Pros

• Can be easy to manage via email, phone, Skype or IM
• Frees up valuable time and allows you to concentrate on more important things
• Cheaper than expected when adding it all up

Cons

• It’s hard to find the right people for the job
• Time freed up could be spent managing others
• Costs can add up at the end of the month, if your not careful

The bottom line is this, you should experiment with the idea for a few weeks, start small and build your team up, only allow them to do very small tasks that are cheap and will build trust with you.  That way you can see if this is the right option for you.  Have fun with it!