Focus on the Important Stuff, Outsource the Rest for $1/hour

I am a one man show.  I don’t have any partners, I don’t split my profits 50/50 with anyone, I simply pocket everything I make.  And one of the main drivers of me growing my profits is that I outsource everything under the sun that I can for dirt cheap.  I need to spend my time focused on the stuff I consider the most important, the stuff that I don’t want anyone else touching or influencing.  Usually that means concept development, project management, and monetization techniques.  All my busy work I outsource.  That is graphic design, content writing (except for Anticareer.com, this is all me), customer service, email response handling, website design/development, coding and scripts, software products and bots, etc…

There are a few sites online where you can find outsourced workers and I’ve used them all.  In the end, there is one which for me has the workers that have the right mix of quality, price, skills, and motivation and that is Odesk (visit them now!).  The way that Odesk works is very simple and user friendly and I can explain it in about 30 seconds so here we go:

1.  Register on the site.  Registration is free.  You are required to provide a credit card number in order to post a job.  This is because when you have to pay someone it is taken from your credit card on file.  (I’ve used them for a few years now and have never had any issue with money or payments)

2.  Post a job.  You select the category (so if you want Content Writing, or Software Programming, etc…).  You enter a job title and job description.  Here’s a very helpful tip that will save you some time, make your job title very detailed and same with the description.  And if you are looking to hire someone for dirt cheap, put “$1/Hour Pay” in the title.  This will help save you time from receiving quotes from people who want $5 or $10/hour.  Now, you won’t find a software programmer for $1/hour, but you will certainly find backlink builders, article writers, customer service and email response workers, and other jobs similar to these.

3.  It takes 20 minutes for your job posting to go live (I think Odesk reviews the job postings to ensure nothing illegal or shady is going on).  After it goes live you will start getting people who will apply to your job.  Wait a day or two.  Once you get a  good number of candidates read through their responses and look at their pay rate.  You want to find someone whose response shows that they read your job description in full and that they understand it and have some type of experience.  You can also look at their rating (5.0 being the highest/best rating) from previous people who had hired them.  Between their response, their rating, and their pay rate you will then need to decide who the best all around fit it.

4.  Hire the person.  When you hire them you should then send them a message.  Introduce yourself.  And give them as much information/detail about the job as possible.  Remember, if you do not explain things then they will be left to make decisions on their own, and most people do not want this.

5.  Review their work.  For my content writers I review their work for the first week and take a long hard look at it to make sure they are giving me what I requested.  Once they build trust through quality work I will then review their work once a week to make sure they aren’t slacking.

And there you have it.  By letting people do the small tasks you can free up your time to focus on the big tasks.  By doing this you should be able to maximize your time and pull in more profits (or at least I am).  Being an ’employer’ does take a little time to get used to.  Really explaining things clearly and in depth was the biggest thing I learned I needed to do, so I just saved you some growing pains.  Now get that money!