Outsourcing By Necessity

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I've moved all of my blogging activity to The Lucid Blog.
You can visit my new home at:
www.thelucidblog.com

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When you first start working online, you do EVERYTHING yourself.

Partly due to financial restraints and partly due to the fear that comes with letting someone else do the jobs you've been accustomed to doing.

But, the sooner you realise your time is finite, you start to discover that it is actually cheaper to outsource some of your tasks to free up your time to do more important things.

The first thing I outsourced was managing my mailing list. Adding and removing subscribers manually can be very time consuming, so it made sense to use a third-party solution. We went with www.ymlp.com (highly recommended).

Next was the administration of the PayPerShop directory and news pages. We hired my sister to work two days a week.

Then came web design. Basic HTML couldn't create the kind of websites we needed so we hired a programmer. Finding a good coder is hard work but worth the effort once you find the right person for the job.

Which brings me to my next attempt at outsourcing: Affiliate Manager

I made the mistake over the last 18 months of trying to get too many projects off the ground at the same time and the result has meant fully functional websites that aren't getting the care and attention they need.

Over the next few weeks I will be endeavouring to find an affiliate manager for www.freesoftwarealert.com. If this proves successful, I will try and find the same for www.thenettle.com.

In the long run this should reduce my workload AND increase profits.

The fun part is trying to find the right person for the task. I've started out by posting on a few forums. Later I may try finding someone through Elance.

I'll post my progress so you can see whether or not this proves to be successful. If you have any suggestions, please post a comment.

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