Last week I wrote about outsourcing and how it can make a massive difference in your business. You can check out that article here.
This week I want to show you the process I used to determine what it was that I could outsource and then provide you with a list of 33 things that you can consider outsourcing.
To discover which jobs you’re doing that can be outsourced is a simple process. What I found to be the hardest was finding the time to actually sit down and do it and then when I did being ruthless enough with it.
Get yourself a piece of paper and pencil. Next write down every single job you do each day/week/month. It doesn’t matter if it takes 10 seconds or 10 hours, write it down.
When you’ve put everything down on it, leave it for a couple of hours and you’ll almost certainly remember a couple of things that you haven’t written. Add those in and repeat.
Once you’ve gone for 24 hours without being able to think of anything else to add to the list then you’ve got everything on there that’s important.
It’s important to give yourself time for your brain to remember things that you haven’t put down. As a busy entrepreneur your brain is going to be overloaded with information and it simply won’t be able to think of everything in one go.
Now take your list and ask yourself these questions for each item on it:
- Can somebody else do this job?
If the answer is no then ask yourself…
- Is this job required for the business to run or does it directly affect the amount of revenue generated?
If the answer is yes then mark the job as one that you need to keep doing yourself. If the answer is no then mark this as a job to get rid of. If it isn’t required for your business, doesn’t directly affect the amount of revenue generated and can’t be done by anyone else then it is not worth your time to do it. After all you’re not generating revenue from it, so you’re not being paid to do it!
If the answer to this question:
- Can somebody else do this job?
Was yes, then that’s great. Mark it down as a job that can be outsourced.
Be ruthless with this process. Cut jobs that can’t be done by anybody else if they’re not generating revenue and not 100% required. Mark everything that can be done by somebody else.
Don’t cheat because you’re not sure you can trust someone else to do it or not. The bottom line is you can, you just need to let go. And when you do you’ll find you’re freed in a way you never thought possible.
When you’ve finished going through your list you’ll find that 80% or more of the jobs you’re doing can actually be done by someone else.
So… it’s time to get somebody else to do them for you.
To give you an idea of the jobs that can be outsourced by someone else here are 33 jobs I was doing that I outsourced:
- Promotional email copywriting
- Scheduling mailing list emails
- Building website sales pages
- Forum moderation
- Subscription cancellations
- Customer support
- Product reviews
- Sales copywriting
- Replying to blog comments (I actually chose to keep doing this as I want to keep it personal but I know many people who outsource it)
- Remote customer support sessions
- Software development
- Bug testing software developments
- Chasing article writers for content
- Create article featured image graphics
- Schedule blog posts
- Fix website bugs and issues
- Find new content writers
- Build technical side of launch sequences
- Build product delivery
- Create invoices for affiliate payments
- Build optin pages and sales pages
- Track our affiliate promotions for conversions
- Find suitable WordPress themes
- Edit videos
- Create free optin products
- Add plugins to websites
- Manage onsite advertising
- Data entry
- Logo design
- Graphics
- Manage development projects
- Outsourcer management
- Upload auto-responder emails
There are also some that I’ve not put on this list as I prefer to do them myself and, having removed all the above jobs, I now have the time to do. These are things such as:
- Record videos
- Lead generation
- New product concept and briefs
- Develop/Test marketing strategies
- Work with JV’s
You’ll notice that every single thing there is related to increasing the turnover of the business. The only odd one out is the video recording and I keep that to me because the sites I record videos for are based around my experience in the industry and so the videos need to be recorded by myself.
Follow this process and re-discover the freedom that you wanted when you first started your online business.
What do you think?