For new affiliate marketers, I always recommend NOT outsourcing right away. Don’t get me wrong, outsourcing your affiliate marketing business should be your eventual goal. However, you will not be able to effectively coach your assistants on how to properly perform tasks until you have done it first. Don’t rob yourself of crucial learning experiences, but also realize that there are many things that other people can simply do a better job at than you. Use this to your advantage.
Sure, outsourcing can cost you some money, but it also frees up your time. As you are probably well aware already, time is money. By outsourcing certain aspects of your business, you can focus on growth and expansion. What you might not be aware of, however, is how inexpensive outsourcing can be. In this article, I will go over some of the business areas many affiliate marketers outsource and who they use.
What Tasks Should Be Outsourced?
This is going to be unique to each individual affiliate marketer and is a tough question to answer. However, to put things in simple terms, you should outsource the tasks you do not enjoy doing. For example, maybe you love to write content for your site, but hate promoting it on social media. That task can be easily outsourced, so why not?! Or maybe you get really frustrated when it comes to website design. There’s no reason to struggle and fight through that when there are literally thousands of outsourcing services filled with individuals who absolutely love designing websites. On the other hand, you shouldn’t outsource tasks that you know you are good at or enjoy doing. When you enjoy doing something, you will probably be better at it than anyone you can ever outsource the task to (with some exceptions).
Another tip is to avoid outsourcing everything on your first couple of affiliate websites. When you build your first 2 or 3 affiliate sites, you will learn a TON. That includes making mistakes, and that’s ok. Making mistakes is a crucial aspect of finding out what works and what doesn’t. You are forced to become intimate with your sites and can really figure out what works and what doesn’t. Only after you have gone through the learning curve, can you begin developing brand new affiliate websites through 100% outsourcing. Once you can do that, your business will take on an entirely new level.
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How To Outsource Website Development
Whether you plan to use WordPress, SBI, Joomla, or any other web development software, you don’t have to go it alone. In fact, you can sit in the passenger seat and simply tell people how you want everything to look. If there is one thing to start outsourcing, this would be it. Website development can be tedious and frustrating for a newbie, but with so many experts available at your fingertips, having a great looking and professionally built site can truly be quick and easy.
The question is, where do you find these experts? I personally use an overseas outsourcing service called BDhire. These folks are based out of Bangladesh where the cost of living and the cost of labor is extremely low. You can hire a programmer that has years of experience on a part-time, full-time, or on a per-project basis. The cost for a programmer through a service such as BDhire is typically around $7.50 / hr. By comparison, you might spend 100’s of dollars per hour by hiring a U.S. based computer programmer. What might otherwise be an unaffordable outsourcing strategy can be entirely affordable by expanding your options to other countries.
You can also use services such as Odesk.com, Elance.com, or Freelancer.com. All of those outsourcing websites work about the same way. You can create a new “job” to post on those sites and allow freelance programmers to “bid” on the job. So, let’s say I want to create a brand new WordPress website and I want a custom design. I post a job stating what I’m looking for, and dozens of programmers will respond with their pricing, experience, and samples of their previous work. You are able to communicate with each programmer privately until you find the perfect match, at which point, you award them the job. The best part is, by using those services, you can place all funds into an escrow account and you only pay once the work has been completed to your satisfaction, thereby eliminating almost all of the risk.
How To Outsource Content Creation
When outsourcing content, you should always lean on the side of quality instead of finding the lowest price. High quality content is perhaps the single most important aspect of your affiliate business. The content on your site is what sets you apart from other sites out there and has a very direct relationship to your conversion rate on sales. So, if you decide to outsource content creation on your site, make sure you go with someone who is well qualified, experienced, understands SEO techniques, and is very familiar with your specific niche topic.
I have personally used Elance.com and Freelancer.com for outsourced content creation, but I now have a new favorite content creation service called Constant-Content.com. While I can typically get content created a bit cheaper on a site like Elance, Constant Content has routinely provided me with higher quality articles that get more search engine visibility. There are many content creation services available, so just do a web search and find the service who makes you the most comfortable. Start off with a couple of “test articles” and expand from there.
How To Outsource Social Media Promotion
Most affiliate marketers seem to focus the majority of their efforts on using search engines for free website traffic. However, there are some businesses, such as PickYourPlum.com, who drive almost 100% of their traffic through social media. In fact, PickYourPlum.com receives about 5,000,000 visits per month to its website using social media alone. Read more about how they do it here..
There are several social media outsourcing services available, or as posted above, you can find a freelance social media manager for hire on Elance.com, Freelancer.com, or any other number of freelancing services. However, if you don’t mind doing a little bit of the work, you can use other services that make organizing and managing your social media accounts a breeze. Here are a few services you might want to look into:
While the above services will not provide you with a human to outsource tasks, they all help you more time efficient and effective with your social media campaigns. Many of the above services also provide free training programs with your membership to help you maximize your social media engagement. They are certainly worth checking out before hiring a more expensive freelancer or employee.
How To Outsource Promotion & Exposure
By using many of the same services I listed above, you can also find an individual to go out and help you promote your site in forums, on blog posts, and on lesser utilized social media platforms such as Yahoo Answers and YouTube. In order to outsource this type of marketing exposure, you must find someone who is genuinely interested in your sites topic and can help contribute to communities where dropping links to your website is relevant.
How To Outsource Miscellaneous Tasks
Sometimes, you’ll have smaller one-time tasks that need to be outsourced. Maybe you need a new logo to be created or want to create a quick 30 second promotional video for your homepage. Or maybe you want someone to set up your social media accounts for you, write a quick article, hand out flyers to promote your site at a university or do some research for you. A great place to go for these types of smaller and miscellaneous tasks is Fiverr.com. You would be absolutely amazed at what some people are willing to do for just 5 bucks. You can either request a “gig” to be performed for you or you can browse through the thousands upon thousands of tasks people are willing to perform for you at an unbeatable price. Fiverr is one of my favorite resources for smaller tasks I don’t want to do myself.
No matter what you want to outsource, the ability to find freelancers or other individuals to perform low priced and high quality work for you has never been greater. The world is your hiring base and the internet is your recruiter. No matter what you need, somebody out there can help.
