How to Get the Most Out of Outsourcing

Building your online business requires you to wear a dozen or so different hats – you’re responsible for maintaining your websites and blogs, building relationships with potential customers, and providing back end service to keep your buyers happy. It can all be a bit difficult to juggle… but when you add content creation, programming, and design to the mix, building an internet business can be downright overwhelming.

For many internet marketers, there comes a point when they must consider outsourcing some of their tasks. Usually, this involves hiring freelancers to handle website creation and design, content, and administrative functions.

Hiring a freelancer involves an element of uncertainty and anxiety – you’ve never met the freelancer before, and he or she knows very little about your business. So it can be difficult to trust a freelancer with your marketing functions. What if it doesn’t work out? What if the freelancer performs below your expectations?

Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to ensure that your outsourcing dollars are well spent. It’s easy to assume that your freelancer should automatically know how to produce exactly what you want – after all, they are professionals. But you wouldn’t just tell a contractor, “Build a deck for my house”, without taking steps to make sure that the end result is consistent with your vision. The same applies to freelancing work.

Freelancers deal with myriad clients, each with their own visions and expectations. While they are professionals, they are also businesspeople, and require the same type of co-creation as a home improvement contractor, landscaper, or any other service professional. 

Here are some tips for getting the most out out of your outsourcing:

• Write clear, detailed explanations. Tell your freelancer how you envision the end product, how it will be used as part of your business building efforts, and how you arrived at your vision. If you can provide examples – flagship content that appears on competing sites, examples of blog or site designs, etc., it will give your freelancer a clearer picture of what you want. The more information you provide, the fewer revisons you will need to ask for.
• Decide what you want before you start contacting freelancers. For a freelancer, few things are more frustrating than taking on a client that only has a vague sense of what he or he wants. If you know you want “great content” to build your online business, but you’re not sure about the structure, style, tone, or keywords you want to see, log out of your email and put pen to paper.  The half-hour you spend refining your objectives will save you countless hours of frustration down the road.
• Don’t just hire the cheapest outsourcing help you can find. Like any other service niche, freelancing has its share of shining stars and scoundrels. It’s worth paying more for proven talent – in the end, it can increase your profits a thousandfold.
• Respect your freelancer’s other commitments. Successful freelancers juggle numerous projects at once… and every one of your freelancer’s other clients want their projects to be completed right away too. Pressing your freelancer to put your project first will result in lackluster performance. Freelancers worth their salt aren’t waiting around for projects – they’re busy carrying a full time workload (or more), so if you want to get the most out of your investment, it’s a good idea to let your freelancer provide a realistic timeframe for the completion of your project.
• Listen to your freelancer’s feedback. Your freelancer has probably done similar past projects, and may well be able to offer valuable insights that will help your business. A good freelancer has to make a living, or course, but he or she is also keenly interested in your success. If your freelancer offers suggestions or other feedback, you’re getting far more value than you’re paying for.
• Stick to your requirements.If a freelancer disregards directions, misses deadlines, or delivers shoddy work, don’t be afraid to look elsewhere. It’s a headache to “train” a new freelancer, but sometimes it is necessary to keep your project rolling along on schedule.

These tips will help ensure that your outsourcing endeavors go smoothly. They will also help you find and retain top freelancing talent that you can use again and again to help you build your business.