Mikael Rieck is the author of more than hundred articles on topics of how to make money both online and offline. He has been online since 1999 and has always had a passion for money making opportunities and teaching others how to make a profit.
Increasing Leverage to Speed Up the Process
If you have signed up for email newsletters and different Internet marketing guru’s lists, you have probably seen a lot of promotions about using outsourcing in the last few weeks.
Some are offering membership sites teaching you how to outsource and others are selling ebooks and video training courses on the subject.
Now all of these are probably great and if you are not currently using any kind of leverage in the form of outsourcing, then you should probably look more into these products. Because without leveraging other people’s time you are most likely falling behind because your competitors are most likely getting help to grow their businesses.
The reasons for using some kind of outsourcing (you can also hire regular employees or project workers) are many but some of the main benefits are:
- Getting more things done in less time
- Having people with more area-specific skills than you do the job
- Freeing yourself from your business – creating passive income
- Only doing the things you love and have others do everything else
As an Internet marketer you are probably already doing too many things at once and you are most likely not doing most of them at the level you could because you’re short on time and full of new things and ideas to work on.
If you haven’t read the Internet Business Manifesto written by Rich Schefren, then stop reading this and go download it. It is a true eye-opener (and it is FREE)!
One of the reasons that I personally use outsourcing and are increasing leverage in my business is that it speeds up the process of getting me from where I currently am to where I want to go.
I understand that hiring a full time employee or outsourcing jobs to someone in India or Philippines can be too expensive for someone just starting out. However I encourage you to not just stop at that.
Instead see if you can find someone to partner with. If you are two or three that hires a full time employee for e.g. $300 a month, that will only be $100 (tax deductable) for you and in return you get 53 hours of work (160 hours a month for a full time employee) done each month.
That is less than $2 per hour. Now I don’t know about you but don’t you think that your time is worth more than $2 per hour?
But even so you can still argue that you don’t have the money. I understand that and maybe outsourcing is not for you (yet). But then you should need to ask yourself the next question:
“Are the work I am currently doing generating an income of $2 or more per hour of work?”
If it isn’t I think you should stop right now and have a look at your business plan. If you can’t produce $2 by working 1 hour, something is not right.
I understand that sometimes it will take 10 hours to do something but if you can make those 10 hours into $20, it will still be an average of $2 per hour.
Investing in Your Business
If you know how to make an average of $2 profit from each 1 hour of work, I am sure that you can probably also find a way to increase that profit to maybe $2.5 or $3 per hour. Don’t you think that is a fair assumption?
If that is the case let me ask you this: Do you think that someone else can to that work in a similar manor and produce the same result if you will just teach them?
I think they can….
So if that is true how many hours of work would you buy for $2 a piece if you knew that each hour you bought would give you a net profit of $0.50 or $1?
My answer would be “as many as I could” and if you would answer the same, then what is stopping you from doing it? 
Hire for Projects
If you don’t like the idea of hiring someone full time for one reason or the other, then go to places like Elance.com, Guru.com or Rentacoder.com. Those places will have you hire people for specific tasks and on a project by project basis.
You will probably find that you will have to pay a little more per hour of work but if your plan is solid you will still be able to turn this into major profits. If you can’t then maybe the plan is not that good after all and you would be better off tweaking it or coming up with something different.
Conclusion
I know this post has been a bit of a rant but I truly believe that increasing your leverage by using other people’s time is something that way too few online marketers do and I would like for more people to see the true benefits of it.
To Your Success,
Mikael
13 Responses so far
Nicolas Prudhon from SEO Help
July 20th, 2009
9:12 am
Hi Mikael,
I have nothing to add to that! You took the words out of my mouth…
Nicolas Prudhon@SEO Help´s last blog ..Article Marketing Redefined
Mikael
July 20th, 2009
10:31 am
I think one of the main reasons why people don’t do this is that:
1) It requires taking a risk (financially)
2) They don’t have a proven plan to outsource
Both have been problems that I have had myself.
jason
July 20th, 2009
4:33 pm
Good point in the comment as to why people don’t do this, requires a lot of risk. I have managed, co-managed, a bunch of websites over the past eight years or so and it is quite a risk to outsource work to someone. On a few occasions I have tried outsourcing to find out that they stole my idea and took half of my visitors by starting their own site and promoting it through my site. Another problem I had with outsourcing was not original content. They would supposedly write an articel for me, I paid and a few days (weeks) later I would get an email from the original author claiming the article was copied…
Matt
July 20th, 2009
4:37 pm
Great rant
I don;t think it’s just the fact that they are taking a risk – I genuinely believe it’s because people haven’t thought of it.
If I get a project in I can outsource it to someone, project manage it and at the same time get another project in – something I just couldn’t physically do if I controlled every aspect myself.
People need to just get wise to this.
Mikael
July 20th, 2009
11:01 pm
@Jason, managing project is also something that one will need to learn. You’ll never get it right the first time and then things like what you have seen will occur. But as long as we learn from it and can move on and become better we’re still on the right track.
@Matt, I am sure you are right that everyone has their own reasons. I can be one or the other but we all have our reasons. Let’s just hope that this (and all the other posts and emails about this) will convince more people to take a leap of faith and outsource.
Anthony
July 21st, 2009
4:09 am
Yep! Its all about outsourcing! Can be done on a small or big scale. For me I’m an English teacher in Shanghai so I hire two programmers full time for a total of around $1000 per month. Its sounds like a lot at first but I see others online paying writers $100-200 per article so I guess they can not be much cheaper. I prefer to make portals rather than content-heavy stuff such as articles, but everyone has their own niche.
@Jason You need to fire them and get a new programmer. This is a question of ethics. If the work they do is old code or old content you are being cheated, and if the content they made for you, they also use for them self in their own site its even worse. You just gotta find a loyal and ethical programmer to be your long-term partner. They are out there but not easy to find. But when you find them, keep them happy with steady work and develop a long term partnership.
Anthony´s last blog ..Hosting a website with a domain name on your home computer
Manshu
July 22nd, 2009
2:30 am
After a certain point you realize that you just can’t do everything and in order to grow you will need to leverage other’s skills. If you have to grow beyond a certain point, there is absolutely no hiding from this fact. It has to be done.
Manshu´s last blog ..Save to Win
joe
July 22nd, 2009
11:33 pm
Great post. I think sticking with what you can do yourself until you generate cashflow to pay for outsourcing is a smart approach. Letting someone else do the things that don’t pay to do yourself is smart. I think learning from people unstead of doing everything the long way is another great success tip
joe´s last blog ..Best Businesses to Start- Profitable Business Opportunities 2009
Mikael
July 23rd, 2009
9:58 am
Hi Joe,
Welcome to the blog. Nice to have you here.
When using leverage you can use the approach you mention about doing things until the cashflow is there to pay for outsourcing but I would also argue that it can be a wise business solution to pay in advance (if you have the money obviously) to increase the speed of building the business. That approach will however require that you know what you’re doing because if you don’t the money can be a waste.
Mikael
David
July 28th, 2009
10:22 pm
I think there are a ton of good reason to outsource but it is not for everyone. Not everyone can afford to spend money on tasks current employees can do. However some people can really be more efficient and make more money with outsourcing while saving time.
Mikael
August 12th, 2009
6:12 pm
Hi David, I’m sure there is but I would also argue that there is probably a lot of poor places as well where you won’t get value for money.
Ryan from North Park real estate
September 6th, 2009
2:23 am
I understand this article very well, since not everyone are fully Internet Marketers as well, few people are doing jobs and whenever they find time, they work on their business as well so yeah I would agree that without a good team you can’t succeed in your goals alone. No one can unless you’re dedicated 10-12 hours each day. And hiring for projects or for 10 hours a week isn’t a bad idea if you want to lessen the burden while concentrating on the major area of your business.
P.S. I’ve downloaded the Manifesto and will read it later. Thank you.
Mikael
September 6th, 2009
3:54 pm
Hi Ryan, I’m sure you’re going to like the Manifesto. Rich is a great writer and mentor.
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