Tyrone Shum has participated in both my Blog Mastermind and Membership Site Mastermind programs. He’s special because not only did he study the materials (which is rare enough!), he went on and has built himself a successful blog and last year launched a membership site too, so he’s a real action taker.
Part of the reason he’s one of the unusual people who actually gets stuff done is because Tyrone knows how to outsource, in fact that is his specialty. In this guest post from Tyrone he offers some advice on how to outsource your blogging effectively…
Get More Done
Recently, I saw a poll on a very popular blog asking if they outsourced any of their blogging. I thought it would be a great opportunity to share with you some tips from my experience of outsourcing blogging tasks to virtual staff in the Philippines.
Undeniably I love my work but that doesn’t mean I can manage all the things effectively from advertising to marketing, from article creation to posting, from directory submissions to email marketing, and so forth all by myself. Additionally, not all bloggers plan ahead of time, and get things completed as early as possible without missing deadlines. So we have to replicate ourselves to meet different demands. I’m not talking about cloning but it’s how we distribute tasks to virtual staff to finish more tasks at the same time.
I’ve summarized the most important points to outsource as part of your blogging below, here we go…
Tip 1: Outsource your blog design
Nowadays in the world of “blogging”, we have to compete amongst millions of blogs to gain readers attention. To have a unique and welcoming blog design is a wise decision. To have it designed and setup sounds easy enough, since there are thousands of blog designs to choose from across the Internet. However, is it worth doing this yourself?
In my opinion this is one area that everyone must outsource. No matter if you are a graphic designer or web developer, I would not recommend spending time designing and customizing your blog.
The reason is quite simple, your time needs to be focused on producing good content and marketing your blog to build a larger readership. The biggest challenge I faced when I begun my blog at Internet Business Path, was I took on the task to install and customize all plugins myself. This was just to save a couple hundred of dollars, and looking back the time spent was at least over 20 hours. In hindsight I would have preferred to spend that time wisely with family or learning how to play the guitar.
In addition, you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to get a unique blog design. Say you have a budget to spend $2,400 for a unique blog design, why not consider hiring a part-time graphic designer for $200 a month from the Philippines? You will certainly get great value and additional work completed for the equivalent of one blog design over 12 months.
To share with you my experience, I have a graphic designer who charges me two hundred dollars per month to design, implement and setup all my plugins for my websites. You can see the work his done for me at www.massoutsource.com and www.internetbusinesspath.com.
Tip 2: Outsource uploading of blog posts
After you create a blog post you need to upload it onto your blog, otherwise no one will read it. Uploading a blog post takes time and if you spend 30 minutes a day to properly optimize and add pictures to your blog post, then it is an extra 2 and a half hours a week that you could be spending doing other fun things.
Since I am a believer of batch processing, I write my blog posts ahead of time which frees up my schedule to do other fun things. After I complete these posts I send them to my virtual assistant who sets posts to automatically be published at certain times of the week. She will search engine optimize my posts for me and begin the marketing process of driving traffic.
It may not seem to take up too much time to do all these, though to save an extra two hour and a half hours per week that costs me around $3.50, I would rather outsource uploading my blog posts any day. It’s not the fact that it costs so little, it’s the time that you gain back to do what you want.
Tip 3: Outsource your submission to directories to get back links
Imagine if you had only 2 hours a day to complete one critical task. What would you do in those two hours? I know I wouldn’t spend my time submitting content to directories and optimizing my website to get more back links. I would focus my time on dollar productive activities that generate revenue into my business.
Most newbie and experienced bloggers spend at least a quarter of their time online completing submission tasks. There are ways to automate this using both software and virtual staff.
Every time a new blog post gets published, my virtual staff has been trained to automatically submit the content to directories and social networks. With a click of a button and a few comments in the post, she creates links using software.
Tip 4: Outsource technical issues with your blog
Even though I come from a technical background of Computer Science and I used to have a tendency to do it all myself, nowadays outsourcing these technical issues is the norm.
There are aspects of my blog which need to be updated and changed from time to time. The more complicated it is to change or fix, the more time it takes and more the reason why I am not the one doing it. Fixing problems like these don’t generate any income and is considered a task that is non-productive, though it must be fixed for the cogs to run smoothly within the business.
I also have a ticket support system in place where’s it sole purpose is to receive support questions, issues and inquiries from all aspects of my business, including my blog. If a customer or reader sees a technical issue and informs us about it, then a quick ticket submission to the technical department will forward an email to the web developers, who will take action to fix any of these bugs.
Whilst I was on holidays recently in Hong Kong and Bangkok, one of my websites went down and the mail server was not working correctly. Could you imagine what would have happened if the issue was sent to my email? No one would be able to check it and I was in the middle of a jungle on a flying fox with no Internet connection to access email.
Luckily for me, with the system mentioned above and having outsourced all my technical issues to a team of web developers, I don’t have to worry about any of these issues. I didn’t even know this happened until one of my members within my coaching program mentioned it to me in passing.
Tip 5: Outsource Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO has always been a big topic and the more you delve into it, the more time it takes to manage it.
From social bookmarking to article submissions, blog and forum comment submission, SEO can become a full time job in itself. It’s not a task I personally manage and I am not an expert in this field. I have a general understanding of how it works and how to implement most of the crucial aspects of SEO. Having this knowledge DOES NOT mean I personally go out and implement these strategies. I hire someone and train them on how to do it, passing onto them my knowledge. SEO is not something that a blogger wants to spend time working on and it’s crucial to find good virtual staff to implement this for you.
How To Face This Blogging Dilemma?
There are millions of blogs out there who struggle to make any income or achieve the level of success they desire. The core reason why I see a lot of blogs struggling is they lack leverage.
Leverage can only be achieved when certain non dollar-productive activities are outsourced, such as blog design, uploading of blog posts, submission of links, technical issues and managing SEO, just to name a few. When you focus only on producing excellent and valuable content for your readers creating a strong following, then you are able to monetizing your blogging efforts. This is when you are truly leveraging your blog.
Remember the key is to have a balance of blogging and lifestyle as well. Taking that leap of faith and transitioning to having others do the “behind the scenes” work will allow you to focus your time on blogging and give you time to enjoy your lifestyle to live that 10 hour work week, whilst making a six figure income.
Have fun and enjoy the journey. Remember to mass outsource for a great life!
Tyrone Shum
Internetbusinesspath.com
Great post, thanks for sharing insights into outsourcing the set-up and execution of a good blog. I have found that many of my author and speaker clients also need help in stepping away from their own content to see all of the gems they already have that would be great blog posts. All it takes is an objective eye to come in and collaborate with the writing, editing and execution. The key is to find someone who can write in your voice so that your content, tone and style remains authentic.
Thanks for your post and resources. I will check them out. I outsourced the setup of my server to my requirements since i am not a server admin and all that.
Some of my friends doesn’t understand outsourcing they say. Just do it yourself don’t be lazy 🙂
It’s not lazyness it’s smart use of your time
Thanks for the post.
That wasn’t 5 tips on how to outsource your blogging it was 5 tips on what to outsource.
Want you fail to mention is how difficult and how frustrating it is to find reliable people to outsource your work to. Particularly point 2 does not address how you tech the person to do the job effectively or what skills they must possess.
In my experience you still get what you pay for. Perhaps a little more info on how you found such excellent people to work with would provide a greater benefit to the readers.
Merely mentioning the country of origin narrows down my search but a little more
Over the past 3 years of outsourcing experience, I have worked with terrible, absolutely terrible people, and very few excellent workers (I still work with them).
Just like an employer would, it’s a filtering/trial & error process. Look at their resume, read how they type up their email. Notice how timely they respond. Look at how long they’ve had stayed at a job (if they skip around too much I usually don’t hire them).
Also, be upfront with your expectations and ask for samples/portfolio of their work.
In terms of training/teaching the person to the job effectively, I have to first understand the process myself, then I create desktop instructions (record with Jing) and send the videos over to them.
I ask that they are on IM so we can instant message back and forth and keep the communication channel open.
Hope that helps!
In reply to: Tyrone Shum has participated in both my Blog Mastermind and Membership Site Mastermind programs. He’s special because not only did he study the materials (which is rare enough!), he went on and has built himself a successful blog and last year launched a membership site too, so he’s a real action taker.
I also studied your Mastermind Program, and originally signed up to the Membership Site Mastermind program, when I put a support email in asking why I was on the Mastermind Group and not the Membership Site Mastermind, I was told that there was no such program?? Its funny how things can come around and bite you on the bum…
I too took action and have also launched my own Membership Site ;-), I ‘m also an action taker might I add!!!
Hi Adam,
Thanks for your feedback. The tips provided here are to give you an insight of what you can outsource for blogging. Especially if you are just starting, these are the most common aspects that bloggers should consider to outsource first. If you want the step by step guide on where and how to outsource, I have 10 FREE videos at:
http://www.massoutsource.com/
Let me know if you need any assistance of additional help?
Nice post. Outsourcing is great but difficult at the start, especially when you’re not making any money. I would definitely outsource everything except for the blog post and information. You would definitely want the information to be your voice, unique to your blog.
I agree with Thomas. When you’re super tight on budget, you’re extremely constrained in what you can outsource. In all likelihood, you’d have to do everything yourself. I do agree it is wise to outsource the 5 items mentioned in the post, but one can only afford to do it when he’s already generating some income.
Cheers~
Mark
Alright, let me pop the big question – where do you outsource to?
My personal favorite is Philippines.
I can say that there lots of freelancer here in our country that are expert in SEO, and other freelance job like web designing, programming, database system and many more. Thank you for choosing our country. 🙂
It’s easy to say “outsource” if you’re making thousands per month from your blogging. However, if you’re making a few hundreds, it is not easy to spend money on outsourcing.
And, I think, people who make thousands from their online efforts, like me, know about outsourcing. But we are looking for ways to effectively manage outsourcing, or how to improve outsource dollar types of post.
Not what I can outsource. I even outsource some of my blog writing.
@thomas – I agree with you, to be genuine and also to portray yourself, it’s best to write your own content. Most of the content I do nowadays is video and it’s definitely me in front of the camera. Once this has been created, I outsource the transcript and audio conversion and marketing to my virtual staff who handle all that for me.
@mark – it’s important to be very concise when you decide to outsource at the beginning as it will be crucial to your success and cashflow as a Blogger. Additionally look to have them do your administrative tasks such as SEO, link building and uploading of blog posts.
@passive income blogger – I agree and that’s where I find all of my virtual staff. Great people to work with and very, very reliable!
The only thing I might outsource people for is SEO and maybe technical issues. There may be sense to outsource for creating posts too if the person is busy and has extra money for that. But I wouldn’t hire anyone via the Internet whom I wouldn’t be able to reach if they are a cheater.
An interesting read … I have actually enjoyed learning how to do all the aspects highlighted in this post. Learning as my site is evolving also gives me clues on what I like to do and what I’d rather have someone else do for me. Having said that, I would look to outsourcing at a later point, when I’m more sure about the direction I want to take. Great food for thought though …
Hi Tyrone,
I understand the concept of outsourcing, and agree that it is the right way to go, but I also think it fits only bloggers that are already making a lot of money, otherwise where would you get US$ 2400 just for the design? Most beginners would buy a premium theme for about US$100 and tweak it.
If you are just starting off, most likely you would invest your money in the blog itself or promoting it (like paying for directory submission) and not pay others to do so.
Thanks
Ami
Hi Ami,
Good point there and it’s important to understand that you could pay a contractor to create a theme that’s just as good for under $300. It would save you time and the headaches and it’s done professionally too. I’ve done this many times and it works out great. The time you save is the money you will gain from the dollar productive activities you complete.
> it’s the time that you gain back to do what you want
Trading up for spending time on what you want is the way to go.
This is the excellent post indeed. but i don’t think that spending dollars for my submissions and on seo works would be quite expensive for me as a new blogger unless i make a handsome amount with my blogging.
I personally don’t believe outsourcing your blog would be great idea, I’m a firm believer that when you outsource quality drastically decreases.
Being a blogging newbie, I’ve never attempted to outsource anything. Although my mentor recommends it.
The main problem, i think, is being able to plan ahead what tasks you can and need to outsource. It is vital to recognize these tasks in advance of them happening so that the right people can be found to complete the right tasks.
Maybe we should think about outsourcing the outsourcing – might make life a bit easier? 🙂
Cliff
Internet Marketing Resources
When out sourcing you have to be very picky, and it does take trial and error to find good people. I think with any task, you have to understand it yourself to some degree to be able to out source and know if your getting quaity.
What a great and inspirational article! I;m going to do some recrutment right away.
My assistants now are great! I have had my negative experiences with outsourcing but overall I like my virtual assistants.
The things that are the most time consuming for me lately are emails and comment management. Those things are a part of building relationships with other bloggers and my readers so I can’t outsource that.
So now I have taken on some clients and I let me assistants do some of the marketing for them. It seems to work well for me 🙂
There goes my romantic notion of a lone ranger blogger carefree making millions, doing it all by himself……LOL! Thank you for putting things into perspective with this guest post from one of your successful students, Yaro. Of course the question now has to be – How much outsourcing do you personally do?
Blogging is also hard in the beginning in my case as a blogger I also learning the SEO. Being a good blogger is a good SEO combined that is a great outsourcing nowadays in the internet marketing. Some of website teach how to make a jumpstart in internet marketing. In this method Hardwork is the top key
Very interesting post
As far as my own experience, Outsourcing is the way to go especially if you have no choice (eg you have a full time job apart your blog or single person company), but the outsourcing learning curve is not easy nor straight-forward for most people/bloggers:
* Find out what to outsource
* Select and Find providers
* Learn how to specify work projects
* Track activities progress
* Quality control: accept “good” instead of chasing “excellent” for any item
* Budget control
You need to know in details how things are done, before you can actually outsource something successfully. If in the real life you are doing a lot of projects’ management activities, then you are likely to be a successfull outsourcer. Successfull outsourcers know what they want, hence they are able to judge the provider deliveries fairly.
If not, I would recommend to enter the Outsourcing world very slowly, with no mission critical tasks, and only repetitive tasks. Lower your expetactions, define what yo want, and monitor the job done.
I like what you say about leverage and focus on revenue generation. That’s for me the main reason to look for outsourcing partners. It works.
Thanks for the resources, its something I’ve done before but only on elance and it didn’t turn out to so successfully.
Maybe its time to try again
Great Article and comments!
In response to some of the comments – my favourite outsourcing site is http://www.ReplaceMyself.com.
In the beginning I focused on doing pretty much everything myself – this drastically helped my learning curve. But then at some point you start realizing that outsourcing can actually help with some mundane tasks such as spinning articles, submitting content to article directories, updating your social media accounts, responding to e-mails, and so on. Remember – WORKING SMART NOT JUST HARD will guarantee you success. It is much better for you to focus on creating ‘pillar articles’, and using your energy to focus on creative ways to improve your business.
As with any business, it is like you are hiring people to work for you. So you need to filter your prospects well.
In addition, I like using Camtasia software to record my trainings – it is like having your viewers looking over your shoulder and seeing exactly what you do. It comes with a bit of a price tag, but in my opinion it is one of the must-have resources.
Dedicated to Your Success
~ Claire ~
@Claire – Thanks for sharing and I admire John Jonas’ teaching as well. His a great Internet marketer and has done very well with outsourcing his business.
I also agree that a lot of people starting out with their Internet businesses get stuck with just doing everything themselves. This is where the mindset needs to change and by taking the next step to begin leveraging your time through outsourcing to people in the Philippines will most definitely fast track your success.
In addition I also share within my membership site with my members on some excellent tools to help communicate with virtual staff and how to train them. Here’s one that I recommend and use all the time: http://www.screentoaster.com.
If you need any additional advice, don’t hesitate to send me an email.
Thanks!
I use Jing a lot – something John Jonas recommend himself.
Outsourcing can be a very useful strategy when used properly. I’ve considered outsourcing for various tasks but I can’t seem to allow others to do my job even if that’ll require me to put more time into it. Right down to the detail, I like to be in charge of it all which may take up all of my time. Maybe I’ll start outsourcing so I can tackle bigger tasks. Thanks for the guest post!
Hopefully I can comment this time. I don’t know why my comments always bounce off your site, Yaro….?
Anyway, I think it’s great that you’re able to outsource your blog. Especially for the part that you know you’re not good at, like graphic or technical stuffs. Or the repetitive ones, like link building for SEO purposes. But doesn’t outsourcing “uploading your blog posts” taking it a little bit too far. Yeah, I know it’s a bit repetitive and all, but c’mon enjoy some of the chores of running a blog can be fun and fulfilling as well.
Just as I said earlier this is hard for a beginner there is someone here can make an advice for a easy jumpstart I really I appreciate your share
yeah, recognize a process in your business that takes up a lot of your time, is repetitive, or something you do not with to do, and outsource it to a capable person.
go on Craigslist (my favorite is Philippines) and post an ad – describe the job/task, interview the candidate, and try him/her out.
Great Article! I believe that outsourcing is a great way to boost my blogging business. Even though It’s an investment that I’m making, in the long run, it’s beneficial to my business. Thanks for sharing!
Personally, I don’t think of outsourcing at this moment of time or my blogging career. I am just starting out and I really want to have a sort of personal experience on my blogging journey. But, this post/article reminds me that soon, If I want my blogging empire to grown, outsourcing is my best option. Thanks for this nice tip buddy. And hey, I am from the Philippines by the way.
It definately maks sense to outsource your blog. In many small businesses, the business owner is time poor. A blog half done does not look professional and can be detrimental to a company’s image.
I agree about getting the blog design outsourced. It’s worked well for me in the past.
Till then,
Jean
Amazing post & Thanks for sharing your information. All steps will help to better outsource if someone will follow strictly.
What can you do to help your blog turn from a bland site about you and into a blog that is optimized to generate you more leads and more money? I have part of the answer for you inside here. Come take a peek.
outsourcing is great…it ultimately saves time…i usually love to write my blog posts with pen and paper and have started outsourcing the type setting.
i do finally proof read before i start posting..it saves me a lot of time …i will consider outsourcing the other parts as discussed here..
thanks…
As much as I would love to outsource my blog related projects, I have difficulty letting go of the responsibility. Finding the right person to do the work is very hard. I am, however, slowing starting to realize the advantage of being able to have more time to do the more important tasks, so outsourcing is becoming more of a viable option for me.
I have sourced out my technical problems and directory submissions however everything else I do myself. I want to feel connected with my blog, if I outsource everyhting then not only is it going to cost a lot of money but I will also not feel like it is mine.
Finding reliable peole to outsource to is also a problem. One freelancing site had a webmaster advertising his work. It was shocking how he had left the site and the owner was putting messages on the site to ask him to finish the work.
Another webmaster had a freelancer leave a virus on his script that redirected all the traffic to his own site.
becareful who you trust if you outsource.
Tyrone, What is your advice on out sourcing SEO? My thinking is that a business owner/blogger should have a good idea of what SEO is and how to do it to properly direct and measure. What is your level of involvement with your out-sourced SEO efforts?
I am inclined to go with your thinking. The mechanics of SEO can be outsourced but content writing with SEO key words must be decided on by the owner.
@passive income blogger
Thank you for choosing Philippines as your favorite country to outsource with. I’m very proud to my country. BTW, I’m an SEO freelancer. You can find me at odesk. If you have available jobs I’m free. This is a very nice post! I loved it! 🙂
@senior living: looks like you are doing some freelance work as we speak 🙂 Please contact me as I am always looking for qualified people (and if you are truly free, I have negative experience working with people who overload their schedules or try to get multiple jobs and do half-@ss jobs).
Yeah I also working outside odesk. I will contact you immediately when I’m totally free.
Thank you also to Tyrone for his nice Blog about outsourcing. Very nice! Keep it up! 🙂
Hi Guys! While we’re on the subject of outsourcing, I am looking for somebody to setup and tweak WordPress themes for me. I’ve got two projects requiring immediate work, and if the results are satisfactory we can take things further. You can IM me on Skype – shamanican
Outsourcing is certainly a useful tool for large sites. For small ones where content is within manageable limits, till growth forces change, outsourcing may not be necessary.
I have been using a freelancer for certain projects on my website and it has been a good experience so far, but does anybody know a website where i can outsource to find spanish speaking freelancers?
Yaro, I feel that is big. I know that when I started out, I did not want to spend the money to outsourse. I really did not see the benefits because I wanted to keep the money. But L learned the hard way that it is a must if you want to really create a decent size business. Outsoursing to other people that either you can train or are skilled at the tasks is really important.
I mean, yeah, I like blogging on yahoo 360 since I dont have to remember any other passwords of the other millions of websites and whatever else, I dont have to go anywhere else to blog and can keep it simple and all in one thing.
Very interesting. After reading this information regarding blogs, I am so delighted. Now I am realize that outsourcing is very must in this competitive world. Also I have learned through this blog that we need not spend time on designing blogs and graphic designing in the blog. Instead of we should spent time in content of this blogs only. Surely I will follow that. Thanks for this useful message
Generally I think outsourcing a company blog is not a great idea, unless you review all new posts before they go live. If you need fresh content though for a niche site or product area that you are promoting, outsourcing is definitely the way to go.
For instance, I run a leading divorce website. I have 5 staff that work on this – 3 people adding links and marketing the content and 2 full time writers who develop content as as good as most western people would. We save probably $4000 a month just for the staff on this site.
We also use and have been developing software to help manage our staff (we have around 50 staff in the Philippines, more in other parts of the world) using a unique piece of software called Time Doctor.
We’re approaching people who are involved with outsourcing to try our new software – it’s completely Free for the next 6 months and we are open to any feature requests that will help it work for your business. Please take a few minutes to check out the product tour: http://www.timedoctor.com/product_tour.html – you can connect with us here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Time-Doctor/133683106653833
It makes outsourcing writing work like this a cinch – it also saves time and ensures that your staff are actually working the hours that you are paying them for…
Sorry, but I prefer Hyperhour over Time Doctor. It’s better in pretty much every way.
Outsourcing can really help a business a lot in terms of minimizing expenses. There are several outsourcing companies out there and there are also many clients that are willing to pay for a good price in exchange of quality content.
Recently, I was looking for a good outsourcing company, and luckily, I found one. It’s OBW, which you can find at http://onlybestwriters.jimdo.com . I ordered once and I think I will hire them again. Really good.
This is truely amazing infromation for seo related persons becuase in this topic you have covered all the basic info regarding seo defination.They also provide additional insight to the readers and the bloggers. Comments offer a different perspective and put a “face” to the readership.
Hi Yaro, Love your Blog, I recently signed up to your Membership Mastermind so I thought, but the course I received is Blog Mastermind, really loving it, I have lots to learn, there are things that I see on your Blog plus other Blogs out their that make me say, wish I knew how to do that, but…as they say we all have to start somewhere, and we are all learning something new wether you are a novice Blogger or even a experience marketeer. May I ask, is the Membership Mastermind still open as I really want to know how to start a membership site, Blogs are easy to start and maintain, as long as the topic that you are writing about is also something that you are passionate about, I believe thats the key here… great site Yaro. Nigel Spence, From The UK
Or you can outsource all of that to one company so that it would not be much of a hassle to handle.
While outsorcing you have to be very careful with whom you do business. A lot of people out there are just looking for a quick buck, and you could end up wasting a lot of money and time in re-work.
Outsourcing is supposed to save you time and money. Although it is the “stylish” thing to do these days, you have to make sure that you are NOT outsourcing any critical parts of the business, like your marketing, for instance.
Thanks for this very helpful list, Tyrone.
I’d like to know the best software for automating submitting each post to directories, and if it’s still a good idea with the latest Google updates?
Yes outsourcing is a wise decision but if you are still struggling to make a buck, it’s not really practical and there are many risk involved. Who knows, the guy you trained to outsource all your work will be your competitor someday?
Fantastic blog post!
I am just starting and this blog really helped me feel better about the future of the website and where I can take it once I get momentum. My partner and I use ODesk and ELance for a lot of different jobs but I never thought about hiring for the month or for the blog. Cheers for the ideas I will be trying them out over the next few months.
Great advice for not only beginners, but intermediate and advanced bloggers.
Great post! I sometimes think that I can do it all which, in the end, is more time consuming and overwhelming. You hit on some great points, it’s finding the right people, people you can trust with your work. It can’t hurt, right? Thanks for sharing!
I definately agree with you because outsourcing makes the work easier and faster. Sometimes i try doing alot by myself but end up achieving little.
Actually, if you have the pictures already, scheduling posts is automatically done for posts hosted on WordPress.org (not wordpress.com where they just monetize your free blog by adding ads over which you have no control).
I find that writing posts directly on the blog that has once been set up for SEO and automated sharing is as fast as asking someone to do it for you.
Outsourcing the set up might be a good idea though.