Outsourcing For Maximum Success

This may sound silly, but if there’s one eye-opening thing I’ve learned since leaving my 9-to-5 last year, it’s that each day still only has 24 hours (who knew?) and I still can’t do everything myself….at least not if I want to maximize my productivity, and achieve greater (and faster) results.

I thought I’d share a list of things that I’ve been outsourcing recently, how much it costs, and where I find the contractors in hope that it will get your wheels turning on how you can get more done by getting some help.

Research and Article Writing/Re-writing:

I hired 5 writers via Odesk.com to do research and write articles for some niche sites we’re developing (more on that another day). This cost me between $1.75-$2.50 per article. I received over 50 applications within 48 hours, despite my rather low budget that I advertised for the assignment. My writers span multiple countries -Philippines, Canada, India, Kenya.

What I like to do is hire multiple writers and have them do a trial assignment. This time I provided each of them with 3 articles to do and told them that the one who did the best job would get to do the remaining ~20 that need to be done. Two out of the five writers are clearly stand outs, and if I didn’t hire five, it would’ve been difficult to figure out who would be the best fit for me (in this case “best” means solid English writing skills, quality information, speed of delivery).

WordPress Theme Customization

My undergraduate degree is in computer science and I used to be a software engineer in my early years at IBM, so I still suffer a little from “I can do that myself” or “I can figure that out by myself” disease when it comes to technical things. The fact is that I could’ve fiddled around with PHP code on my WordPress theme for 3 or 4 hours to customize my WordPress theme to look exactly how I wanted it, or I could pay someone on oDesk $15 to do it for me while I focused on other more enjoyable activities. I chose the later!

Graphics Development

One of my favorite places to get graphics done is Fiverr.com where you can get work done for $5. However you should know that Fiverr.com is a crapshoot. Sometimes what you’ll get is a complete bomb, while other times you’ll be astounded by the quality of work you received for a mere five bucks. I’ve had 4 graphics gigs on Fiverr.com and 2 of them were a success!

Shae’s Fiverr Rule Of Thumb: Don’t use Fiverr when the work you’re getting done is for a time-sensitive project and don’t use Fiverr if your graphics needs are rather complex. Always review feedback and portfolio before choosing someone for your gig.

Outsourcing For Your Real Estate Investing Business

All of the above activities were for our online business, but there are a number of things that you can outsource for your offline real estate investing business activities as well. Here are some ideas:

Placing bandit signs (I have friends who have paid $1 per sign to have signs placed)
Screening seller calls (they ask the questions, record the answers, filter through the leads, and send you the ones you want to take further action on)
Printing letters
Handwriting letters and envelopes (plus stamping!)
Taking photographs of properties
Driving for dollars – looking for vacant properties or For Sale By Owners
Getting leads from public records

Or perhaps you need assistance with some online tasks for your real estate investing:

posting ads on classified ad sites (Craigslist, Backpage, etc)
creating squeeze pages / landing pages to collect buyer and seller leads
writing articles or press releases to post online
creating or editing videos

A useful exercise is to map out every single task that needs to be done for your business….identify all the moving parts. Then you can begin to categorize them into activities that truly require YOU and which ones can be done by someone else (or perhaps don’t even need to be done at all!).

How To Get Help

Outside of ODesk and Fiverr, I’ve also hired both short term and longer term contractors from Guru.com and Elance.com. However, there are other creative ways to get things done in your business, real estate investing or otherwise. For example, you can find a hungry (for success not food!) person who is ready to take action and wants to learn the business. These “interns” will work for you for free in exchange for your mentorship.

By the way, don’t think that you have to be an expert to have an intern. If you’ve been working at the business for any amount oftime, you have more experience than a person who is brand spanking new. You will have something to offer that intern, even if it’s sharing as you’re learning together and or just serving as a motivation.