Are you overwhelmed with work? Here are 6 things to outsource
If you're overwhelmed by a lengthy list of tasks, it might be time to hire reinforcements. Below are six tasks that you could outsource to a freelancer or virtual assistant.
If you are an entrepreneur, your plate is always full.
The projects just keep on growing. Your inbox is full, you have 17,17 Excel spreadsheets open at once, you haven't looked at your social media alerts within a week, you keep catching typos whenyou write blog posts.
The list of tasks you have to complete is way too extensive for one person. It's impossible to do everything on your own -- and that's okay.
The time has come to bring in reinforcements. Namely, virtual assistants (VAs) as well as freelancers.
The outsourcing of repetitive tasks will give you precious time back to invest in growing your company. From the entry of data to social media management There's a myriad of activities taking up your time that can be outsourced to a third party.
In this post this article, we'll discuss six jobs which you could outsource to save time (and your mental health).
But first ask yourself if outsourcing actuallyworth it?
Yes, and here's why.
Why outsource tasks to a virtual assistant or freelancer?
This is especially the case in light of this mind-boggling stat: Workers tend to devote 2.8 hours a day on productive tasks.
If you're a business owner who is full-time this number will be more for the person who works full-time. But chances are, you're still working on tasks that aren't the best utilization of your time.
By outsourcing those lower-growth repetitive jobs to freelancers or a virtual assistant (VA), you can free up your time to concentrate on higher-growth to-dos.
Hire an expert tackle the tasks you don't want to spend time on (or do not really enjoy).
Save costs and time over employing a full-time worker.
These benefits are why 70% of small- and medium-sized companies (SMBs) say they have employed a freelancer. 81% saying they plan to continue to employ freelancers.
The hiring of virtual employees similar to freelancers or VAs -- has been proven to boost productivity.
Research says remote employees are up to 13.5 percent more productive than office workers.
All in all, outsourcing tasks to freelancers or a VA will help take certain of your most unpopular work-related tasks that have the lowest growth potential off your to-do list and free up your time to concentrate on growing your business.
Then, there's only one remaining question you need to address which tasks you should outsource?
6 tasks to outsource if you're running out of time
1. Organization and administrative work
When someone thinks of outsourcing the work of a virtual assistant They usually think of offloading time-consuming jobs like data entry or transcription. These are certainly part of many VAs tasks.
But VAs can help business owners with a wide variety of tasks and that's probably the reason the world outsourcing market -- which includes VAs -- amounted to 92.5 billion dollars in the year 2019.
A few of the most commonly performed VA assignments are:
Calendar management and scheduling
Data entry
Management of projects
Event planning
Email marketing
PR outreach and follow-ups
Invoicing, managing accounts payables, and expensing
Support for customers, which includes moderating accounts on social media
CRM software management
Competitor analysis
Transcribing video and audio file
Vendor management
Webinar management
Social media marketing
Phew. If that list seems to cover a broad range of capabilities, it's due to the fact that VAs can be among the team members with the greatest versatility available.
If you're looking for the services of a VA be sure to know which tasks you want the VA to concentrate onin addition, you should have funds to reward for them in a fair way based on their skills.
The current market rates for VAs are:
$25-40 per hour for general admin skills
For advanced abilities
A minimum of $50 per hour is required for skills that are specialized
While we wait, let's look at some other specific tasks to outsource -such as bookkeeping and accounting.
#2: Bookkeeping and accounting
If you're like me -- nota numerals person there's probably a hundred other things you'd rather do than crunch numbers.
If you're making less than five figures from your business and you don't have an abundance of expenditures to keep track of it's likely that you'll be able to manage your finances with software such as Quickbooks .
If your earnings are higher than this, hiring an accountant who is freelance can help take the nitty-gritty of balancing the books off your hands and help simplify your financial management.
Accounting is among the most frequently performed business processes that are outsourced to a third party. .
and there's an excellent reason why. Accounting is among the primary tasks required by small-sized businesses, especially considering that 29% of startups fail due to running short of funds.
Estimate, manage your finances, and pay taxes for each quarter.
Manage your cash flow
Track and follow the
Contrary to software for accounting, a bookkeeper or accountant can provide you with individualized guidance and address your questions in more depth since they are familiar with the specific tax issues you face.
Some bookkeepers even specialize in helping professionals in specific fields. As an example, Friedman, Kannenberg & Company, PC specializes in providing accounts services for musicians or bands, music equipment retailers, and music schools.
If you want to find an accountant who knows the ins and outs of your industry, Google "accountant specializing in the industry you work in".
Look, as a small company owner, accounting and bookkeeping services should be among the first areas you should consider outsourcing (unless you are really interested in analyzing tax codes (I won't be able to).
Apart from the more numerical tasks like data entry and accounting, you can outsource technical and creative tasks, too.
#3: Web development and design
It takes people about 0.05 second to make a decision about your website.
It's the reason having a reliable web developer in your corner important.
Your site must appear appealing visually, simple to navigate, and informative. In this day and age of instant gratification the website must be swift.
26.9% of ecommerce customers will wait less than four seconds for the page to load and 45.4 percent of those who visited stated that they were less likely to purchase something if the page load speed was slower than they anticipated.
You also need to ensure that your site is responsive to mobile devices. Traffic from mobile devices accounts around half internet traffic in the world Visitors are 5 times more likely to quit your site when it's not mobile-friendly.
Additionally, Google announced in the year of 2018 that they're boosting the ranking of sites optimized for mobile on their mobile-friendly search results making it clear that the presence of a responsive or mobile-optimized site can help your search engine optimizationtoo.
(You can check your site's present mobile-friendlyness using Google's mobile-friendly checker tool .)
Delegating your web design task to a skilled web developer or designer will aid you in designing a website which loads fast, functions well on smartphones and matches your branding image.
So, where can you find web developers and designers who can make your site shine?
A few of the best websites for finding web-based developers include:
The Website Builder allows you to build a site to sell an infinite number of digital products such as online courses subscriptions, memberships, as well as digital downloads -- all without needing to ever enter a line of code, troubleshoot a finicky WordPress template, or even install the wrong plugin.
Have a look at the website Mallika Malhotra brand expert and photographer, built with 's site editor:
Mallika has customized her site to fit her brand and design without the need for the services of a designer or developer in order to create it from scratch.
Also, we take care for mobile optimization, site speeds, and all of other technical issues also take care of mobile optimization, site speed and all the other technical issues. Mallika (and you can concentrate on selling and creating items instead.
An attractive, user-friendly website is a must-have, but without great content, it can just take you so far. Luckily, you can also hire copywriting or content writers.
#4: Copywriting and content writing
Making and carrying out a successful content marketing strategy is a long process and effort, especially when blogs typically take three hour and 45 minutes to compose.
If you're looking to put up weekly posts, it's the extra time every week, which most solopreneurs aren't able to afford.
Additionally, various types of content require different types of writing.
There's a wealth of experienced, skilled freelance copywriters, content marketers and copywriters available to assist you develop content that appeals to your target audience, and boosts sales.
Outsource writing assignments in all kinds, such as:
Blogging
Writing press releases
SEO-related services like linking-building, keyword research as well as backlinks
For finding talented freelance content writers, Jodi Harris, director of content strategy and editorial at the Content Marketing Institute, recommends these tactics :
Connect with your professional networks and ask if they have writers to suggest.
Place the job to a writer's job board focused on freelancer-based services such as upwork.com as well as LinkedIn's Pro-Finder .
Use an agency for creative staffing or an online platform for content marketing such as Contently . (This option tends to come with a higher price tag, however.)
Even if you manage writing content in-house, you can ensure that the content on your blog and website is top-quality by outsourcing proofreading and editing procedures.
#5: Editing (writing videos, writing, and podcasts)
Your customers want to be able to access as well as hear or read amazing content from your company. People enjoy the content they consume.
Take podcasts, for example. 64 percent of Americans listened to some type of online audio (like podcasts) in 2018, with weekly online audio listeners reported an average of 17 hours of listening a week.
This is a huge amount of material your audience could potentially enjoy from you -- and plenty of information you can use to gain your audience's trust, loyalties, and money. Yet, content that isn't of high quality is unlikely to convert viewers to customers.
Editors are the ones to call. An experienced editor can be the difference between good content as well as outstandingcontent.
When writing content, editors can help writers sound at their finest, convey their message across clearly and avoid common writing mistakes .
It's also possible to use an application like Grammarly for an additional check However, it's not meant to entirely replace human editors -- even if you're proofreading your own work. Grammarly's AI sometimes misses errors (or finds errors where there are none).
It all depends on what you're searching for as well as the price you're willing and able to affordPodcast producers can assist with everything from reducing background noise to offering an editorial perspective that can help the show tell a more compelling storytelling.
Last but not least, video editing is another time-consuming task that outsourcing can help you with.
For editors who are looking for freelancers to edit all types of content, check out freelance marketplaces like Upwork as well as Freelancer.com .
Keep in mind this old saying that you only get what you buy.
Instead of choosing freelancers who promise the lowest rates make sure you find skilled editors. This will help you receive the most efficient service possibleit will also will save you lots of time (and an enormous headache) later on.
Like video and audio editing, our final task on the list is one that takes a lot of skill and effort to master. This makes it an ideal candidate for outsourcing.
#6 graphic design
Let's start by putting this off the table: Photoshop is hard. (And I'm not just declaring that simply because I earned an A in high school's graphic design class.)
If you're a enterprise owner, odds are you're not in a position to master graphic design. Visual content is, however, a key part of branding and online marketing.
Indeed, more than 90% of purchase decisions can be influenced by images and 40% of marketing professionals said that original graphics have helped them achieve the goals they set for their marketing in this year.
A freelance graphic designer will help build your visual brand across your site, downloads as well as social media profiles and more.
Freelance graphic design deliverables might include:
Logos
Infographics
PowerPoint templates
Design and layout of ebooks
To save even more time it is possible to commission ebook and slide templates that you could use for a number of times, which means it's not necessary to design these assets each time.
In this case, for example, turning your data-heavy blog post into an infographic will make the content easier for your audience to absorb -- and infographics get shared and liked through social media by three times than any other kind of media.
To find a graphic designer, check out design marketplaces like DesignCrowd and, obviously, UpWork's design section .
Both websites connect businesses to thousands of designers who are freelance, and design work ranging from web design and email templates, to packaging and T-shirt design.
Here's the bottom line: Like all of our tasks today visually appealing content is a vital element of developing your company -- one that you don't have to tackle alone.
You can outsource these six jobs to reduce your list of to-dos
"There aren't enough hours in an entire day" is a common cliche that has a reason: It's true in particular if you're an entrepreneur trying to build a business by yourself.
Working with a freelancer or virtual assistant can aid you to regain the time you spent. In case you're wondering, here's the six things you should consider outsourcing
Administrative and organizational work including data entry, schedule management, and transcription
Accounting and bookkeeping to keep you on top of your tax flow and your cash flow obligations
Web design and development to create a UX/UI the audience will appreciate
Content writing and copywriting, making sure your content marketing sales material stands out the rest of the pack (and the Google results for searches)
Audio, video and editing of written content so you don't have to be concerned about choppy or misspelled audio
Visual and graphic design for displaying your branding identity and draw potential customers' attention
The idea of asking for help may seem daunting, and there's often lots of pressure placed on entrepreneurs to do it all independently. There's nothing wrong with outsourcing tasks so you can focus on the things you love to dodeveloping and expanding your company.