iElectrify

Hi, I’m Nicole Dean and I’m a guest expert here this week.

When I approached Sharice about blogging on Ielectrify.com this week, I asked her which topic she’d like me to discuss. She mentioned that she receives quite a few “outsourcing gone bad” stories from her clients. (They had used a different designer and then came to her to fix the mess.)

So, we decided upon the topic “Common Mistakes that Can Sabotage your Outsourcing Success and How to Avoid Them”.  (I hope she’ll share her advice and experience here, too.)

But, of all of the millions of marketers on the planet, why’d she ask me? Well for a few reasons.

1. I’m doing a Blog Summer Tour where I’m guest blogging on at least 13 great blogs including this one this summer. It’s a fun publicity adventure and so far it’s been very well received. Hopefully you’ll like what I have to say and you’ll keep an eye on me in the future. (Translation: I was available.)
2. I earn a nice living online. It’s enough that it’s my only form of income for my family and it gives me the ability to travel and the freedom to do as I please. (I’ve been around awhile and am doing well – not some fly by night scamster.)
3. I successfully Outsource many tasks in my business. At any given time in my own business, I have upwards of 15 contractors working for me. The types of jobs they do varies from graphics to customer support and everything in between. I’ve had some of the same helpers working for me since 2006 – so I must be doing something right. (I’m not making stuff up. I live it.)
4. I have been an Affiliate Manager for several years, and my biggest client is Jimmy D. Brown (who is also my mentor and friend). He’s counseled some of the biggest gurus online since 1999 and is highly respected and is responsible for the success of many marketers online – so I know a thing or two about being a freelancer/consultant, too. This gives me the added benefit of seeing both sides of the “outsourcing coin”.
5. I outsource tasks in my personal life that are not business-related. Because I view my time as very valuable, I outsource my lawn care, my pool care, my house cleaning, as well as some of my meals.
6. I also created a course with Jimmy called Outsource Weekly where we teach marketers just like you how to be more efficient, how to automate, and how to outsource pretty much anything in your life.

I tell you these things, not to brag, but to give you an idea of my qualifications so you can better decide whether or not you’d like to listen to me and trust what I have to say. I think you should know a bit about any teacher before you decide to follow their advice. Don’t you?

So let’s get started discussing “5 of the Biggest Mistakes that You can Make When Outsourcing AND How to Avoid Them“.

The first mistake that I’d like to discuss is the most common one in my opinion.

Mistake #1: Waiting Too Long to Outsource.

“I’ll outsource later. I can’t afford it yet.”

Do you find yourself saying that? I can totally understand. I waited too long to start outsourcing, too, and I didn’t think that I could afford it, either. That’s very logical and practical to wait until you can afford to outsource, but that logic can cause two big problems, depending on the success you achieve. Or, you could be like I was, and find yourself managing to be in both predicaments at the same time.

Scenario #1: Waiting too long to Outsource — and Sabotaging your Chances of Success.

I find this happening all the time, especially with people new to internet marketing.

Let’s call this marketer Mary.

Mary knows she need a domain and hosting. She spends two months trying to figure out how and where to get those and how to set them up.

Then, she knows she needs a website of some sort, so she asks around and is told that a Word Press blog is the best options for her, so she spends another few months figuring out DNS, installation, and RSS and plugins and widgets.

But then she doesn’t like the header or the font size or style or… or… or…

So, she ends up spending another month messing around in her blog, trying to figure out how to make her blog pretty and continues to get more and more jaded about this whole “making money online” thing.

She realizes that she has spent at least four months working on her “online business” and hasn’t even posted one blog post, let alone figured out how to monetize the darned thing. And, after all those months, she doesn’t even like the look of her blog, plus, there are some weird errors, and the RSS doesn’t work.

She’s ready to throw in the towel and hasn’t even gotten out of the gate. Meanwhile, she’s spent over $150 on eBooks that haven’t helped one bit!

Let’s compare her with another marketer, Marina.

Marina decides to start an online business. She hires a coach right away to ask questions instead of trying to figure everything out herself.

Her coach sends her to a hosting company that she recommends, and helps her choose a domain name and sign up. Her coach then guides her to an affordable designer who sets up the blog, installs all of the plugins and makes it look just like she’d envisioned.

In the meantime, the coach has guided Marina to start writing and recording a podcast. In under a month, Marina is already starting to build momentum in her online business – and is amazed at how easy and affordable this “making money online” thing is.

Now, in these examples, you can replace Word Press with Amember or an Autoresponder or setting up your shopping cart or whatever. The fact is that you don’t NEED to learn how to set up everything yourself, especially if it’s something that you’ll only ever do once.

Don’t believe me?  I have nearly 100 websites, and I’ve never once installed WordPress myself. I know that I could figure it out, but I don’t need the mental clutter, honestly. I just go to ReliableWebs.com and they install one for free. Then, I go to my designer and she does the rest for under $200. Easy peasy. Why on earth would I give myself a stomachache over all that work? I’d rather be at the beach.

Scenario #2: Waiting too long to Outsource – and then Finding yourself Too Successful.

I can talk about this mistake, too, because I did it, too!

After crawling my way up the learning curve with bloody little fingers to earn a full time income, I realized that I was now in a different pickle.

I was actually successful! Yay, me! But, uh, oh. I had another problem.

With more websites, more customers, more affiliates, more traffic, more everything… you have more work. More hosting and domains to keep up with, more WordPress and plugin updates, more marketing to do, more customer support, more email lists, more stats to track, more everything.

I had created a full-time job for myself, just maintaining everything that I had built. I had no time for growth and I was stuck trying to keep up with everything that I had created.

YUCK. I quickly realized that the more successful I got, the more miserable I would be, unless I made some changes – and quickly.

So, if you plan to be successful, P.L.A.N. to be successful.

Prepare: Prepare yourself by learning more about outsourcing from the start. Don’t wait until you need it. You can study my course at Outsource Weekly, or find another one that resonates more with you. However, the more prepared you are, the less you’ll panic or put off outsourcing – or make costly mistakes.

Look: Look around at sites like Shelancers.com to see what Virtual Assistants have to offer, what prices Ghostwriters charge, and where you can find a Designer for a reasonable fee. Of course, Sharice offers her services here, so contact her for quotes for any work that you’ll need done. She offers the following:  Web Design and SEO, Sales Copywriting, & E-Commerce.

Assess: Assess your business tasks. First of all, what tasks make your business special? Compare that list to a list of tasks that you dread doing. Take a good look at that list and you’ll find some pretty glaring areas where you can being to outsource very minor tasks while learning more about how to outsource effectively.

Network: Ask your friends for recommendations. What do they outsource? Who do they use? Are they happy with their work?

Well, goodness, that got long. And, that’s only one of the five common mistakes that I’ll be covering this week.

I’ll be back tomorrow with more. Thanks for reading!

Warmly,
Nicole Dean

Nicole Dean on Twitter| Sherice Jacob on Twitter | Nicole’s Blog

Note: Please add your comments, questions, opinions, and experiences. I will give prizes to several of the commenters randomly just for participating, so be sure to stop by all week.

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Tags: marketing tips, mistakes, nicole dean, outsourcing