Time is money. Well, sort of, because that’s only partly true. If you still have a regular job working for the man, then you really are trading hours for dollars. You could be paid a salary or you could be paid an hourly wage, but you are effectively selling your time to your employer. That’s the “normal” way to make a living and, as you may have figured out, the dot com lifestyle is anything but normal.
All the Time in the World?
The truth of the matter is that money is theoretically limitless whereas the hours that you have are inherently limited. They’re finite. You only have so many hours in the day and you only have so many days on this planet. This does not mean that your earning potential is finite, because you can outsource so many of your regular tasks out to someone else to do, freeing up your time to spend it in much more enjoyable and fruitful ways.
If we were to look at the world of professional blogging, the question then arises of which tasks you should be outsourcing and which tasks you should be doing on your own. I came across a post on Dumb Little Man that lists the six most commonly outsourced tasks and the one that came out on top was custom research at 31% of requests.
For bloggers, this makes a lot of sense. We all recognize that content is king, but producing quality content can be awfully time-consuming. One of the best strategies for writing great blog posts is to have excellent research. Instead of doing this yourself, you simply come up with the topic and get an outsourced worker to do the grunt work for you. Once they’ve gathered up all the vital information, you can piece together an excellent article in your own words from your own viewpoint.
Let Other People Do the Work
The other categories of requests on that list aren’t as directly applicable to conventional blogging. You probably don’t have to deal with customer service all that much and you don’t need someone to book a restaurant for you. However, as your blog grows, you may want to outsource to a sales team to help you attract the best advertising partnerships, for example.
Realistically, the kinds of tasks that you want to outsource on your blog will depend on where your expertise lies and where you want to spend your time. If you don’t know much about graphic design, get someone else to design your book cover and create your blog logo. If you’re not at all a WordPress whiz, get someone else to code the plugins and features that you desire.
Any Way You Want It
While you may be inclined to write and edit every last word that appears on your blog, you may find that as your blog grows, your needs will grow too. When John Chow dot Com first started, every post was written by John. Today, he has a whole team of writers — among which I am one — who contribute regularly to this blog. Outsourcing your writing can help to accelerate growth, because it means you can have more quality content with less effort on your part.
In theory, you can remove yourself from your blog entirely and let it effectively run itself with a team of freelancers and outsourced workers. That’s up to you. If there’s anything that you don’t want to do, there are bound to be people who are willing to do it for you for the right price.