How to build an online business without hustling – Part 1 – This is my ultimate goal… This is my dream!
Why, because I am tired of hustling…there is never an end to it. There’s always more you can do, and often there is more you MUST do, or suffer the consequences.
So I set about finding a way to do this because I knew in my gut there must be a way.
Do You Have Time or Money to Invest
When you’re learning how to start a business, the majority of information you’re going to find is aimed at people who have very little, if any money to invest in it – or who don’t mind rolling up their sleeves and investing a lot of time.
But there’s a whole host of people who have careers already supporting them. Many others already retired. These ones want to invest their surplus funds. These people don’t want to devote a lot of time taking a hands-on approach.
It doesn’t take extremely deep pockets or a full-time work schedule to start and grow your online empire. You have likely seen many mentions of automation and technology or strategies designed to free someone from a burdensome schedule.
If You Can Invest Money, You Can Grow Faster
There are three specific ways you can become an online entrepreneur without taking on the task of doing all of the work on your own. If you have some money to put towards the growth of your business, you can grow it even faster.
This doesn’t mean you’re absent from your brand – just overseeing, delegating and managing tasks rather than having to put yourself in a position of overwhelm. Most marketers don’t start with this concept – but as time goes on and they begin suffering from a lack of down time, they seek it out desperately.
Below, you’re going to find a plan that helps you start off on the right foot. Start by determining how much detail work you are doing that you can delegate. Set aside time to implement this approach and gain back those lost precious hours in your day.
Take Advantage of the Option to Outsource
“Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to have thousands of dollars in order to get your business off the ground using a system of outsourcing or delegating to other individuals.”
You can outsource certain tasks to others on an as needed basis, and you can often find freelance service providers who have discounted prices in the beginning as they try to grow their reputation and ratings, even though their quality should demand much more.
If you find people who have a really good portfolio and profile, and they are charging less than a fair cost for a project, keep in mind that that may be a starter price point, and that you should expect to pay more as your workload with that individual continues.
There are different things you can outsource so that you can take a hands off approach to growing your online business. It not only allows you to reduce your own workload, but it also lets you move forward in your business with content, branding, and other elements that are more professional than what you may be skilled at doing on your own.
Many online marketers don’t want to be do the drudge work, such writing content or answering emails. Instead, they want to focus on the decision making, or executive level aspects of being an online entrepreneur.
Expert Help Is All Around You
There are many people out there who would love to take on those tasks for you. They may have more experience and skills than you do, and you don’t have to hire someone full time in order to get access to these talented individuals.
“When you are considering outsourcing so that you don’t have to do as much work, you can also consider it an investment in your business because you would take longer to do a task that you didn’t enjoy or were not good at, and that means your momentum for earning profits would slow down, or stop.”
Usually, if a freelancer specializes in something like ghostwriting or graphic design, they are faster than you would be. And you have the ability to work with multiple freelance individuals as you scale your business and reinvest your profits.
Outsource the Most Burdensome Tasks
“If your goal is to eliminate as much of the work as possible, then you want to look at the most burdensome tasks that are on your to do list. These are the ones that eat away most of your time or that you struggle with”
It might be some sort of repetitive administrative tasks, such as responding to dozens of emails. It might be batch work like queuing up emails and blog posts to be published, or using a social media management tool to schedule your social marketing content.
Once you have a list of what you need to clear off your plate and onto someone else’s, you can begin looking for freelance individuals who would be a good fit for your brand. You never want to choose price alone as your qualification for whether or not you hire someone.
It will do you no good to hire someone at a cheaper price point if the deliverables are subpar. That will only mean you have to throw away what they gave you, which will be a waste of money or hire someone to do it over again, which means you are out double the money.
There are different platforms you can go to in order to outsource your projects and tasks. For example, you might want to sort through the listings on Fiverr or look on Upwork to find suitable freelance service providers to handle your job.
Rely on Your Connections in the Industry
As you begin developing connections with others in the industry, you can also ask for recommendations for freelance service providers. Sometimes there are high-quality individuals who only get clients in this way.
Be sure and look at the feedback and ratings that other clients and customers provided. Take a look at their portfolio and listings to make sure you understand exactly what you are agreeing to, when you are working with them.
For example, if you hired someone to write a blog post, you want to know the length of the post, according to word count not pages (because some may use a large font), whether or not they allow any revisions, and what the turnaround time is.
You’ll also want to see what they expect in terms of payment period oftentimes, if the project is large enough, you can put the money in escrow and have project milestones along the way until completion.
You don’t want to outsource a large project in the very beginning. When you are new to working with someone, you want to make sure that they are going to do the job as you instructed, in the right amount of turnaround time.
Learn by Outsourcing Small Project
So start with something small and test their abilities so that you aren’t risking a lot of investment with that individual. Scale your use of their services slowly until you feel fully comfortable that they are ethical and capable of working well with you.
By working consistently with freelancers, and treating them well (remember, they can leave feedback for you, too), you’ll be able to save a spot on their calendar to ensure all of your outsourcing needs are met.
Be Clear About What You Expect
To ensure a smooth process of handing your work over to others, you want to be clear about what you expect, when you need it done by, and any other specifications that will prevent a miscommunication.
Check in with the freelancer from time to time, but don’t micro manage them. If they stop responding, you may need to get your money refunded and find someone with a better work ethic.
“You can hire freelancers to do your content creation. The ghostwriter can write blog posts, email autoresponders, lead magnets, bonuses, info products and sales copy for you so that you don’t have to lift a finger“
Also,You can find people to outsource to who handle all of your graphic design. Whether you need branding elements for your website and social media channels or you need someone to create the product image (like an eCover) and sales copy graphics, hand it over to them and lessen your work load.
You can also hire a virtual assistant to take care of the day-to-day administrative work for you.
They can respond to the backlog of email inquiries, take care of your social media content publishing and engagement, queue up blog posts and email autoresponders and more.
For this type of position, you will usually be giving them work on a per project or hourly basis. Select daily tasks that you want to delegate and turn them over to an administrative assistant. This person will complete certain projects each day by working for a specific number of hours.
How to build an online business without hustling – Part 1 shows you that you can build your business without overwhelm. It just takes some smart planning.
Be sure to read Part 2 of How to Build An Online Business Without Hustling – Part 2
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