The Little Black Book of Online Business: 1001 Insider Resources Every Business Owner Needs

Chapter 49. Outsourcing

One of the keys to being a successful business owner is to focus your time on the things only you can do.

Say you're drawing a salary of $100,000 per year from your business. For a 52-week year, working 40 hours a week, that means your time is worth $48 an hour.

I know what you're thinking—for business owners, a 40-hour week is about as real as mermaids and unicorns, right? But use the resources in this section and you may actually have a shot at making it real.

Now, think about the things you do in a typical day. Are you spending time futzing around with your web site, getting things "just right"? How much time do you spend cleaning the junk out of your e-mail in-box? Are you personally answering customer support questions about billing and fulfillment?

You know where this is leading: How much of your $48 hourly time do you spend doing jobs worth $10 per hour?

The efficiencies of the Internet have given rise to a myriad of companies that will do those $10 an hour jobs for you—and because of the money value in different economies, the same kind of work can often be had for much less than $10 an hour.

For instance, I just did a quick check and found one offshore company offering various services for under $5 per hour.

A word of caution here: The quality of work, speed of completion, and communications ability of the people employed by these companies will vary. So it's a good idea to hire two or three people at first and give them small and simple tasks ...