First off, this post is not for beginners, or even Affiliates whose Business is not bringing in a decent profit. If you don’t have extra money to spend, do not attempt this at home…
Seriously, I think it’s really backwards thinking to outsource everything when you’re a newbie. You’ll never learn this Business from the inside and you’ll never know how much money you may be losing. DO NOT get stuck with outsourcing everything without first learning the ropes in this Business!
Moving on…
In any Business, you need a team. The problem with most Businesses is that they fail to build “the right” team, with “the right” players. Rather than spend quality time looking for quality team members (employees), most managers simply stick to “good enough.”
In Affiliate Marketing, you cannot use this way of thinking and become successful. If you choose to build a team, you need the best players possible, or your Business can literally fail overnight.
If you need Design work done and your Designer is a week late – this can destroy a campaign, right? So why stick with this person?
It amazes me how many chances some people give others, even after they’ve screwed up more than once, JUST because they were simply too LAZY to spend more time on finding a Designer (in our example) that will be prepared, or even a few backups to turn to in case that person is not capable of doing the given task.
I’m currently building my own “rolodex” of “team players” that I can test out for small jobs and slowly, but surely, be able to count on them to do bigger tasks… right now I’m taking names, emails, AIM info, etc. for Banner Designers, LP Designers, XHTML and CSS coders, PHP programmers, Server Admin’s, etc.
Since I need my Business to move as smoothly as possible, I’ve already been slowly building this team and testing out some designers, content writers (articles, blog posts, etc) and even a few XHTML/CSS coders to implement my LP Designs, etc.
I’m always struggling to get my work done, so now it’s time to step it up several notches and have others helping me out in my Business. Some people are looking for work, and a ton of Internet Marketers are looking/needing to hire!
If you’re wasting time with doing stuff that is NOT a strength of yours, you’re KILLING your Business. You need to focus on your strengths, and have other people fill in the voids.
If you can’t write good, why bother? There’s plenty of people out there that are very affordable, if not downright CHEAP, that provide excellent content. The same can be said about Landing Page Designers, Programmers, etc.
The more you focus on your weaknesses, the more your Business BECOMES that weakness. You’ll be wasting valuable time trying to accomplish something that someone else has been fully trained to do, and can do for cheaper than the time you’ve put into the same project.
I know of some people that actually go out of their way to learn something new – just because they think they need to program something themselves… this is STUPID and a MAJOR waste. If you want to learn something because you have a burning desire to learn it, then go learn it. But do it on YOUR OWN time, not your Business’ time!
Go figure out what your strengths are, your weaknesses, and even what you don’t like doing — and then write them down. Make a list of things you’d love to have OTHER people do, and go out and find those people!
Stop wasting time and money on pointless work. There’s far too many people out there that are more than capable of doing that job for you, for cheap, while you work on YOUR STRENGTHS.
