Virtual Assistant Outsourcing: What To Outsource To A Virtual Assistant

When’s the right time to consider virtual assistant outsourcing? And how about the question of what to outsource to a virtual assistant? Outsourcing to a virtual assistant is a critical step to grow your online business, especially if you’re just a business of one person. Here’s some pretty useful insight and guidance on the subject…

“Hey, good morning my friend. As you can see this is a very different setting. Why? Well I’m actually in my house. This is one of our spare rooms here.

I want to actually address a specific topic today. A lot of times on The Drive, I’m kind of just talking about what it is we’re up to and various things like that, which I will always keep doing.

But today, I want to actually answer a specific thing. And there’s a few topics that I really want to address. So probably over the next few Drives, I’m actually going to address specific topics.

The first of these topics though – let me just address one specific one here… When do you know it’s right to start outsourcing things? And how do you do it? What should you outsource?

So really, we’re going to talk about outsourcing for a few minutes. Y’know, when you’re building an online business, and in life in general, you only really have two main sort of ‘commodities’ (or whatever you want to call them) that you can put in.

One is time, and the other is money. And the way I think about money in the business is…

Money Allows Me To Buy Back Time

That’s kind of how I view it. It’s like you’ve got – imagine if you’ve got two coupons. You’ve got ‘time coupons’, and you’ve got ‘money coupons’. And you’ve got to spend them, like, they’re both being spent.

Say every day, you’ve got one-hour blocks. So you’ve got 24 ‘one-hour block’ coupons in a day of your time. And then money – however much money you have – to put into your business.

Every hour that goes by, you’re spending a time coupon. And they don’t come back – they are very limited, right? And you have money coupons that you can put into your business as well.

Now obviously, that money has to be allocated to everything that you do in your online business. So, for example, you’re going to need money for website hosting, you’re going to need money for an autoresponder, you’re probably going to need money – as soon as possible – for paid advertising.

And of course the other thing to consider – which is what we’re talking about here – is how do you buy back some time?

Because the LAST thing that you want to do, especially long-term, is to build a business that does not allow you to be away from running the business.

So you have to be able to buy back those time coupons. And you use money coupons to buy back the time – and therefore, you free up your time, okay? So now you can do with it what you want. Does that make sense?

Because we all have 24 hours in a day. And so when you are able, you want to…

Start Looking At Virtual Assistant Outsourcing

But what to outsource to a virtual assistant? Now on a basic level, when you are just a business of one, some of the things you want to outsource would be the tasks that really are not profit producing tasks, not income generating activities. And you want to try and replace yourself from those.

So for example, let me give you a rough bit of guidance as to the sort of things that I did outsource early on… Sort of like, ‘virtual assistant’ type tasks – checking emails, responding to emails possibly, posting blog posts, uploading your videos or podcasts if you do those.

Y’know, anything that’s not directly contributing towards income and sales coming into your business – you want to ultimately be looking to start virtual assistant outsourcing as soon as you can. Especially those kind of administrative types of tasks, okay?

The way in which you go about this is – do a full list. Grab a trusty, old-school traditional pen and paper, and write down like every single thing that you do on a day-to-day basis to operate your online business.

What To Outsource To A Virtual Assistant

Everybody’s going to be doing different stuff – so it’s kind of a ‘general’ process. Write every single thing down that you, until you’ve exhausted this whole list.

And then as time goes on – each day, keep checking on, “Am I doing something that’s not on my list?” Then add it to the list, and keep adding until you’ve got this exhaustive list.

Then you’re gonna do this interesting thing, where you’re going to circle… “Which of these things that I’m doing, directly affects my income?”

So for example, creating a video which you can post online that can be used as an ad, or used as content to attract traffic.

That would be something which would impact your sales, because it allows you to get traffic and therefore make sales. Placing an ad online, directly impact sales. Sending an email to your list, when you have one, directly impacts income. You see where I’m heading with this, right?

You’re gonna circle all these things. Then what you’re gonna be left with is a LOT of stuff. And I guarantee you, it’ll probably work out somewhere along the 80/20 principle.

Eighty percent of the stuff on that bit of paper will not be your income producing tasks. And those are the sorts of things that you could start to say, “Right, is this something I can outsource?”

And when you’re at the earliest stages and you don’t have tons of money to put in, perhaps then obviously you’re gonna have to juggle how much you can afford to put in to virtual assistant outsourcing, to be able to free myself up from this stuff.

But eventually, as time goes on and your business grows and everything’s going in a great direction…

You Will ONLY Want To Be Focusing On Those Income Producing Tasks

I think mostly you’re probably going to be looking at your first outsource being a virtual assistant. How do you get one? Well, we always use sites a site called UpWork.com (used to be called oDesk). And on there you can basically list any job.

So if you’re looking for virtual assistant outsourcing you’ll be able to list all the tasks that you’re looking for someone to do. Now just bear in mind that it’s not normally likely to find one single person that can do everything you need doing.

This is why you’ve got to look, and list, and be open and honest, and look for what skills people have. But you’d list your job, put it up there, and people will start to apply and submit their information, their skills and experience, and things like that.

That’s kind of how you would go about things. So, see what you can find. And you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised how low-cost you can get virtual assistant outsourcing, to take some of those tasks off your hands.

To be honest, early on, you’re not going to need somebody for a lot of hours. So you might be talking, you know… Even just outsourcing to a virtual assistant for a couple of hours a day right?

Just have somebody for a couple of hours a day to take care of some of those things. You’re probably looking at, like, five to eight dollars a day, okay?

And so, for five to eight dollars a day, you can really free up a lot of your time – and buy that time back – and put it on the income producing tasks.

So anyway, hope you find that helpful. With that said, I’m probably gonna head outside now because the sun is shining. So until next time, take care. Bye bye for now.

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