There are two things we can never seem to have enough of in life.  That’s  Time and Money. We are always trading one for the other. I can’t help you much with your money, that’s all up to you.  But in this post I will try to show you some ideas that will help you regain some more time!

I’m not a full time marketer. I do own my own Internet Business and do my best at managing it on a part time basis. But no matter who you are, or what you do, you are always trading your time for money.  If you work full time like I do as an employee for someone else, you are trading your 8 hour days, every day of the week for money (The Paycheck).   I think we all can agree the reason we are interested in started an Internet Business is to be able to have more of both time and money.

I can’t help you to manage your business or your money. I will try, from time to time, to show you how to cut the cost of doing business.  But in the end managing your money is really up to you.

However, I can help you with some ideas to save you some time. One of things I’ve done to help me recently get more time is to take advantage of outsourcing.   I can’t tell you enough what a big step it is to actually have a dedicated person working for you to help you finish the tons of projects you have.

Outsourcing may seem like something only for big corporations. But really the act of outsourcing is just as simple as giving someone else a task that you need done, either temporarily or permanently, so that you can get more done.

There are a couple of simple ways you can outsource. Outsource temporarily or outsource permanently.

Outsourcing something temporarily is really just giving a particular task to a 3rd party contractor such as Elance or Scriptlance (to, for example, have articles written).  This is a one time shot where you have someone write up a bunch of articles for you.  The drawbacks to this process is that you don’t know if the person will do the job correctly.  You may have to have the project go back and forth between you and the contractor before the job is done right. It may take a little while for the contractor to fully understand exactly what you want done and how you want it done to reflect your business needs.  Then once the project is over and you start another project, that whole process of going back and foht starts all over again.

Outsourcing permanently is finding a full time contractor to work for you all of the time. (For example finding a dedicated writer for your content).  The best part of this solution is that you develope a relationship with your contractor, they get to know your business, what you like and dislike and you are able to be more productive. The bad part is, like hiring an employee you become a manager where you have to screen applicants, weed out the bad performers and even occasionally make the tough decisions of firing someone.  There is also the added expense.  A full time person is a financial burden to your company if you don’t have the income to fund a full time contractor.

You’re probably saying, “Oh sure Joe, just go hire someone – I can’t afford that and where would I find someone to begin with!” .  Yeah you’re right.  The other challenge is where do you find these affordable full time contractors?

From what I know there are a couple different options for you.  I can tell you what I did and show you some other alternatives.  For me, I used John Jonas’s ReplaceMyself.com.  There are others out there but I liked Johns service. It costs $97/mo – but honestly you should only need to pay for one month (consider it a finders fee).  He has a ton of great training, not for you but for your new hire.  He also has some great tips for you on how to go about hiring someone. It’s well worth the hundred bucks for sure.

Now there are other ways too.  Craigslist is great for finding help. I personally prefer hiring people out of the phillipines.  They speak great english, are very friendly, hard workers, and are very affordable, especially for small business just starting out and don’t have a lot of money.  I found a great girl (honestly THE BEST).  She works FULL TIME for me for  $200/mo. I will be giving her a pay raise very soon as she works very hard for me.  I will tell you it was a challenge to find her, but its a challenge to find any good employee.

Overall, if you can afford to permanently hire a contractor to help you with you day to day business needs, whether you are a full time or just a part guy like me.  I highly, highly recommend it.  It will help you achieve your goals so much faster and in the end build your business an make money!  Which is what you really want in the first place right?