How to Grow Your Online Business with Outsourcing: 13 Tasks to Outsource First

13 Tasks to Outsource (Updated 2021) and Infographic Included

Want to grow your online business? That is obviously a lot of work, especially in the beginning. New businesses always experience some growing pains, and entrepreneurs are often tempted to do all the work themselves. However, this is an inefficient tactic that can actually cause more harm than good.

This ceases to be a problem when certain jobs are outsourced, meaning delegated to someone outside the company.

 In this way, you’re able to focus on things that will really move the needle while allowing others to take care of other tasks. These could include tasks that are highly repetitive, tasks that require specialized skills, or simply tasks that you don’t enjoy.

If your stress levels are reaching an unbearable level, then it’s probably time to start outsourcing. You might consider hiring a virtual assistant if your business is still small. Then you can grow from there. 

Now, let’s take a closer look at what outsourcing is, the pros and cons of outsourcing, the differences between onshore outsourcing and global outsourcing, and how outsourcing can grow your business.

What is Outsourcing?

So what exactly is outsourcing anyway? In simplest terms, outsourcing is the act of delegating certain services and tasks to individuals or third parties outside the company. This is the opposite of in-house meaning a task is done within the organization. 

There is a wide variety of different jobs that can be outsourced, and we’ll take a closer look at some outsourcing examples in a moment.

At this point, your next question might be “What is offshoring vs outsourcing?” 

These two terms often get confused. The business practice of hiring workers in another country is known as offshoring. This is opposed to onshore outsourcing in which the third parties exist within the same country.

At Balkan Hire, we handle both offshore outsourcing and onshore outsourcing. We can help you find what you’re looking for regardless of what you decide is right for you.

Pros and Cons of Outsourcing

Of course, there are pros and cons of outsourcing. 

The benefits of outsourcing are fairly obvious. Outsourcing frees up your time and allows you to focus on the things you need to do to grow your business. After all, time is money.

Outsourcing also allows you to move away from multitasking, so you can focus on one thing at a time. Multitasking is an inefficient way to work and some studies have shown that is a myth and it can actually damage your brain.

The benefits of outsourcing don’t end there, though. Outsourcing can make your business much more competitive and help your company grow rapidly. Multiple people can obviously perform more work than just one and by hiring people to do things you don’t like or you’re not good at you will achieve your target goals much faster. Most of your competitors are already outsourcing, so why not you?

Of course, there are a few downsides to outsourcing as well. 

Naturally, outsourcing will cost you some money. It’s not difficult to find cheap virtual assistants, but it’s still important to pay people what they’re worth. As the old saying goes, you get what you pay for. That said, if you’re for example based in the US, by outsourcing to the Balkan region (Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Macedonia, etc.), you can find skillful employees for a much lower cost in comparison to what you would pay for the same position hiring locally.

Learning how to delegate work can also be difficult in the beginning. If you’ve started your business as a solopreneur, giving away control and accepting different ways of doing things (that still work) might be challenging in the beginning. But, ultimately if your goal is to grow, you will need to outsource.

 An entrepreneur’s usual instinct is to be a jack of all trades, and trusting someone else with your work isn’t easy. It’s important to communicate exactly what you need to your assistant and everyone you end up hiring. Writing down clear processes and instructions will help make things clear for you and your new employees.

Top 13 Tasks to Outsource

Now that you know what outsourcing is and the pros and cons of outsourcing, let’s take a look at a few tasks that can be outsourced.

Customer Service

Customer service can obviously be a very stressful, time-consuming task. And if you don’t know how to handle it, you can very easily lose a customer in just a few minutes. Therefore, best to outsource customer service to an assistant who’s knowledgeable in your industry.

This can be considered a form of business process outsourcing.

One thing we found helpful when hiring a customer service agent is to find people with empathy who love working with others. By putting themselves in your customer’s shoes they will be much better at their job and they will stay longer with your company.

Finance/Admin Work

Administrative work can take up a lot of time, especially during busy seasons. You might be surprised by how much of that time can be freed up by outsourcing. 

And let’s be honest. This kind of work is often best left to people who are experts anyway (unless you enjoy doing finances yourself).

Social Media Management

It might surprise you to learn that you don’t have to manage your own social media. Social media is a fantastic marketing opportunity, but it can be confusing if you’re not a naturally techy person. It’s much more than just writing a caption and posting a photo or a link.

Hiring experts in the field can help ensure your social media is targeting all the right people, reach new audience, and get better engagement rates.

Website Maintenance/IT Work

Here is another example of business process outsourcing. Maintaining a website is long, difficult work, and you might not have to technological know-how to do it yourself. The time it takes you to learn this could be better invested in other areas. Outsourcing this work allows you to focus on those things while ensuring your website is up-to-date.

SEO

Search engine optimization is something that’s constantly changing, with new Google algorithm updates rolling out every few months. This is particularly important if you main acquisition or conversion channel is organic, or you’re aiming it to be.

It can be hard to keep up, so it’s best to hire someone who can. 

Hiring an assistant who’s an expert in SEO will help your business stay as competitive as possible in this constantly evolving landscape. 

Email Management

It can be very, very easy for your inbox to get cluttered, especially if you’re trying to juggle a dozen other jobs. After a while, you might have trouble separating the important emails from the junk. Having someone handle this for you prevents this from happening and lets you focus on more important things.

Email marketing manager can also help you stay in touch with your audience by creating newsletters, promo campaigns, and welcome sequence for all new leads to help them convert later on.

Content Creation

Creating content on a consistent basis is a huge time investment, but it’s likely something your business needs. Furthermore, you might not be totally confident in your own writing, editing or graphic skills

If that’s the case, then you’re better off hiring an expert that can take care of content creation for you. 

Graphic Design

You want your business to have a professional appearance, but graphic design obviously requires some specialized skills. You shouldn’t try to handle this yourself unless you’re already an experienced graphic designer. Even then, you’ll save yourself a lot of time by hiring a professional.

Project Management

Project management is another area that requires specialized skills. If you don’t have a lot of management experience yourself, it’s best to outsource this responsibility to someone who does. This is especially true if you have a very big project coming up.

Research

Regardless of whether you’re researching a product, competitor, or market, this is another time-consuming activity. And of course, it’s not something that needs to be performed by you personally. Outsource this activity so you can focus on things that really need your attention.

Data entry and analysis

Data entry is a highly repetitive task. Trying to do this yourself is an inefficient use of your time, and hiring a professional will get you more accurate results anyway. Therefore, outsourcing is obviously the better choice.

Email outreach/Communications/PR

Outsourcing these jobs can work wonders for your business’s reputation. Once again, your PR is something that’s best left to experts. You can try to do this yourself, but the results will be noticeably better if you let professionals handle it.

Hiring

Finally, you might consider outsourcing your hiring process. Finding people you can depend on obviously isn’t easy. Letting professionals handle it ensures you’ll get quality employees with low turnover.

Things NOT to Outsource

Now you understand the benefits of outsourcing, but it’s also important to understand what not to outsource. If you try to outsource everything, it’ll be different for you to be competitive.

In particular, you shouldn’t outsource core business practices. 

A good question to ask is, “What do I or my company excel at?” Alternatively, “What are things that only I or my company can do?” Those are the things you definitely should not outsource.

Also, make sure you’re not just outsourcing certain tasks just because you don’t enjoy them. Anyone in any industry should have a firm grasp of sales and marketing, even if they’re not exactly your cup of tea.

Top Outsourcing Books

If you’d like to learn more about outsourcing, there are some excellent books on the subject. 

The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss is a great resource for modern entrepreneurs in general and can help you learn more about how outsourcing works.

Vested Outsourcing by Kate Vitasek is another excellent book. This can help you get started with outsourcing while avoiding some of the common pitfalls that entrepreneurs often make in the beginning.

Outsourcing Examples

It’s fine to talk about the benefits of outsourcing, but some of you might like to see some successful outsourcing examples. There are dozens of outsourcing success stories. Here are some outsourcing companies that have been successful.

It might surprise you to learn that much of GitHub’s backend was written by an outsourced employee named Scott Chacon. He was originally hired by the company’s CEO, Chris Wanstrath, after demonstrating an impressive knowledge of Gits. Today, he is GitHub’s CIO.

Skype also had most of its back-end developed by outsourced employees. In this case, it was developed by three Estonians who later became partners. Microsoft eventually purchased Skype for $8.5 billion.

How much did it cost for AppSumo to get up and running? Only $50. The $50 was spent on an outsourced employee to develop a credit card form and a PayPal button. That was all it took for AppSumo to become the company it is today.

How to Start Outsourcing

Are you feeling ready to start outsourcing? If so, Balkan Hire can help you get started. 

We can help you find and train employees that can help grow your business. We work with freelancers from all over the Balkan region, including Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia, and Croatia.

If you’d like to learn more, you can find our website here. You can also email us at contact@balkanhire.com. Get started today, and you’ll be seeing results in no time.