How to be smart and efficient. Five ways to outsource tasks for your WordPress business

The older I get, the more I realize how limited my time and energy is. The harder it is for me, one person, to do everything in my business.

I’m not a young man anymore. I wish I had some of the energy that my younger friends have. Let me just say, fourteen hour work days aren’t kind. Sometimes they are necessary to get things done.

I have learned that it becomes necessary to hire someone else to do some of the tasks needing to be done.

A couple of years ago, I met a young woman who is a virtual assistant (VA). I have been around the online world long enough to know what a VA is, so I was intrigued.

The year was running out. I had an interview on audio that I needed to turn into an article. So I hired her to transcribe the article. She did a fantastic job and it saved me a lot of time!

A virtual assistant is just one way you can outsource tasks in your business that will help you scale.

Ultimately, outsourcing is all about scaling your business. You have one of two options if you want to make more revenue. the first option is to charge more. This is great if your market will bear the increase in price.

The second option to generate more revenue is to take on more client load. To do this, you will need to scale your ability to take on the clients. The best way to do that is to scale.

So, when is the right time to outsource tasks in your business. Robert Cairns, a veteran in IT and online marketing, says this,

“If you are a one-person shop in order to scale your business you need to white label/outsource parts of it to concentrate on other parts of the business.”

“By doing this your business will grow and scale in ways that you could not have made it scale as a 1 person agency.” Source: Robert Cairns

Outsourcing is where you can start to scale. Fizzle explains more,

Outsourcing is simply the process of paying for tasks or services to be completed so that you don’t have to do them. It’s no more complicated than that.

While outsourcing sometimes involves working with another person, more often than not outsourcing can be as easy as introducing a new piece of software into your work-flow.
It doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive, and the time it saves you will be worth its weight in gold.
source: Fizzle

If you are going to outsource, you have a few options. Today, We are going to discuss different ways to outsource tasks for your WordPress business.

Keep things moving with outsourced developers

When I worked for a local marketing agency, I was indeed, an outsourced developer. The company had in house developers, but I was on contract.

As it turned out, I did multiple things including project management, SEO, content updates, and much more.

Outsourcing developers who can do specific development tasks are something that can greatly benefit your agency.

These individual developers allow you to focus on things like the overall project, the strategy behind your project, and other “big picture” tasks.

There are a number of places you can find developers to help with outsourced work.

Stay on tasks with a virtual assistant

Virtual Assistants can be incredible for WordPress agencies. They usually have the skills to do basic WordPress content update, various admin tasks, write blog posts, execute email campaigns, and update social media.

A virtual assistant is one type of contractor that many online businesses turn to during their initial growth phase. The name “virtual assistant” does a good job of describing what they do – helping you to execute tasks while they working remotely.
source: WPMUDev

If they have the skills, you might even use them to update your websites via MainWP. Keep in mind, with MainWP, you can give them access to only the updates what you want by using the roles feature.

VA’s can schedule meetings, help with webinars, help manage Slack and Facebook groups. VA’s are often extremely versatile with many skill sets.

Keep sharp with outsourced design

Some of us are not very design oriented. It’s okay because there are many who are!

If this is not your strong suit, partner with a designer you trust and can work with. There are many who are great designers but don’t consider themselves good developers. We all need each other.

Designers are needed for website layouts as well as web page design. We also need designers to help with branding assets, graphics, and social media images.

Having a graphic and website designer you can outsource to will make it seem like you are part of the Justice League America. You will deliver high quality to your clients and be part of something bigger than yourself.

Use white label services for efficiency

As an agency, you may need the services of another type of company to complete parts of your business that your in-house team does not do. This might be different than using an outsourced freelancer.

For example, there are companies that white label WordPress maintenance services. If you are an agency that would rather spend your time on another part of your business, you can partner with someone who white labels WordPress maintenance.

Maybe you are the WordPress maintenance company but you have clients who need website redesigns or custom plugin development. You might consider working with a development agency who white labels these services.

Another area is in content creation or funnel building. There are companies who specialize in these tasks and are happy to white label their service.

This will allow you to further service your existing customers without using your in-house team.

Work brighter with automation

Automation can really help you outsource some of those tasks. Over the years, software such as ActiveCampaign and Drip have helped online business owners set up active marketing campaigns.

We all use some kind of software as a service tool to make life easier. For example, I use a SaaS to issue invoices.

I have and do create an autoresponder email series with MailChimp. When someone subscribes to my email list, they get a series of emails with various pieces of information.

Content marketer Brittany Berger breaks down automation workflow in this monster post.

In the article she says,

Automation is one of the two main ways to save time for your business. With it, you set up or complete a task once, but the activity is performed over and over again.
source: Work Brighter

Think about some of the tools you already use.

Do you track your time? You likely use something like Harvest. How about project management? Maybe you use Asana or something like Trello.

Frankly, at times, we experience tool overload.

All of these are types of automation that help us run our business. It allows us to spend less time on these things and on things that need more attention.

What things do you automate?

Wrapping it up

While these are great places to begin outsourcing for your WordPress agency, Sujan Patel has given more ideas in this article at Entrepreneur. He lists seven in the article.

If you are wanting to scale, you will need to offload some of your tasks to focus on tasks that bring about more growth. As small businesses, we have the flexibility to make these changes quickly.

In what ways have your outsourced tasks in your business?