Several years ago I was in a dilemma. I’d been working as a self employed web designer for a couple of years and things were going well. I was building up a string of regular clients, a growing portfolio, and getting more and more referrals. I was earning good money and always had more than enough work.

That, however, was the problem. I was getting so much work that I was having to turn projects down. There are only so many hours in the day, and when you’re self employed you can’t just spend all your working time doing your actual work. On top of designing websites there are accounts to be done, and marketing, and admin and all sorts of other tasks. I knew that in order to scale my business I needed to take on an employee, but the idea scared me. My father had been an employer for the past 40 years and I knew about all the stress, and headaches, and health and safety, and pensions, and respinsibility that came with it. An employee would mean having to be at the office on time to open up, and stay until closing. No longer could I wake up and, on finding the sun out and the winds right, decide to go kite boarding for a few hours before rolling into the office at lunchtime and making up the time by working until midnight.

No, employees certainly sounded like too much responsibility for me so I struggled on, trying to be a one man band and do everything myself. Luckily for me, it was around this time that I stumbled upon Network Marketing. Here was a way of scaling a business, and leveraging other people’s time and effort, without the need for employees. I started building my Network Marketing business in my ’spare’ time and as that began to grow into a substantial second income I eased off on the web design.

More recently however I’ve been more prolific on the web again. Creating my 1DayWebmaster seminars and a number of other projects has, once again, started to put strains on my time. The idea of taking on employees has once again reared its ugly head.

That was, however, until I read a book that changed my view of business all together, The 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss. Tim spends much of the book praising the virtues of outsourcing, a subject I’d never paid much thought to before hearing about the book over at Internet Business Mastery.

Put simply, outsourcing is the process of paying a freelancer to take on a specific project for you. It could be writing a report, building a website, creating a small piece of software, carrying out market research or any number of other tasks. Now, I know from personal experience that the perceived cost of hiring a freelancer is often the stumbling block here but you may be surprised with how incredibly cost effective it can be. Let me describe my first venture into outsourcing by way of example.

I had an idea of writing a report about home business opportunities in the UK. I had been thinking about writing it for months and had got as far as drafting a rough outline of what information should be included but not further – the thought of spending hours and hours researching each opportunity, and writing the report was hardly a task I would relish, although I was convinced it would be a marketable product.

Enter outsourcing… There are quite a number of outsourcing websites these days and the one I chose was getafreelancer.com

I signed up for a free account set about posting my project. I wrote an outline of the project, what I expected to me included in the report, what opportunities I wanted toi be included, how the report was to be formatted etc. I included a list of 60 UK home business opportunities and one sample page which I wrote to give an indication of style and content… Then I waited.

Getafrelancer.com and many of the other outsourcing sites (rentacoder, elance etc.) work as a kind of ‘reverse auction’ where freelancers bid on your project and you can choose the one best suited. As well as price you can be guided by an ebay-like feedback system and private messages with the bidders.

The first bids started soming in within about 2 minutes! First were $500 bids from very professional sounding individuals, although their PMs sounded generic and stilted. Slowly, more and more cam in until after about 6 hours I had 18 bids ranging from $500 down to $30… I went with the one for $30!

The bid was from a Kenyan woman whose English wasn’t perfect, but it was very, very good and was expecting to have to edit the report myself anyway. I was told it would take 3 days!!!

True to her word, 3 days later I received a 90 page report packed with information about the business opportunities I had requested. For 30 bucks! I couldn’t get over the amazing value for money – if I had employed someone local to carry out the work it would have cost me a small fortune, yet I had just managed to have the entire report written, in 3 days, for less than the cost of a decent dinner!

Needless to say I paid up, left glowing feedback, and have been using outsourcing on a regular basis since. In fact, I still don’t use it as much as I could and that’s something I’m working on. I’m a bit of a perfectionist and find it hard to relinquish control and delegate but it’s something I’m working on.

I’ve learned a lot since that first venture into the world of hired help so here are my top tips to getting the most from outsourcing:

1. Plan your project

They say that failing to plan is planning to fail. Freelancers might be great at what they do but they are not mind readers. If you’re not clear of exactly what you want, how can you expect them to deliver?

2. Be specific

The more detailed your project outline the better chance you’ll get what you want at the end. For a book or report give chapter headings as well as a synopsis. A sample of writing style is also a good idea. If there is research to be done give examples of books or websites where you expect that information to come from.

3. Research your freelancer

All good outsourcing sites will allow you to view feedback but it’s also a good idea to look at a sample of pervious work. Use PM or email to discuss the project before choosing a bidder to make sure you’re compatible.

4. Define rights

If you’re having a report written, or software created for example you need to be sure to get the full rights to the work. In order to avoid any potential legal problems in the future use a contract saying that you get full rights to the work and none are retained by the author.

5. Use multiple freelancers

You can save money on larger projects by getting the work done by multiple people. For example, having an ebook written by a native English speaker will generally cost you a lot more than having it written by someone in e developing country who speaks English as a second language. However, you may find you can have the book written cheaply by a freelancer in India for example, and then have it edited by a native English speaker at a fraction of the price.

6. Agree payment schedule

For larger projects it’s a good idea to setup multiple escrow payments which are released as the project develops. For example, you make the first payment when they deliver the first 2 chapters, second payment when half done and final payment on completion. This creates trust between you and the freelancer and also alows you to monitor the project as it progresses and catch errors early on rather than waiting until you get a complete project with fundamental flaws.

7. Finally – Start off small

Handing over control of any project, and a payment for the pleasure, can be a daunting experience. Start with a small, non-vital project to get yourself into the mindset, learn from the experience and also scope out the freelancer you’re hiring. If they do a good job, and you manage them well, you’ll feel more comfortable delegating a larger project in the future.

There really are only 24 hours in the day, no matter how hard you work! There’s only so much you yourself can do in that time so if you want to get more done you’ll need leverage. Sure, employees could be the way forward depending on your business, but they also come with massive responsibility and costs. Network Marketing is another great way to leverage your time but it doesn’t suit everyone… but hiring freelancers is a method that will fit most business models. Start small, test the water, follow the tips above and watch your productivity soar!