Running a blog can be hard work. Luckily, you can easily outsource several everyday tasks and still be successful. If you are feeling overwhelmed or are just looking for information on how much time commitment it takes to blog, you have come to the right place.
Below, we will discuss a blogging strategy where you can outsource while maintaining the high quality of your content. Grab some coffee ☕️, and let’s get into it!
Pssst… check out my guide on how to make money blogging for a big-picture view.
Outsource jobs, gain benefits
Commonly people are taught “if you want something done right, you should just do it yourself!” So, why would you outsource anything?
Firstly, this method of thinking is not conducive to scaling a business. Just think about the most successful businesses out there. All of them have hundreds or even thousands of employees.
Many of them even have contractors and full-time employees alike. Using their small business as a template, it is easy to see that success comes from working together.
Successful businesses are made of many people working together.
Let’s think about this a little deeper though. You are just one person. There are only 24 hours a day, every day. That means at a maximum, if you worked every second of the day, you can still only get 24 hours of work done.
Spending all of your time doing every task on your own sounds super stressful. Not only that, but you may be unable to complete all the tasks necessary to make your blog successful.
What about your expertise? Are you the best at… everything? Most people would absolutely say no to this question. Each person has a unique combination of skills, you included.
Because of our limited time on earth, we can only truly master a few skills. This is a strong indicator that we should outsource at least some tasks, like writing a blog post, to people with more expertise than us. After you have decided to outsource, you will most likely see a clear difference in your effectiveness.
Benefits of outsourcing
You gain several benefits by using a blogging strategy where other people do the heavy lifting on your blog. Each of the top outsourcing blogs has its own list. Here is my short list of some possible benefits:
- Fewer responsibilities for you means less stress.
- The right person for the job will generate better-quality results.
- With fewer tasks, you can focus on the remaining tasks or on growth.
- A framework for outsourcing can allow your blog to scale much larger than solo.
- When others are doing the work, you have time freedom. Spend it doing things you like doing.
- Better scaling means you can make more money!
There are plenty of other possible benefits but this is a good starting list. Let’s dive into each.
Less stress
Most humans experience stress. Stress can be triggered by the pressure we experience. The more stimulus you have around you, the higher the stress you typically have. Outsourcing some of your responsibilities can eliminate some of that stress.
When you have found a trustworthy person to complete your tasks, the time you previously spent worrying about managing your time can now be spent performing tasks you enjoy. Maybe you like making guest appearances on podcasts or YouTube channels. Or maybe you like creating new material using your expertise.
With less stress, you have more time for greater enjoyment. Who would rather have stress than satisfaction? Nobody. All of the top outsourcing blogs will tell you to outsource those stressful tasks.
Better-quality results
Humans have a limited amount of time on Earth. As such, we tend to only focus on learning how to complete specific tasks effectively. Every other job is better suited for someone else.
We might not even like some of those other tasks. On top of that, those other tasks might be too much for us to complete or comprehend.
This list of known tasks is different from person to person. Each person has a unique combination of skills they are good at or enjoy doing. Some people are naturally more suited for one job and are absolutely terrible at others.
For instance, I am a very creative person. On the other hand, I cannot abide by repetitive tasks. They eat at my soul, and I feel like life is just being sucked out of me every moment I waste on them.
On top of that, I am not very good at them. Despite how I feel, a few people around me love repetitive tasks. Yet, they hate the pressure of creating something truly unique.
For tasks having a high degree of repetition, I will not want to complete those myself. Instead, I can ask one of my friends to handle it (with some compensation, of course). This same principle is true for all aspects of your blog. Outsource those less desirable tasks to someone more suited to handle them.
Focus on tasks for your expertise
Generally, when we are good at something, we enjoy doing it. Additionally, we tend to produce really good quality work when we enjoy the job we are doing. It is imperative out blogging strategy allows us to spend our time effectively if we want to scale our business.
Armed with that knowledge, it should be clear that you should only work on tasks in your wheelhouse. Understanding that you cannot do everything perfectly solo is the key to ultimate success. Trust others to be experts too. Just like you have strong skills in your expertise, they possess strong skills in theirs.
Outsourcing to these other trusted individuals will yield better-quality results. You could spend 10-20 hours on it and create something passable. Or you could outsource it to someone who can spend 1-2 hours and yield a fantastic final product. I would personally choose the latter pretty much every time.
Scale your blog
Outsourcing the jobs on your blog creates a framework for an even more prominent gain. Once you have decided to outsource each job, you can hire even more people to help with each task when the job is too big for one person (and it will be eventually). This is a big boon for the future of your blog.
Now you will have the ability to scale quickly. The speed at which you reach goals will accelerate. You will no longer need extra solo hours to complete all the tasks.
Instead, you can hire more people to handle the work. Have them complete the work at the same time as your other staff. Then you can work on your content marketing strategy, for example, instead of writing a blog post!
The bottom line is you can get more people to spend some of their time creating your blog instead of feeling the time pressure of being a solo person trying to complete all the tasks. You will no longer be bound by the number of hours you can expend. Instead, you will have access to nearly infinite external work hours, limited only by the number of employees you have. There are always more people; all you have to do is find them.
Time freedom
The top outsourcing blogs all say after outsourcing nearly every task on your blog, you will have time freedom. What is that? Think for a moment and ask yourself this question:
What would you be doing if you didn’t have to work all the time?
Maybe you would pursue your passion for underwater basket weaving. Or maybe you have a loving family that deserves more of your attention. Perhaps you like running triathlons and would love to make that the focus of your time.
The possibilities are endless. Your passion is your passion. The list of things that you like will differ from mine.
You will be able to indulge in those enjoyments without the impedance of stress-inducing work. Life is full of things to experience, and you will get to participate, at your leisure, without fearing that your income is at risk.
Make more money
This probably sounds counterintuitive. Most of us are taught, “if you spend money, you have less of it.” That statement is 100% true; however, many people misunderstand it. Let’s break it down.
Logically speaking, if you have a certain quantity of something, then you give some of it away, you end up with less of that something. Out of context, that is obvious a bad thing. Fortunately, there is another component that is not represented in the statement. We are spending money, but that money is being used to make more money; therefore, the “end state” will be a net gain.
Spending money can make more money.
Let’s say you are an “orange salesman” (the fruit, not the color). You buy your oranges, from an orange grove, at a bulk price. You buy each orange for $0.25. When you sell them to your customers, you charge them $1.00.
Today, you go to the grove to buy more oranges for selling. You bring $20 with you for your budget. Yesterday, you could only buy 20 oranges using your budget. You sold them pretty quickly and gained $20 income.
Without hesitation, you are confident you could easily sell those 20 again. You also suspect that, given the current demand, you could sell at least 80 today.
Today you could buy the same 20 oranges for $5.00. That would mean you save $15.00 and make an additional $20.00 from your new inventory, for a total of $35.
Another option could be to buy 80 oranges today for $20.00. Today you will sell 80 of them, as you suspected, for $80. You spent 4x more money and wound up with a lot more money.
Spending more money does not always result in less overall money. If you spend it on expenses that generate more money, you can result in a net gain.
The same logic can be applied to staffing your small business. Spend money on outsourcing to gain more productivity. Increased productivity results in more income than you could have generated solo.
What does running a blog entail?
As you can probably imagine, many moving pieces make up a blog. Each job requires a moderate amount of attention.
Some blog writers try to handle each of these jobs themselves and ultimately burn out simply because they are overwhelmed. Abandoning an idea you are passionate about can cause a lot of self-doubts. It can severely damage your self-worth long-term.
Thankfully, you do not have to do it all yourself, and if you want to be truly successful, you shouldn’t. You can use a blogging strategy to outsource nearly any job to qualified people. Outsourcing allows you to gain control over your own time while others do the heavy lifting for you.
You get to focus on content marketing strategy instead of blog post writing. Let’s explore several jobs required for a blog, each of which you can and should easily outsource.
Content Writing
Every blog has content. It does not write itself. Someone has to create content for the people reading your post.
Someone has to spend their time creating each blog post. Someone also has to spend time editing it and sprucing it up with pictures and graphics. Many bloggers do all this work themselves. While blog writers can do all of this work, it might not be the best use of their time.
Unfortunately, doing that work yourself prevents you from spending time on other valuable tasks for your blog. You could build relationships with other blogs, promote your blog on podcasts, or drive traffic to your blog through other means. When you spend all of your time writing, you just do not have enough time to spend on these priority tasks.
Enter outsourcing! When you outsource this task to qualified freelance writers, blog writing services, or a content writing service, you immediately gain substantial free time to spend on those other priority tasks. You can have time to focus on your content strategy instead of writing!
Think about it. It takes freelance writers an average of 1 hour to write 200 words. If you write a 2000-word article, that is 10 hours of work!
Pssst… Whether you outsource your writing or do it yourself, you still need a writing tool to help make the content the best. Check out my suggestion of the best writing tool out there.
If you outsource your blog writing, the first draft of that blog post could be the result of someone else is spending that 10 hours. Then you can come behind and edit that article to fit your voice a little better. That process might only take 1-2 hours.
So you have a net gain of 8 hours. That is 8 hours you could spend building relationships with other blogs, guest posting, podcasting, advertising, promoting, etc… That’s why I recommend making this the first job you outsource for your blog.
Guest Posting
Writing content for other blogs can be a valuable boon for your blog, even though that seems counterintuitive. One of the most impactful benefits of Guest Posting is that you generate backlinks to your content. As I talk about in my Backlink Guide, Guest Posting is one of the best ways to build those backlinks.
Backlinks act as a vote of confidence for your blog. A link from another blog related to your niche is an enormous signal to Google and other Search Engines that their blog thinks your blog has valuable information that warrants an extra glance; when that link comes from a highly-respected source, even better.
As I wrote in my Backlink Guide, you could wait for one of these respected sources to magically find your content and backlink. Or you could take your fate into your own hands and open the communication channels yourself. You can reach out to offer to help them by writing a Guest Post.
When you write that Guest Post, you may help them fill their editorial calendar. It may show their audience a new perspective they were looking for. It could be the variety in the content they needed.
Whatever the reason, when you offer to write a Guest Post, you are doing them a favor. As a reward, they usually allow X amount of links in your blog post to your website in exchange. Those links are like gold, so grab as many as you can!
Like Content Writing, though, this will take your time. Outsourcing this will free up your time. You could spend that 10 hours writing a 2000-word Guest Post, or you could pay someone else to write it.
Even more, you could find a person to pursue the Guest Posts, meaning you will not even have to start the conversation. The person you hire will.
Keyword Research & Content Calendar
Another good target for outsourcing is Keyword Research & your Content Calendar. Everyone knows that Keyword Research takes time if done correctly. You do that research specifically so you can find more keywords to use for your future content.
Thankfully, there are two tiers of outsourcing you can employ for this.
Firstly, you could find better tools. Keyword Research used to be daunting and extra time-consuming. You used to need in-depth spreadsheets and insider information.
There are some rudimentary free tools out there to help guide a little. Nothing compared to the incredible tools we have today. Tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, and Moz are game-changers! Using these tools could be the difference between 100 visitors a month and 100,000.
They also significantly cut research time, from days to only a few hours. Outsource the heavy lifting to these tools, and gain a leg up.
Additionally, there are people out there who are rock stars at Keyword Research. These people are well-versed in using tools like Ahrefs and Moz. They can be creative and even find some gaps in your content. Identifying those gaps and adding them to your Content Calendar could lead to thousands of extra visits a month!
No matter what, outsourcing this task can help you gain more command over your own time, allowing you to spend it on something to grow your business. Instead of spending tens of hours hunting for those content gaps, you can leverage a tool, or even a person using a tool, to find those gaps for you. Once identified and added to your calendar, you will reap the benefits of time freedom and extra traffic, all in one go.
Brand and Website Design
Building a brand is a bit more work than most people think.
Your brand is more than just a name. It includes the logo representing the company, the color scheme in use, the fonts in use, the tone of the wording in use, any characters or mascots associated with the company, the theme of the website including all its design elements, the graphics used on the site, and any other elements that distinguish the brand from others.
These elements take time to design, as much as 5-10 hours weekly for a professional.
I am a strong rudimentary designer. My knowledge and experience allow me to make the visuals look nice, generally speaking. Case and point, I built this site by myself using my programming and design skills (and WordPress, of course).
On the other hand, an expert brand and website designer or a market company will understand how to make a brand stand out from everyone else. These people have full time jobs that focus on getting eyes on your brand. Let them work harder so you can work on other important tasks.
Brand & website design is not the first task I would outsource for your blog; however, it would be one of the first ones I consider outsourcing right after Content Writing. My recommendation would be to launch your site first. Use a basic theme looking between “okay” and “excellent.” Then at a later date, once you have invested in a designer, you can use them to focus your branding and website design, which should improve your attraction for new audience members and, by extension, your conversion rate.
Website Building & Hosting
This is where the bulk of my experience resides. For more than 15 years, I have been building websites. I have engineered and/or hosted over 300 websites ranging from small mom-and-pop e-commerce stores, garnering only 200 visits a month, to gigantic blogs, sustaining 500 Million monthly visits.
From personal experience, I can say confidently this can be as little as 40 hours of work up to months of full-time work, depending on many factors. I highly recommend outsourcing this job, especially if you feel out of your depth when trying to “find the right plugin” or “add that special functionality.”
My consulting services can certainly help with that; however, there are plenty of outsourcing options for this out there. You can find people willing to charge you almost any amount for the work employing various skill levels.
I always recommend outsourcing Website Building to a professional.
If you are comfortable setting up a website but do not know the best place to host it, I have a tip for you too. For a beginner, an easy-to-use hosting company is BlueHost. Their onboarding process is very user-friendly, and their entire small business is centered around hosting WordPress websites. I highly recommend this hosting company, specifically if you have never hosted a site.
On the other hand, if you outsource your Website Building, your developer will probably have a solution for hosting already. Most of the time, I would recommend going with their solution unless you are confident that your current solution is king. Outsourcing both at once will save you time and usually save you money too.
Sales & Marketing
These two jobs are critical to the success of your blog. You can have the best blog in the world, but if nobody knows it exists, you will never make any money! Likewise, you can have an outstanding product or service and even present it to a bunch of people; however, if your selling skills are not on point, you may never close a sale!
Pssst… If you want more details about implementing a Sales Funnel, check out my guide to Sales Funnels. There are some excellent tips in there and some valuable external resources.
Content Marketing & brand voice can be an easy outsource for an effective blogging strategy. You could spend 5-10 hours weekly on your content marketing strategy. Or you could outsource to a marketing team it for cheap and get that time back.
There are tons of Marketing firms and content agencies out there. They can range from solopreneur operations to thousand-employee behemoths! You want someone who fits inside your budget.
Yes, you will see an increase in your exposure for each dollar you spend, but you only have a certain number of dollars, at least for now. Also, remember, you get what you pay for. Paying little or nothing for service will generally yield little or no results.
Most salespeople work strictly for commission, making them great early employees.
Salespeople are also easy to outsource. Outsourcing them is also generally pretty good on the pocketbook too.
Many salespeople will work solely for commission, meaning you won’t have to pay them until you get a sale they initiated! This is an early win because it pretty much costs you nothing. Because of that, it could justify hiring this person early on, maybe even as a second employee, right behind Content Writer.
Community Voice
Another great target for outsourcing is Community Voice/Outreach. When your audience is engaged, they will generally interact with your site more.
Interacting more also generally means they spend more. Getting your audience engaged can take time and effort. Mostly, you can do this yourself in the early days, but you will certainly want to outsource this eventually.
You will want a person with a proven record of generating community engagement, like popular content agencies or content marketing agencies with successful clientele. Ideally, they would be a strong marketing person specializing in Social Media Marketing.
A strong social presence will signal to your audience that you are a legit business. It can also build your audience to a larger scale and a faster rate, simply based on the “social proof” principle. The more people talk about your business; the more people will visit your site.
It is a solid target to be outsourced because cultivating a large audience takes dedication. You might be okay at building up your audience, but a professional will build that community much faster and with more engagement. In addition, you can spend those 10-15 hours weekly doing other things you enjoy or are better at.
Customer Service
Sometimes, audience members like to communicate with the person they are listening to (that’s you). They might be reaching out because of an issue with your product or service. Maybe they have a question. Perhaps they like letting you know how awesome they think you are.
Whatever the reason, they expect a response, and they expect it relatively quickly. You might not be able to dedicate those 5-15 hours a week.
Nobody wants to feel neglected and certainly not ignored. That is why it is crucial to respond to every query from an audience member if you can. Everyone wants to feel prioritized enough to warrant a response, and honestly, they are.
Sometimes you might not be able to respond. Perhaps you do, but it was not fast enough to satisfy their expectations. Maybe you were asleep, on vacation, or doing other important work for your business!
This is a clear sign that you need assistance, specifically with Customer Service. The great news is that Customer Service jobs are easy to outsource and full of potential employees looking for work.
A bonus is that they are relatively inexpensive too. These people and services can quickly answer most “generic” questions for your audience. For more specialized help, you may need to outsource to someone who knows your product well, or you may need to be willing to answer some of those questions via email.
Summary
Outsourcing some of the jobs associated with your blog will help your business grow fast. Your business will also now have the ability to scale simply by hiring more people. Once you have decided to outsource, outsourcing those jobs will also free up your time.
You can use that time to grow your blog even more. You can also use it for other things, even non-business things.