If you are reading this post, I can almost guarantee that you fall into this statement. I know that I do. However, there is nothing wrong with working too hard. But, there is a problem when you don’t work smart.

I am an Economics major and Economics geek at heart, so this point hits home hard. I have always thought I was good at outsourcing. I never write content and I never build links. It takes too long, it is redundant, I don’t enjoy it and it is not worth my time. If it takes me just a 1/2 hour to write an article, that is valuable time lost out of my schedule when I could hire someone to do it for me for $5 and get decent content.

In Economics, we call outsourcing or teaming together with other people/companies comparative advantage. It is all about levaraging what you do best but also being able to offer other services or get other goods as well. Say I find a killer article writing team that can pump out a ton of content every day but they have no marketing skills whatsoever. I come into play. I can write, but it takes me longer but I work alone plus it doesn’t motivate me much to be honest. However, I can set up ad campaigns on Facebook or Google all day long and make a profit on those articles that were churned out. When we team together, we can accomplish more and make more money. So why don’t we outsource everything?

1. You don’t have the money

This is probably the single biggest problem people have with outsourcing, and it is understandable. If you are broke yourself, consider starting out at the outsourcee (is that a word??). Do the crap jobs. I know I did when I started out. Write content, build sites, do link wheels, etc. in order to get a nice amount of money to start out with. Once you do that, you can start focusing on what you do best and outsource the rest.

2. You are too cheap

I fall into this one and the next one as well. I hate spending money. I always am looking for a discount, review, coupon codes or whatever in order to get stuff cheaper. I hit up Craigslist for stuff all the time. I am cheap. My wife hates it. But it is good to be frugal. However, being too frugal can be a detriment to your business.

First off, even if you outsource, you need to make sure you get quality work. Sure, hiring an article writer from DP at 60 cents per 100 words may seem good, but is the content going to deliver? More then likely, you will be fixing mistakes and adding keywords. That is fine if you don’t mind spending a few minutes doing that. I don’t personally, so I pay a bit more.

Also, if you don’t outsource, you find yourself doing jobs below what you are worth. If you are making even $150/day, you shouldn’t be writing articles or doing link building. These services can be found for very little money on virtually every forum in the world, so respect yourself and outsource.

Use the 80/80 rule. Yes, it is different then the normal 80/20, but if you spend 80% of your time doing the things that make you 80% of the money, then you are in a good situation. Don’t spend 80% of your time doing things that make you 20% of your money. If you are writing content and building links, then you fall into that rule.

3. You don’t trust anyone

I am so guilty of this on outsourcing except in the content and link building department. I HATE outsourcing anything related to my websites, as I am afraid they will steal my ideas, content or just totally screw me over. I also do not like hiring designers and coders. I have found a few that I use all the time, but it took me a long time to trust them, starting them off on tiny projects and such until I felt I could trust them. I would rather do the work myself, but I am not the best designer and I can’t code too well, so again, we use comparative advantage to get services done that benefit me.

In conclusion, you are never going to get anywhere if you do it alone. You may be your only employee, but you need to outsource things. There is only so much you can do and there are only so many hours in a day. The rich don’t become rich by themselves. They are lifted up by a strong team of individual talents that feed off of each other. Does the Steve Jobs work at an Apple store taking order? So why do you need to feel that you can do it all?