This year, I faced some challenges when I increased my work hours and started juggling blogging, working full-time, freelancing and being a parent and running a household. It hasn’t always been easy, but I still feel like I want and need to develop a decent work-life balance for my own health and sanity.
I realized that I couldn’t do it all by myself a long time ago. I’m no ‘super mom’. The big ‘secret’ is that I started outsourcing some elements of my life and my blog to others to lighten my load and increase my productivity.
Here’s when you know you need to start outsourcing:
Table of Contents
You are Starting to Get Burnt Out
Back when I first started blogging, I read a really good book about how to monetize your blog and turn it into a business because yes, I’ve always considered my blog a business. It’s a hobby as well and I love sharing details about my financial journey, but I also intended for it to be a thriving side business from the jump.
The book was great but after reading it, I had a headache. There is sooooooo much involved with managing and growing a blog that it is literally is a JOB.
You have to write, edit, promote, work out the technical kinks, grow your traffic, determine your visual brand and a number of other things. It’s very easy to get very overwhelmed and burnt out after a while.
You Have BIG Goals That Will Require a lot of Time and Energy
When you set large goals, you must realize that while your efforts may play a large role in working to achieve them, you will still need help from others.
If your time and energy is heavily focused in one area of your life, you will need help to balance the other areas that you can’t pay much attention to. If you don’t, you’ll risk getting stressed out and frustrated.
You’ve Reached a Time Cap
There are only so many hours in a day and so many responsibilities one person can take on. You must know your limit. For me, working 60 hours per week is it. There are only 168 hours in a week and I can’t work every waking minute.
I need time for my family, sleep, and other parts of my life.
When I realized that I was working the maximum amount of hours I could handle and didn’t want to slow down, I knew I had to start outsourcing if I wanted to keep moving closer to my end result and making more money.
Tips For Outsourcing and How I Outsource
I’m a super control freak so it was hard for me to give up the reigns on certain things to someone else, but I’ve felt much better and more relaxed as a result of outsourcing. Here are some things I’ve realized:
You Don’t Always Have to Worry About Money
Most peoples’ excuse for not outsourcing is that they don’t have the money to pay someone else to do it. I’m all for DIY, but I realize that sometimes you have to spend a little money in order to make more money.
I agree that you should wait until you are financially able to comfortably pay someone for a service before you outsource, but if you are working your way up to one or more of the three limits mentioned above, you should get strategic about how you want to earn money and when you’ll be able to outsource.
I was passionate about starting a blog almost a year ago and I knew my main goal was paying off debt this year, but I didn’t necessarily have the money to pay anyone for anything right off the bat. So instead, I focused half of my time on blogging (which doesn’t earn you diddly squat in the beginning stages) and the other half of my time on freelance writing (which helps you earn an active income quickly). Pretty soon, I was making a nice amount of extra cash that I could use to help accelerate my debt payments and invest back into my blog and freelance writing business.
I taught my fiancé how to cook some of our favorite dinners so we could both split the responsibility of cooking and taking care of other tasks around the house. It’s definitely a partnership. That type of outsourcing is absolutely free 🙂
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Find the Thing You Like Least and Get Someone Else to do It
When it comes to blogging and freelancing, I love to write (obviously). Writing is where I want to focus most of my time and energy. Even though I work with websites all day at my day job, I still don’t know much about how to fix little things on my blog and make it look perfect.
It takes up way too much of my time trying to troubleshoot so I’ve reached out to Grayson from Debt Roundup a few times to help me with some technical things on the back end of my site.
Grayson helps a lot of other bloggers in my niche and he’s trustworthy, reliable and always does a great job which puts me at ease.
Another part of my blog that I like to outsource is quality photos for Pinterest. Tapping into Pinterest marketing is crucial for bloggers. I just happen to hate it. Outside of manual pinning, I don’t understand the whole group board thing or scheduling pins. I’d just rather write.
Luckily, I enlisted some help from my friend Kristin who creates beautiful photos for my blog and takes care of all the scheduling and Pinterest stuff. I’ve been reading Kristin’s blog, Believe in a Budget, throughout the past year and after reading about her success with Pinterest and her mentioning wanting to offer services to other bloggers in a past post, I decided to reach out to her. Her services are affordable and I started out only with a $30/month package. Overall, her help saves me time and frustration and she rocks!
All in all, outsourcing hasn’t caused me to lose any money but it’s helped me grow my blog and my business and free up some of my time which greatly improves my work-life balance. I’m glad I found a way to work much smarter as opposed to working harder and experiencing burnout.
Do you outsource? If so, what tasks?
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Tonya @ Budget and the Beach says
I’m right about there with Pinterest because I’m too swamped right now with other things. Can you talk about your numbers and how they changed with using Pinterest. I’m curious to know if it’s really worth it. Thanks! You can email me if you want to if you don’t want to say it here.
Choncé says
Hey Tonya, when you say numbers I’m guessing you mean page views? My page views have increased by about a third since I’ve been getting help with Pinterest photos and scheduling pins. However, that was when we were using Board Booster. I recently subscribed to Tailwind and it’s supposed to be more effective and favorable than Board Booster and I’m already starting to get more click and readers on my site so far as a result. It’s a little too early to calculate the change, but over the next few months I will try to track it. A majority of my traffic does still come from organic searches especially for this Liberty HealthShare post I wrote so I guess I’m doing something right in terms of SEO.
Jason @ TheButlerJournal.com says
I don’t outsource yet, but I know I will have to in the near future. There is a lot going on. I’m starting to realize that I don’t have the time to do everything.
Choncé says
Yes, I hear ya! Sometimes I feel like I need of me to get everything done. It’s best to outsource when you truly feel ready though so it doesn’t have to be rushed. For me, I just felt like I would not be able to move forward unless I outsourced some stuff.
Melissa says
Social media can be so all-consuming, that’s a great one to outsource. All the marketing stuff gets pretty time-heavy, so outsourcing can be a lifesaver!
Choncé says
Yes, exactly! For me, my main focus is and will always be content so I need time for that.
My Urban Family says
That is amazing that you are at a point where you can outsource some things! Social media really is a time killer – I may need to think about this down the road too 🙂
Christie says
I love this post! Trying to blog takes a very wide skill set. I don’t know how anyone could be good at them all. I love bloggers hiring bloggers so that some folks can specialize!
Cat@BudgetBlonde says
I do some outsourcing too. As you know, I have a VA that helps me stay organized and runs my other site. I also have some who does my Pinterest images too, and Grayson provides my technical assistance as well.
DC @ Young Adult Money says
Oh I may be interested in talking to you about who does your pinterest images! I may be interested in their services.
DC @ Young Adult Money says
Now that my blog income is a bit more consistent and I’ve had a couple promotions at work I’ve tried t outsource more. I originally thought I would DIY with our bathroom remodel but I am 100% for sure hiring it out now. I also did minimal writing on my blog the past 3 months as I outsourced all the writing so I could work on my book. Outsourcing can be a good thing, but it’s important to not go overboard.
Choncé says
That’s great that you’ve been able to outsource quite a few things to free up some time. I’m so excited for your book! It sounds like you’ve work so hard on it.
Kristin says
Thanks for the shout out Chonce! I love this post and wish more bloggers wrote about this!
I’ve started slowly outsourcing as well out of necessity. Grayson has been a lifesaver for the back end stuff I’m tired of dealing with – I just can’t handle the technical stuff and I don’t have time to mess around with things that I really don’t understand. I’m pretty much ready to hire someone to either edit my posts or write a couple times a month. I totally agree that you have to spend money to make money!
Choncé says
Sometimes it’s hard to understand that concept of having to spend money in order to earn money. It can be so worth it if you outsource a little of the things you don’t like to do to free up your time though 🙂
Michelle Jackson says
Fantastic post! I am starting to write out my processes so that I can outsource when the time is right. My biggest concern is all of the podcasting stuff that I’m getting into. You can’t do everything and deciding what to hand off to someone else (like housecleaning) is a process of being honest about what you don’t want to deal with…or what’s taking you away from earning money.
Choncé says
That’s a good way to think about it. Tedious tasks and opportunities that take you away from earning money should definitely be outsourced once you start to feel comfortable with that.
Reelika @Financially Wise On Heels says
I do outsource several things as well. I tried to save money at first and handle everything on my own. However, the reality is that it is not worth it. I created a list of things that needed to get done, and outlined those that absolutely needed to get done by me (for instance creating my online program or providing consultations) and those that absolutely didn’t need my input (for instance tech stuff, administrative duties, etc). It helped me focus on things that do bring income and readers, and not to worry about the things that take forever for me to understand (tech stuff for instance).
Choncé says
Sounds like a great system! I’m still getting accustomed to the whole outsource thing myself, but it’s making a huge difference so far when it comes to focusing on offering value to my readers and increasing my side income.
seattlegirluw says
I’m finally jumping in to Pinterest. So I outsourced that to Kristin. I hated spending the money — especially since my blog still doesn’t really make much this many years in (to be fair, I haven’t put a ton of effort into monetizing it) — but I looked at the task, looked at Pinterest and nearly got a headache. So I decided it was worth the money to have someone else take care of it. She set up my boards, and we’re setting up Tailwind and she’ll help me with that. I try to visit to find more people to follow and such, but mainly i want nothing to do with it.
That said, I tend to have fun making the images for my posts. Well, sometimes it’s a slog. Other times it’s fun. But I think I’ve got it down pretty well, so I’m not willing to pay someone for that. Of course, I’m only writing the post the night before maybe 40% of the time. So it’s not really tenable anyway.
I also use Grayson. I just sucked it up and pay him a monthly amount so that he can help me. I decided it was worth it to have him on call. And so now each time I want to upgrade something, I don’t have to put it off. I can just have him do it. Totally worth it!
Choncé says
Haha, I felt the same way after I read some Pinterest marketing articles. Grayson is very dependable and that’s great that you don’t have to worry about any of the technical stuff.