We're going to get into some of the actual things you need to do when considering outsourcing any of your work to others. Hopefully, this will give you some idea of what to look out for and what to be careful of.
When you're dealing with outsourcing your work, you're dealing with other people. Whenever other people are involved, there are going to be things that are out of your control.
For example, you outsource a project to somebody and they become ill. They work alone so they have nobody to pass the project along to. For that matter, if the only way you're able to communicate with this person is through email and they're suddenly rushed to the hospital, you may never hear from this person again for several days or weeks.
So the first thing you want to do when you outsource anything to anyone is to find out if they have a partner and if not, is there a way to contact somebody besides them should they have a sudden illness or problem that takes them away from the work. If this sounds cold, it's not. It's just plain business and you always need to have a backup plan. Things happen and we have to prepare for those things. Otherwise, we're stuck with a project that we can't complete until we find somebody else to do it. And in the case of a written contract, that may not be so easy to do. Think about it. If you signed a contract with this person for them to do the work, you're obligated to give him a chance to finish it. So make sure you have somebody in his camp, whether it be a partner or his wife or whoever, who you can contact in case of emergency.
But even before we get to the point of making contracts and providing for backup plans, we have the issue of finding somebody to do the job. This isn't a matter of simply pulling out our address book and calling our friend Joe and asking him if he'll write a sales letter for you. Joe may not know the difference between a sales letter and a sail boat. You want to hire a professional who is an expert in the thing you need done. Will it cost more money? Yes, but there are ways around that. I'll get into those ways in a later article when we get into more advanced strategies.
To find somebody to outsource your work to, you want to look for somebody who specializes in one thing. Yes, there are plenty of people out there who can do a number of things, but people who specialize in just one thing, such as ecover design or sales copy, are usually very good at that one thing. That's why it's all they do. These are the people who you want to seek out when you plan on outsourcing your work.