Wondering how to outsource your affiliate marketing business?
If so, it’s probably because you’re overwhelmed right now.
You’re feeling buried under the sheer amount of tasks on your To Do List.
You need to:
- Blog 3-4x a week
- Promote your blogs on social
- Work on your link-building campaigns
- Maintain your website
- And so much more
To add to that, you want to expand your business.
You want to delve into new niches, build more sites, and earn more.
But since all these take time…
…you’re stuck with simply imagining what you could do if you had less on your hands.
If this is you, congratulations!
You’ve already made it this far in your affiliate marketing journey.
The next step is simple: outsourcing.
It’s time to free yourself up, so you can move on to the next level, grow your business, or simply sit back, relax, and enjoy life more.
The only question: how to outsource your affiliate marketing business?
In this blog, we’ll dive into the nitty-gritty of this topic.
I’ll show you how outsourcing can help your business, the main tasks you should outsource, how to find people to delegate to, and more!
Let’s dive right in.
This post is part of our free series on Affiliate Marketing! If you want to learn everything from A – Z in one place, then check out our course below!
How Outsourcing Can Help You (And Your Business)
Right now, your affiliate marketing business is running smoothly.
You’re earning a steady income, and you’re happy about things so far.
So why should you outsource?
Why take a step that’ll chip away at the money you earn from your business?
Two reasons:
1. You Want to Grow Your Business
As I mentioned earlier, running an affiliate marketing business takes time and effort.
You’re writing blogs, promoting on social, updating your website, building links, and so on.
This leaves you with little to no time left to plan, start, and grow new affiliate websites.
And when you’re stuck with a few, you miss out on huge potential and opportunity.
That’s right!
Check out these stats on how affiliate marketing has grown:
Source: findstack.com
And it won’t stop there.
In fact, affiliate marketing is predicted to touch the $835 million mark by 2025.
What this means for you: right now is not the time to slack off.
You should be seeking new opportunities, expanding, and growing.
And when you outsource your affiliate marketing business, this will be 100% possible.
2. You Want to Enjoy Your Life
Flashback to 2011, I was a busy affiliate marketer.
I was writing my own blogs, doing my social media promotions, and building my websites.
Everything has changed by now.
These days, I wander around the country in my travel trailer.
I go on adventures.
I write my own travel blog, just for the fun of it.
All the while, my affiliate marketing business runs in the background, led by amazing people I trust.
Because in the end, money isn’t everything.
It’s what money can buy that makes the difference.
In my case, that’s time, freedom, and adventure.
In yours, it could be more time with your family. It could be the chance to try hobbies you’ve always wanted to experience. It could be the energy to start up a new business.
When you outsource your affiliate marketing business, you gain time.
And like Benjamin Franklin once said, time is money.
6 Tasks Affiliate Marketers Can Outsource
Convinced it’s time to outsource your affiliate marketing business?
Great.
That said, it’s not as easy as waking up in the morning and deciding you’re going to do it.
It’ll take time, planning, and a few careful, strategic steps.
One important thing you’ll need to do is organize.
Stop thinking of your business as a fluid whole, and start dividing it into different tasks you can outsource separately.
Here are six to consider:
1. Writing
Producing content for your blogs is one of the most time-consuming parts of being an affiliate marketer.
This is especially true if you’re into quality, and feel pride in pleasing your audience with content that’s truly helpful to them.
Here’s how long it takes most bloggers to write a 500-word piece of content.
Source: blog.hubspot.com
As an affiliate marketer, you’re probably writing blogs that run on to thousands of words.
This means that even if you write with super speed, it’ll still take you around four hours to complete one blog.
Since you need to publish 3-4 blogs a week, most of your week will be spent trying to produce enough content for your site.
And that’s just one site!
When you outsource blogging, you’ll be surprised (and relieved) with how much extra time you’ll have on your hands.
2. Social Media Promotion and Management
Here’s something you might not have heard:
To grow your audience, you should focus 20% of your time on writing for your blog…
…and 80% promoting it.
That’s right!
In fact, that’s what the experts are doing:
Source: sujanpatel.com
So, how do you promote your blogs?
There are a ton of ways, but one of the easiest and most promising is through social media.
With 4.48 billion people on social, it won’t be hard to find an audience who’ll love your content.
But like I said, promotion should be thorough and consistent, meaning it’ll take time.
To get the social engagement you want, it’s a good idea to hire a savvy social media manager to take the mountain of tasks out of your hands.
3. Web Development and Design
Looking to build new affiliate marketing sites?
That’s great!
You’re capitalizing on the potential of affiliate marketing and setting yourself up for success.
However, building a brand-new, SEO-optimized, professional-looking website from scratch isn’t a walk in the park.
According to experts, it takes around a month to develop, design, and launch a successful site.
If you’re not up to the task, you can hire an expert web developer to do it for you.
4. Video Creation
There’s no doubt about it:
Video is the future of digital marketing.
In fact, 85% of American internet users watch online videos.
Source: oberlo.com
Since the online audience loves video so much, you’ll get on their good graces by producing quality, helpful videos that’ll change their lives.
Plus, videos increase your visitors’ time on your site, signaling to Google that you’re worth ranking at the top of the SERPs.
Sadly, creating superstar videos isn’t as easy as snapping your fingers.
Yup!
It takes 2 to 300 hours to make a single video on YouTube!
If you don’t have all that time on your hands…
…it’s time to hire an expert video producer.
5. Your Miscellaneous Tasks
Running an affiliate marketing business isn’t all about the big tasks.
It’s not all about writing blogs, building a cool website, and interacting with your audience on social media.
A lot of the time, it’s about the small stuff too.
It’s about publishing your blogs on WordPress. Looking for broken links and replacing them. Reaching out to other site owners and asking them if they’d like to link to you.
Trust me, these tasks seem easy, but they take a ton of time.
The good news is, you can hire an all-around person to do them all for you.
These people are called VAs (virtual assistants), and they can take a huge burden from your shoulders by eliminating all the tedious tasks lining up for your attention.
6. The Management of Your Business
To be honest, this step is a little extreme.
Most affiliate marketers will want some level of control over their sites, and be OK with putting in some of the work themselves.
But not everyone is the same.
For some, the dream is to be totally hands-off and to focus on the stuff they love while their business runs in the background and makes money in their sleep.
If this sounds like you, you can hire a full-time business manager to take control of all your sites.
Instead of you, they’ll do the work of maintaining your business, collaborating with people you’ve hired, and finding ways to grow your brand.
How to Outsource Your Affiliate Marketing Business: Where to Find the Right People to Hire
All right!
Now you know which tasks you can outsource and how doing so will save you a ton of time.
The next questions?
Who should you hire to take over your tasks?
Where do you find these people?
How do you know if they’re “the one” for you?
To answer, let’s look at these queries one by one.
1. Who to Hire for Your Affiliate Business (And Where to Find Them)
When it comes to hiring, you’ll want to double-time on finding the right person.
That’s because the right hire will be worth all your patience and hard work.
So, who should you hire and where can you find them?
For me, hiring a savvy freelancer overseas is a great idea.
That’s because these people are as talented as native Americans, but charge less because of the low cost of living in their countries.
Here are some awesome places you can find and get in touch with them:
All you have to do is sign up as an employer, create a post with the details of your job offer and compensation, and wait for offers to flow in.
Check out this example of how to do it on Upwork:
Source: upwork.com
2. How to Determine if a Candidate Is the One for You
If you offer a great job and good compensation, your inbox will soon be flooded with applicants.
However, you shouldn’t just pick anyone.
You’ll need someone with the right skills and attitude, someone you can trust to do a superb job.
A great way to determine if a candidate is the right one is to offer paid tests.
That’s because an interview will only get you so far with gauging a person’s real-world skills.
For instance, if you’re hiring a writer, you can ask them to write a brief 300-word piece on the subject of your choice.
Make sure to pay them for their work, so even if you decide not to hire them, you won’t be taking up their precious time.
How to Outsource Your Affiliate Marketing Business: 3 Valuable Tips from 11 Years as an Affiliate Marketer
The truth is, outsourcing is a great step if you’re thinking of growing your business.
But it’s not perfect.
Also, it won’t be the same for everyone.
So before diving right in, here are three tips from my 11 years as an affiliate marketer.
Tip #1: Don’t Outsource Too Soon
Just starting out on your affiliate marketing journey?
I’ll be honest with you: now is not the best time to outsource.
That’s because you’ll want to learn the ropes of your business before you hire other people to run the show.
In order to train and guide others, you first need to be the expert yourself.
So my suggestion is this:
Spend a year or two doing everything yourself.
Make mistakes (trust me, it’s 100% OK)!
Learn, learn, learn.
After you’ve mastered the process and started earning from one or two sites, you can consider outsourcing.
Tip #2: Go for Quality
In the beginning, you’ll be tempted to hire the cheapest people.
This is especially true if you’re on a tight budget.
But trust me, that’s not the best idea.
While you’ll need to balance between quality and what you can afford, never accept low-quality work simply because it’s cheap.
In the long run, your whole business will suffer from bad quality.
Tip #3: You Don’t Have to Outsource Everything
The truth is, not every affiliate marketer is created equal.
Maybe you want to be totally hands-off from your business, chilling out by the beach and enjoying life or working hard on your next business idea…
…or maybe you don’t.
Maybe you still want to be in the game.
Maybe that excites you.
And if so, then great!
You can still run your affiliate marketing business, but here’s the best part:
You can stick to doing what you love.
For instance, if you hate the writing part but love social media promotion, you can hire writers while you focus on social platforms.
Or if you love writing but hate link building and SEO, you can hire people to do these less-savory tasks.
And so on.
The result will be that you’ll love your business even more, and enjoy every day you spend running it.
How to Outsource Your Affiliate Marketing Business: It Really Isn’t That Hard!
Scratching your head, wondering how to outsource your affiliate marketing business?
I understand.
The truth is, outsourcing is scary.
This is especially so if you’ve been doing everything yourself from the beginning.
Questions are bound to pop into your head at 3 am, giving you nightmares.
But hear me out.
It’s really not that hard.
All you need to do is identify the aspects of your business you want to delegate…
…then hire skillful people using the steps I mentioned above.
In no time, you’ll be running the kind of business you want, exactly the way you want to run it.
This post is part of our free series on Affiliate Marketing! If you want to learn everything from A – Z in one place, then check out our course below!