How to Outsource Your Life for Five Bucks

31 Aug How to Outsource Your Life for Five Bucks

Written by: Scott Dinsmore

Editor’s note: I’m somewhere off exploring Croatia right now, but I wrote this prior to leaving and had to share it with you.

Average Read Time: 3 Minutes

Do you ever have little tasks that might take you hours, but you know others could do them in minutes?

If something isn’t your specialty, you shouldn’t expect to be much good at it. Graphic design and complex web coding are perfect examples of this for me.

Well I have found an awesome answer to this problem and I’ve got to share it with you.

Outsource your life $5 at a time.

Recently I read a blog post on Escape the 9 to 5 that interviewed the founder of Fiverr.com. Within minutes I was hooked and I’d become massively more productive!

The site is simply a marketplace for people selling their services for $5 each. One fixed rate for everything-both online and offline/in-person work. The service is brilliant and incredibly useful for entrepreneurs or anyone looking to spend their time only doing the things they’re good at (which is the only way I recommend anyone spends time).

You might say, ‘how could someone offer a useful service for only five bucks?’ Well I assure you they can. At at over 75,000 active listings, I’d say they’re onto something. They cover everything from increasing your Twitter following to singing happy birthday to your buddy in Turkish. It’s all there.

Only spend time on what you’re good at. Outsource the rest.

My first experience was unreal and the timing could not have been better. I was just about to start the design work for the cover of my new eBook which I was offering as part of my new site redesign and launch. I had it all written and all I needed was a sharp looking cover. I figured, how hard could this be?

I opened photoshop and proceeded to tumble face first into a 2-hour time warp, with nothing to show once I reached the other side. Even if I spent 8 hours on the task, there was no way it was going to look nearly presentable enough for my site. I am just not a Photoshop guy.

I needed help, but the problem was I needed it done in 3 days or less (I’ve noticed designers tend to hate tight time lines).

I hopped on Fiverr and found someone in minutes. I made a $5 payment via PayPal (you pay in advance but the money isn’t released to the provider until final project is delivered) and two minutes later he wrote me asking for the appropirate files. I sent them and went back to work.

No more than 5 minutes later I had an email saying my project was ready. I logged in and there it was. A sharply designed, 3D eBook cover. Are you kidding? That’s time leverage at its best.

After two renditions it was perfect and within 9 hours the project was complete (I assigned it at 10:30 pm and it was done by morning). They even designed it based on the design of my website. For proof, check out the final version of my eBook cover, The Best of Reading For Your Success.

Your time is worth more than you think. Spend it wisely.

Many bloggers and E-entrepreneurs often produce eBooks and other graphic materials so I hope this alone saves you a bundle of time (and money). I was about to outsource the task for $50 to a woman in the Ukraine, which I would have been more than happy to pay prior to Fiverr.

The site is brilliant: Finding people who are super efficient with a particular task and linking them up with people who are terribly inefficient at the same task and are willing to pay a few bucks to have it done. If we all spent our time this way, the world would be an unbelievable place.

Imagine if the next time you needed a quick website header, logo, widget, snippet of code or site troubleshooting, that you could have it done for five bucks and with little wasted time. It’s perfect for the guy who wears a ton of hats or someone just looking to have some fun.

Now I have three other people working little design tweaks and coding things for my site. I love it. And outsourcing always feels so good! It actually makes me sleep better at night.

Some of the other services being offered right now:

• Advertise your site to 5,000 facebook friends
• Write and record a song for you
• Turn a picture of you into a cartoon
• Post blog comments
• Create a custom Twitter background
• Code in any language for an hour
• Beautiful woman do an HD video promoting your brand
• Same beautiful woman be in a relationship with you on Facebook for a week
• Design a logo or website header
• This list seriously goes on as long as your imagination can handle…

Invest $5 to save your most precious resource: Time

I don’t care if you have a huge pile of tasks or nothing at all on your plate to outsource. Check out this site and spend $10-20. Consider it an investment in learning how to manage the world’s most scarce resource.

I know you’ll find plenty of value. Pick something work related or just do it for fun. But do something. It’s worth the experiment.

Our time can never be recovered so why not spend it the best way you know how?

Happy outsourcing and let me know what you get done. Share your best outsourcing experiences in the comments below.

Note: I am not getting paid a dime to promote this service. I just think it’s awesomely useful.

If you liked this article, please Tweet about it or tell your friends on Facebook using the links below. I’d appreciate it.

If you really want to get serious about outsourcing, check out the article I wrote for Elance a few weeks ago:

12 Tips for Outsourcing Your Business to the Next Level in Today’s Economy

Photo 1 courtesy of foxspain