OK here’s the total honest truth.

I’m doing like 10% of the volume of business I was doing earlier this year.  My affiliate income right now is PATHETIC.

Why?

Because I’m too damn busy to make money!

Does that sound completely retarded to anyone besides me?

Then I talk with guys like John Jonas, or Daniel Turner & Marc Lindsay, and hear that they work a fraction of the time that I do and make orders of magnitude more money.

Something is seriously wrong with this picture.  ANd it ain’t them!

What am I doing checking on my support desk?  Why am I answering simple questions about my products?  Why am I checking my stats and spending even 5 minutes in Excel?  Why am I doing any one of dozens of tasks that really truly do NOT have to be done by me?!??!

Part of it is being a control freak.  I admit it.  But this is seriously hampering my ability to make money, and there is no valid excuse for that.

I’m my own worst enemy in this regard.

I’ve started addressing this by hiring programmers (Russians in specific), and that’s worked out for me so far.  See, I understand software development… I know how to speak their “language”, and with very few exceptions I’ve gotten spectacular results out of my outsourcing efforts where programmers are concerned.  I happen to really like Odesk for this.

But as yet I haven’t had much luck outsourcing administrative stuff.  I do finally have a couple guys helping me in my LPGen support desk (both are customers & users of the program so they truly understand how to use it) and recently I’ve begun experimenting with hiring in the Philippines.

So far, that hasn’t been as spectacular as my programmer experiences.  No disasters or anything, just nothing really stellar in terms of results.  Then again I’m paying them a fraction of what I pay even my “reasonably priced” Russian programmers so really, they can be less than stellar and I still get my money’s worth.

But the time has come and I need to step up my outsourcing to a whole new level.  From what I’ve seen, there are two main camps really pushing hard on providing education on outsourcing and how to apply it to your internet marketing business.  The Outsource Method, and ReplaceMyself.  Both are excellent resources, but differ in approach and style.

Daniel & Marc are the forces behind Outsource Method.  They have built quite a large company by heavily leveraging outsourcing.  They’ve really refined this into a system that in my opinion applies to almost any scale of online business, from a 1-person affiliate shop, to a big corporation.  Not exclusive to any one country (though they’ve recently started talking mostly about the Philippines), they provide more of a map for the do-it-yourself marketer who wants to learn the ins & outs of outsourcing, how to train the workers, etc.

These guys have a number of online businesses under their belt so they certainly aren’t newcomers to the game, and they put out good stuff and are very available for questions, etc.  Hey they gotta do something with all that extra time right?

ReplaceMyself is different in a few key areas.  Firstly, it’s strictly focused on the Philippines, and that’s IT.  John Jonas gives some pretty compelling reasons why the Philippines is the ideal place to outsource to, and explains a number of important details you need to know when navigating the waters of offshoring.

One thing I love about ReplaceMyself is that it actually provides basic training FOR YOUR OUTSOURCERS on things like link building, SEO, Adwords, mini-nets, article marketing, etc.  It’s set up so that any time you don’t have specific tasks for your team to be working on, they go back to their “perpetual project” and just keep implementing the things in the training area, into your business.  I can’t think of an online business that simply COULDN’T benefit from article marketing, SEO, mini nets, better PPC campaigns, etc.  So to not have to train them yourself on these things, is pretty awesome.

I’ve gotten to know all these guys to various degrees this year, and actually have spent time with John Jonas in person (Daniel & Marc are in Australia and while I would LOVE to hang out with them some time, it’s not the most convenient spur-of-the-moment weekend getaway.  )

They’re all passionate about what they do (does that mean they’re passionate about what they DON’T do?  LOL) and absolutely practice what they preach.  I recently spent 4 days with John and other than a few emails, I didn’t notice him “working” on his business at ALL during that time… and yet everything was still getting done.

I promise you that if you have any level of online business and ever think - even for a moment - that you “wear too many hats” or wish you “didn’t have to do _________”, you can benefit tremendously from either, or perhaps both, of these programs.  They differ in style & approach, so check them both out and see which speaks to you.

The important thing is that you STOP DOING EVERYTHING YOURSELF!  I can’t tell you how maddening it is to see my income dry up while I work on getting LPGen2 out the door.  And there is NO good reason for it!  I could have other people continuing to put up campaigns, test offers, etc.  This ain’t rocket science folks… if you don’t begin multiplying yourself immediately, you’re going to find you get in your own way and become your own worst limitation.

Check out The Outsource Method and ReplaceMyself before any more time passes!  You’ll be glad you did!

Jonathan