Let’s discuss “How to Build Your List Nearly Hands-Free” As mentioned elsewhere in this course, you may occasionally find yourself “stuck” as you work your way through some part of the process of building your list.
The good news is that if you don’t have the time or skills to do a task yourself, you don’t need to. Instead, you can outsource it to a competent professional.
In turn, this frees up your time, which you can use in more productive ways in your business (or you can just enjoy more free time with your friends, family, and hobbies).
You might occasionally feel “stuck” as you progress through a stage of the process of developing your list, as was previously described in this course.
Table of Contents
How to Build Your List Nearly Hands-Free
The good news is that you don’t have to do a task yourself if you don’t have the time or the necessary abilities. Instead, you can hire a qualified expert to handle it for you.
This frees up your time, which you can then utilize to run your firm more effectively (or you can just enjoy more free time with your friends, family, and hobbies).
So, with that in mind, here’s a crash course on how to outsource…
Step 1: Decide What to Outsource
There are multiple things you can outsource when it comes to email marketing, including:
- Lead page design.
- Lead page sales copy.
- Lead magnet creation.
- Lead magnet graphics/layout/design.
- Content creation (emails).
- Traffic generation to your lead page.
You can outsource the whole shebang, or you can outsource a small part or anything in between. Ask yourself:
- Which tasks would be better handled by a professional because you don’t have the skills to do them well?
- Which tasks do you dislike doing?
- Which tasks do you tend to procrastinate doing?
- What is your budget for outsourcing?
You may decide to start small and scale-up.
For example, you might hire someone to create your initial autoresponder series with (for example) five emails, and then later hire them to create a lead magnet and another set of emails. Eventually, you might outsource all your content creation, which frees up your time to work on things like traffic generation.
Decide what to outsource, and then move on to the next step…
Step 2: Define the Project
Now that you know what you’re going to outsource, your next step is to take the first project on your list and create a project brief. This brief should be as detailed as possible, as this will give you a better end result.
Let’s suppose you want someone to create a set of five emails for you. Your project brief may include:
- The purpose of this set of emails, including what you want readers to do at the end of each email (CTA).
- The number of emails in the set.
- The approximate word count for each email.
- An outline for each email.
- Working titles for the set as well as each individual email.
- Any notes you’d like to add, such as wanting a conversational tone.
Next…
Step 3: Decide How to Advertise
Once your project brief is in hand, now you can work on attracting the right freelancer to complete the job. Here are different ways to advertise the project:
- Post on a freelancing site. Examples include Upwork.com, Freelancer.com, Guru.com, and similar.
- Ask your network for their recommendations. This includes your marketing partners, colleagues, and prospects/customers.
- Search Google for “ghostwriter” or “content writer.” Be sure to look at the sponsored ads as well.
- Post a local want-ad. You can do this on sites such as on CraigsList.org or via a local newspaper’s online ads.
Generally speaking, posting on a freelancing site is your best bet, as a good ad will attract a wide variety of talent. Be sure to include your deadline as well as your budget. Naturally, a project with a bigger budget and a longer deadline will attract a wider variety of people.
Step 4: Do Your Due Diligence
Once you get bids flowing in for your project, then be sure to research each potential candidate. This includes:
- Checking their portfolio to ensure they do high-quality work.
- Reviewing their ratings and feedback (if they’re on a freelancing site).
- Checking testimonials and references (from verified people/companies).
- Researching the freelancer’s name and business name in Google to ensure they have a good reputation.
- Checking that they’ve been in business as a freelancer for at least a year or two.
- Seeing if their pricing matches your budget.
You may decide to select two or three of the top candidates and ask them to do a project. You can then decide which freelancers work well with you, deliver on time, and create a project that closely matches your vision of what you wanted.
Step 5: Develop a Relationship
Once you find a good freelancer, you’re going to want to hang onto that person. This is especially true if you’re hoping to work with this person over the long term, such as having them create a new lead magnet and set of emails every month for you.
To that end, you want to create a good working relationship with your freelancer(s). Here are tips for doing that:
- Create a written agreement that protects both of you. This agreement lays out all the terms of any particular project so that there are no misunderstandings. This includes the scope of the project, the mutually agreed-upon delivery deadline, payment terms, how revisions are handled, and similar issues.
- Make your expectations clear. For example: if you give your freelancer a big project, and you want weekly updates on their project, make this desire/expectation known to avoid misunderstandings.
- Pay promptly. When the freelancer hands you the invoice, don’t sit on it until they remind you again. Make the freelancer’s job easier by paying it immediately – and you may occasionally even toss in a surprise bonus to reward good work.
- Offer kind words. While freelancers are obviously in business to make money, they’re humans who appreciate kind words. If your freelancer does a good job, let her know.
- Be polite. Don’t forget to use your “please” and “thank yous” when communicating with your freelancer.
In short, it does take an investment of time upfront to find, hire and develop a good relationship with a freelancer, but it pays for itself over the long term when you have people on your team that you can trust with all of your most important content or other email marketing tasks.
Your Turn
Your assignment for this lesson is to decide if you’re going to start outsourcing. If so, what are you going to outsource? Use the questions inside the lesson to determine which tasks are better suited to a professional, and then decide which of those tasks to outsource first. Then create a deadline for yourself to complete the project brief and begin advertising to find a freelancer.
