Image by Brian M Anderson
One of the big benefits of the web, of SEO, and of the great infrastructures like AdSense, Amazon, Kindle, the Play Store, iTunes and the rest, is that has in many ways ‘levelled’ the playing field allowing anyone with an idea and some commitment to start making money from their passion and competing with the big businesses.
There are still obstacles though for the ‘little guy’ when it comes to taking on big business, and it can still be tricky to put out the sheer quantity of work that big companies do, or to give it that corporate ‘sheen’ that gives buyers faith in a product or service and makes your organization look more professional.
Before we get started note that this isn’t entirely a bad thing, and that there are advantages to lacking some polish. Not only does this give you underdog status (and people love to support the underdog), but it also gives you the ability to make your product seem instantly more hip, more creative and most likely – more affordable.
Still though, giving your presentation some of that professionalism is important nevertheless so that you can assure someone that they aren’t handing their money over to a kid who has no idea what they’re doing. Particularly if you want people to spend a lot of money with your business, you need to make yourself look more professional. So how do you do that? You outsource of course.
Your Outsourcing Options
Image by ElProsumidor.net
First of all, unless your business is in web design then you should certainly outsource the design and programming of your web site. While you might be capable of creating your own basic WordPress site, or your own basic website template, this is just not going to be as effective as it would be if you had it built by a company that specialized in web design. That’s their job and as such they simply have more expertise and more resources to create a great site that looks like it belongs to a real business. This is a smart investment with a long term ROI.
At the same time though you might also need a range of smaller jobs doing which can all help to create that professional feel. Remember: the devil is in the details. For example then you might want a professional font designed for some advertising, you might want an advert built, you might want a logo designed, or you might want a video opener for your YouTube channel. In any of these cases there will be a temptation to ‘do it yourself’, but the end product will be much better if you outsource it. And there are plenty of ways you can find these services very cheap these days – head over to Fiverr.com for instance and you’ll find loads of people offering great services for just $5 because they love doing it.
Lastly, if you want to outsource even more cheaply for a range of tasks, you can always try reaching out to your visitors/clients. This is called crowdsourcing, and if you ask your viewers’ opinions or whether they can help you to finalise a specific product, then you’ll find you can get a lot of help from people who just want to be involved. It’s completely free, and it will result in an end product that’s guaranteed to be a hit with the people you’re marketing it to.
