If you run a small business, you probably spend hours every week on small jobs that are not the best use of your time: checking listings, sorting photos, posting, testing your own website. Outsourcing small tasks lets you hand those jobs to others and spend your time on the work only you can do.
Which tasks to outsource
Good candidates are tasks that are:
- Repeatable: the same steps every time.
- Easy to explain: you can write the steps in a few lines.
- Easy to check: you can tell quickly if it was done right.
- Not your strength, or not worth your hourly value.
Examples: data entry and checking, product photo sorting, transcription, website and app testing, social posting, short content creation, research.
What not to outsource (at first)
- Decisions about money, pricing and strategy.
- Anything that needs access to your bank, passwords or sensitive customer data.
- Relationships with your most important customers.
How to break a job into tasks
- Write down every step you do for the job.
- Group steps that one person can do in one sitting.
- For each group, write the result you expect and how you will check it.
- Turn each group into a task with a clear brief. See how to write a task brief.
Two ways to outsource on Microtask
- Host a task when you need the same job done by many people, such as twenty app tests or fifty product videos.
- Direct Hire when you need one reliable person for an ongoing or bigger job. Choose from workers with a proven record. Read why proven records matter.
Keep quality high
- Start with a small batch and review it before scaling.
- Give feedback on the first submissions.
- Approve only work that meets your brief, and explain rejections so people can fix them. See how to review submissions fairly.
- Keep the people who do great work and offer them more.
Work out what your time is worth
Divide what your business earns in a typical month by the hours you work. That is a rough value of your hour. Any small task that someone else can do well for less than that is a strong candidate to outsource, because your hour is better spent selling, serving customers or improving the product.
Examples of outsourced small tasks
| Task | Good fit for |
|---|---|
| Checking 200 product listings for errors | Hosted data task for several people |
| Testing a new checkout on different phones | Hosted testing task |
| Fifty short product videos for adverts | Hosted video task |
| Managing your Instagram for a month | Direct Hire one person |
| Transcribing customer interview recordings | Hosted data task or one freelancer |
Protect your business while outsourcing
- Share only the information each task needs.
- Never share passwords. Use separate accounts or roles where platforms allow it.
- Keep customer data out of tasks unless it is essential, and remove it when the task is done.
Start with one task this week
List the three small jobs that took most of your time last week. Pick the easiest to explain, write a brief, and hand it off. Create a business account on Microtask to post it.