Businesses always look for ways to keep costs low while still getting the word out and attracting new customers. For small businesses, this often means operating on a shoestring budget while doing everything yourself. For larger business, it means putting off hiring someone new until it becomes absolutely necessary.
In the meantime, existing employees struggle to keep up with the workload, often spending all of their time handling day-to-day operational tasks. This means less time to build and grow the business, which can eventually lead to stagnation. By relying on crowdsourcing sites like Upwork and 99Designs, businesses can offload some of those tasks, giving them time to focus on other things that need their attention.
Graphic Design
There are many tools that now make do-it-yourself design easy. However, unless you have a talent for design, your results will likely be less impressive than a true professional’s. Instead of spending two hours of your day trying to figure out a business card design tool or working out the navigation on your self-built website, you can hire a freelancer to handle it. Freelance designers can also create your business logo and build the rest of your material around it, developing a theme that helps establish brand recognition. Crowdsourcing sites have made it easy to find an affordable graphic designer versus going through graphic design firms, which often charge a premium for their services.
Content Creation
High-quality content is essential to capturing the attention of search engine algorithms, which strive to deliver the best results possible. By searching for talented content providers, you can hand off your blog posts, social media updates, and email marketing campaigns to experts. This will allow you to keep your online platforms completely up to date at all times, without taking time away from your busy schedule. In addition to writers and social media content creators, you can also find strategists to help you decide what to post and how often to post it.
Bookkeeping
While there are many software-based solutions that can automate your accounting processes, having an expert accountant review your books can make a big difference. You can get help with your financial projections, your tax preparation, and even your client billing processes. Some business owners prefer hiring professional bookkeepers or virtual assistants for their billing merely because it keeps them from damaging client relationships. If one of your clients is late on payment, for instance, your bookkeeping freelancer could be in charge of emailing reminders and late notices. This restricts your own communications with clients to business only, helping you avoid potentially damaging the relationships you’ve worked so hard to cultivate.
Research and Organization
There are small things that are necessary to growing your business, but those small things can take away from the work you need to be doing. Instead, you can pay a freelancer to handle tasks like creating your mailing lists and organizing your email inbox. You can also find research specialists who will put their expertise to use in conducting original research or locating information that is already out there that can help as you seek funding, develop case studies, or plan your next product release. Research help doesn’t have to be anything extensive. You can even use it to get information for a post you want to add to your business blog.
Crowdsourcing brings affordable services to businesses of all sizes. By carefully choosing the right providers and clearly communicating the work you need from them, you’ll find that each of your projects is successful. Over time, you’ll gather a stable of freelancers who regularly provide work for your business in exchange for an hourly or per-project fee.
