Outsourcing involves delegating some operations to an external entity, which is usually specialized in managing that operation. Outsourcing emerged on the business world as a method to focus a company’s energy and resources on some core-activities, where most of the value is created, while delegating non-core activities to external suppliers that can execute those operations more efficiently and with reduced costs.

10 Requisites for Professional Bloggers” where I outlined 10 factors that contribute to the success of a blogger. While I believe that every blogger should at least have a basic knowledge of those areas it is not necessary to master all of them. Some people will inevitably have better writing skills while others will have more technical expertise.

Before considering to outsource some of your blog activities you need to carry an objective evaluation about your blogging skills, and identify where the value is being created on your blog. A certain person might be an outstanding marketer but an average writer. In that case most of the value on the blog will be created from the marketing activities and not from the content itself, meaning that this person should consider outsourcing the writing part to a more competent writer.

Alternatively someone might have brilliant writing abilities but no web design skills whatsoever. This person could try to design the blog template by himself, but the result would a poorly designed blog and a lot of time wasted on the process.

If you are not sure about your core-activities or where value is being created on your blog you need to ask yourself the following question: “Why readers come to my blog? What makes my blog different from the other 50 million out there?”. Below you will find a list of activities that could possibly be outsourced:

Web Design: this is the easiest activity to outsource given the vast pool of talented designers across the Internet. If you are looking for a professional design you should get in touch with a design studio (The Blog Studio, a sponsor of this blog, is a top notch resource when it comes to blog designing). Alternative you can check Sitepoint’s contest section, where people can create a contest for a particular job. After the job is posted designers will submit their entries and the contest holder will pick the best one.

Content: sometimes a blogger might want to increase the posting frequency of his blog without having to dedicate more hours to it, and the solution is to hire co-writers. Secondly, even if the blogger writes well he could have stronger marketing or entrepreneurial competencies. In that case he should probably focus his energy on creating and promoting new blogs while outsourcing the writing part for people that is specialized on doing that. A good place to find talented bloggers is the ProBlogger Job Board.

Blog maintenance: keeping a small blog up and running is no challenging task. As soon as your blog starts to grow, however, the problems will emerge. They will range from server issues to spam, backup and security concerns and so on. If you lack the time or expertise to deal with the technical side you should consider hiring someone to host your blog and take care of the maintenance. The Digital Point forum has an active market place for those services.

Online marketing: content is surely king, but without proper promotion and search engine optimization even great content might get lost on the Internet. Mastering the basics of SEO and online marketing is not a difficult task, but if you are looking for tangible results you should consider getting some professional help. There are plenty of SEO firms and individual experts across the Internet, and you can also turn to established players like Pronet Advertising or SEOMoz.

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