- Jen Glantz is an entrepreneur and the founder of Bridesmaid for Hire.
- She budgets $400 a month to hire freelancers to do work for her small business.
- The expense is worth it, Glantz says, because it saves her time to spend on more important tasks.
As a solopreneur, I make money through multiple income streams: from services offered by my business, from coaching and courses, through revenue from my podcast and newsletters, and from books and seasonal products launches.
Daphne Youree
But one of the biggest and most long-running mistakes I made was refusing, for years, to hire anyone to help me out. I thought I could do it all and I did, but it left me overworked and exhausted.
Not only did it feel impossible to keep up with day-to-do tasks, but I didn’t have the time to innovate or think of new ways to scale my businesses.
So at the end of last year, I decided I’d start finding people to help me, and began budgeting $400 a month to spend on hiring freelancers.
While the kind of help I need every month varies, I typically find freelancers on Facebook groups or through websites like Fiverr and Upwork. Here are the kind of freelancers I usually hire, how much they cost, and what they bring to my business.
1. Researchers
During any given month, I’d spend two to three hours a week doing outreach to secure speaking engagements at conferences, press segments, or brand sponsorships. While I already had different email templates ready to personalize and send out, it still took too much time researching every opportunity and hunting down the correct contact information.
So, I started hiring a research assistant who I pay to create lists of contacts for me to send my pitch emails to. For example, last week I hired someone for $25 for an hour to put together a list of 50 conferences I could apply to speak at. This saved me at least three hours of work. On average, I spend around $75 a month hiring researchers to create these lists for me.
2. Google Ads specialists
When it comes to acquiring new customers and subscribers for my newsletter or podcast, running Google ads has been an effective way to make that happen. Since I’m not an expert at setting up these ads or doing keyword research, I hire a freelancer to set these campaigns up for me on a monthly basis.
This saves me at least two hours a week, and results in more effective ad campaigns because they’re done by a specialist and optimized for success. I usually pay between $40 and $60 per campaign, and budget $125 a month for two to three campaigns.
3. Personal assistants
When I took inventory of how I spent my workday, I noticed that I was spending a lot of time on low-impact tasks, like formatting a presentation deck, scheduling social media posts, or writing podcast show notes.
These things had to get done, but they took up hours of my time and pulled me away from taking important meetings, strategizing ways to grow my business, and other tasks that only I could do.
Now, I budget around $200 a month to hire personal assistants to help me with the tasks that I don’t have to do myself. This amount gets me anywhere from three to five hours a week of extra help, which has made a noticeable difference in the amount of time I need to work every day after I finish my high-priority to-dos.
I understand the hesitation as a small business owner or entrepreneur to spend money on freelancers and delegate tasks to someone else. But if it’ll save you time to spend on more important needs, it’s worth it.
