In order to focus more on my business and marketing and less on some of the ‘trench work’ I’ve posted projects on sites like Elance.com. And I’m not a graphical expert. While you can get some good deals and find some great experts, these can end up costing you a fair amount if you post many projects. And each project is separate, requiring repeated posting, evaluation, awarding, monitoring and payment of projects.

One issue that gets reported is that the typical countries involved in technical work can be problematic from a work ethic perspective. Another is having to explain how everything should work over and over to each new project winner. Also you sometimes have issues getting the dedication to your project as many of these workers are juggling multiple projects.

That’s why I was intrigued to see the site Replace Myself. The interesting thing about this approach is that you will hire a very educated person full-time so they are dedicated to your business one hundred percent. This is like having an employee but way cheaper and no benefits to pay. The estimated monthly cost to hire someone from what I was told is $200-500 per month. Not to generalize but being from the Philippines these people are very hard working. And this site provides extra assistance and best practices.

Of course you will have to potentially train this person to do your tasks but once they are up to speed you will at least have the consistency of someone who can take some of the workload off your shoulders.

Right now I’m working on my business full-time (7 days a week) so I don’t need to hire assistance but if I end up working during the day on other things, or start to make some better revenues I will seriously consider the option to replace myself.