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The intent of leverage is to obtain the best advantage with the least possible effort. In particular, for Internet Marketers, that means highest return on investment with least personal involvement, and we can make this happen via outsourcing.

Previous articles described ways of providing leverage by 1) re-using, and 2) re-purposing content. In this article, we’ll address acquiring leverage by outsourcing recurring, or non-value-add work, and any work that simply isn’t a match with our unique skills, experience and/or nature.

Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman documented some interesting findings from more than 25 years of research by the Gallup organization - initially in their book, First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, and subsequently elaborating on those findings in later books. Two of their most important findings for internet marketers and home-based business owners are these: 1) Play to your strengths, not your negatives, and 2) Hire workers for talent.

The world of online business has a rather large learning curve and involves many different abilities. Unfortunately, few people are talented in all of those skills - and even those who are, may not be applying their available time and other skills to focus on areas that are relative weaknesses for them.

William of Occam, noted for “Occam’s Razor,” has stated: “It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.” As small business owners, Occam’s Razor has a big lesson for us relative to our own time usage.

Tim Ferriss, author of “The 4-Hour Workweek” is a terrific proponent of the use of virtual assistants to handle recurrent, low prioritiy activities or those for which he does not have either the time or inclination to perform.

Contrary to popular opinion, outsourcing is not restricted to the world of giant companies, but given the low cost of international VAs, even small, home-based companies can now afford to delegate many tasks to virtual assistants.

One task that many internet marketers choose to outsource is article marketing. Many see the value of article marketing, but either don’t like to write, don’t have the skills, don’t want to spend the time, so they turn over those writing tasks to freelancers.

Another task you might consider outsourcing to a virtual assistant (or call center) is the telephone and email follow-up required for lead generation and sales closings.

If you focus on your areas of strength, you can multiply your results, whereas, focusing on improving areas of weakness will, at best, result in only an incremental improvement in results.

Which is more important to you - the ability to multiply your results, or simply see incremental improvements?

If you would like to discover how to leverage your time, sign up for the Online Success for Beginners course.