The purpose of leverage is to return the maximum advantage with least effort.  Specifically, for affiliate businesses, that means greatest profit with smallest personal involvement.

Preceding articles described ways of obtaining leverage by 1) re-using content, and 2) re-purposing.  In this article, we’ll focus on increasing leverage by outsourcing routine, or non-value-add work, and any work that simply doesn’t fit our personal skills, experience and/or nature.

Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman described some interesting findings from 25 years of Gallup organization research – 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 findings, that are important for online marketers and home-based business owners are these:  1) Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses, and 2) Acquire staff for talent.

The world of online business has a rather large learning curve and involves many different skills.  Unfortunately, few people are personally skilled at all of them – and even those who are may not be making the best use of their available time and other skills should they focus on their weaknesses.

William of Occam, best known for “Occam’s Razor,” has stated:  “It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.”

Tim Ferriss, author of “The 4-Hour Workweek” is a big proponent of the use of virtual assistants to handle repetitive, non-value-add tasks or other non-favored tasks.  Contrary to popular opinion, outsourcing is not limited to the world of giant corporations, but given the low cost of international virtual assistants, even small, online companies can afford to outsource many tasks to virtual assistants.

Many internet marketers elect to outsource writing articles.  They 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 outsource article authoring to ghost-writers. 

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 gain the benefits of leverage and multiply your results, whereas, focusing on your weaknesses will only marginally improve your results. 

Which would you rather do – multiply your results, or simply see incremental improvements?

If you like what you’ve just read, and would like to learn how to leverage your efforts, and become a millionaire – get the FREE Infinite Income Plan report and put your income on autopilot.