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Down here in the southern hemisphere it's winter ... but, depending on where you live, winter can be a relative term. Steve just pointed me at a tweet from a friend that declared that right now it's snowing in a place we once lived.

That makes me so glad that we moved north because right now it might be winter but the sun is shining and we're in for another day that's going to be far warmer than where we used to live.

Today I thought might be a good time to talk about growing your business. Like most people who come into adult marketing online Steve and I thought that we would be able to do just about everything we would ever need to do all by ourselves. Even today we keep up with all the latest scripting and technology by doing online courses and reading and reading and reading some more.

But after a while you reach the point where you can't do everything yourself. Sure you might be able to write Javacript and PHP ... heck you might even be able to learn something like ColdFusion ... and so be able to write just about any application you might need for any project but will you have the time?

When you're doing everything by yourself eventually you will reach a point where you need develop something that's important for the growth of your business but doing that development will mean that you have to stop doing other things. Development takes time and while you're spending time writing those scripts and fitting them together in a solid framework where will you find time to keep on building those free sites and galleries that bring in the money?

It's that basic work that keeps the money coming in and as soon as you stop doing building those sites and galleries the cash flow starts to dry up. If you do stop building those income producing sites and galleries and spend time developing something to grow your business you may end up with no cash coming in well before the new project you're working on is making money.

And that's where outsourcing comes in. When you don't have time to do the work you yourself it's a wise move to hand it over to someone else who can do it for you. While they're doing the hard work on the project you can still be keeping the money coming in by building those free sites and galleries.

However outsourcing is not without its problems. I've certainly written quite a bit about the problems that I have faced finding reliable workers and I've actually wasted money on outsourcing. I've used several of the sites that will connect you with people who are qualified to do the work you want and there have always been problems.

While it's quite easy to find plenty of people who might want to bid on your project it's not so easy to find people who will actually complete the project. For some outsourcers it seems that it's far easier to skip out on jobs when problems arise and go looking for more work.

Sure, there are plenty of people out there who will complete the job to the point where they're entitled to get paid but don't expect many of them to want to come back and fix any minor issues that might appear later ... even if you're prepared to pay them to fix the problems. The concept of customer service is one that seems to be completely foreign to most of those you will find on the outsourcing sites.

But that's not what you want to hear when you know what you want to do to expand but need to rely on someone else to do the work. So where do you go looking for people who can do the work you and want and will deliver a finished product that is fault free and actually works the way you want it to?

Well of course you can go to those outsourcing sites that I've used but don't always believe what you read there about the workers who might be able to do the work you want done. It's not hard to build up a great list of recommendations without actually doing any work at all.

Word-of-mouth is a great way to find people who can actually do the work you want them to do. Get recommendations from others that you know and trust ... you can also ask for recommendations on message boards but you may not always get a genuine answer. Just don't rush in to give them the major work first.

When you do find someone who comes highly recommended give them a small job to do first. Sometimes the people who are recommended may not be as easy to work with as others might say. Sometimes conditions of changed and the worker who was once eager to please is now only interested in a quick and easy buck and he doesn't care if you come back for more or not.

Never make a full payment for a job upfront ... that may sound strange coming from someone who only ever does work for clients who pay upfront ... but it is a protection against those who might want to take your money and run. You should be prepared though to pay up to 50% up front and the balance on completion.

Make sure that your worker has a clear understanding of what needs to be done and make sure that there are clear lines of communication between you and the worker. Never rely on someone else to pass a message because those messages become garbled and everyone gets confused.

And don't use Western Union as a payment method. PayPal is probably the best payment method to use because there are steps you can take to ensure that you get what you're paying for.

While straight outsourcing may not work for some ... it certainly hasn't worked for me ... it does work for many and when you're building your own business by yourself it may well be the only way to really grow your business.