It might seem like doing everything yourself means you’re saving more. But that’s not always the case.
I’ve prepared a short article about the benefits of working with freelancers, both offline and online.
1.
Let’s start with working with freelancers offline. This article will focus on volunteers who live in your city. Of course, they’ll save you a ton of time and, ultimately, money. They can perform the following tasks:
- Distributing and posting flyers (15 minutes to 2 hours)
- Collecting information in clubs (surveys) – 30 minutes to 1.5 hours
- Monitoring ticket prices (which is very important for an experienced musician) – weekly, or better yet, daily, with notes in a spreadsheet – 2 to 4 hours
- Working with the target audience (introducing them to your work and band through specialized organizations) – 1 to 1.5 hours
- Recruiting people to performances or concerts (inviting) – 10 minutes to 1 hour
- Performance supervision (if you’re in a band, I highly recommend assigning the supervision to a freelancer) – this will take up the entire concert or a minimum performance window of 3 minutes
- Personal assistant (if you can afford to pay for the work, this will be the most cost-effective option)
Result: dire results – at least 4 hours of wasted time.
I used to run around inviting musicians to music schools and other institutions, and I can estimate the time investment. I’ve even had students perform at one music school, and to attract audiences, I had to run to neighboring schools and spread the word about the concert. It was fun. But I don’t feel like it anymore.
At every point, if you do everything yourself, you’ll lose time that could be used for more serious matters. Sometimes it’s a mere half hour, and sometimes it can take several hours. Delegate these tasks to others. Who knows, maybe some of the people you entrust the work to will become full-fledged members of your team.
2.
Now let’s move on to online freelance help.
There’s a huge amount of work you can delegate to others. From writing lyrics and scores to arranging a concert in another city. It’s truly very useful to work with freelancers. But not with all of them. And don’t delegate the most important tasks. These are the ones you need to do yourself. Otherwise, you never know, you might entrust someone with the password to your musical cache, and lo and behold, a short while later a twin band appears with a repertoire very similar to yours. You have to be careful here, too.
Still, the list of things that honest and responsible Freelancers can do for you is vast:
- Write song lyrics on a specific topic
- Compose a well-written ad and design it
- Create a script with your corrections and editing
- Write an interesting part
- Edit photos for a concert announcement from rehearsals and real life
- They can find out the price of musical instruments and equipment in their city (it’s easier to pay $15-$30 and get a video countdown than to search for information online)
- They can help with backing vocals (just listen to the voice, send what you need to sing, then insert it into the track)
- Professionally edit or even create a pre-recorded “semi-finished” song
- Arrange for a concert in the city, especially those with connections (if you’re planning a traveling project)
- Spread the word about the upcoming concert, notify as many people as possible More people (especially when your band is on the road)
- Record a backup musical part (audio) (very important, especially when, to put it mildly, one of the band members doesn’t show up for the concert)
- Edit the video after the concert
- etc.
Now you can review your schedule and understand how much more efficient and productive you can be if you outsource routine tasks to freelancers.
All the best!
