Avoiding false economies

Like many things in life, sometimes trying to do everything by yourself is just not a good idea. It's tempting, particularly if your portfolio career includes elements of working for yourself, to try and save money by doing everything yourself. This might include book-keeping, invoicing, Companies House admin, website design and maintenance, marketing, branding, sales, networking...oh yes and of course the work itself. This is a common problem for anyone who runs their own business but if you have a portfolio career, the problem can really multiply. Add it all together and you'll soon be spending so much time on these things you won't have time for anything else.

A good way to look at it is to think realistically about the time it will take for you to do something yourself against the cost of paying someone better qualified to do it for you. You have to think of your own time in terms of cost too. If you could be earning more in three hours than you'd save in undertaking a particular task yourself then it just makes sense to pay someone else.

Websites are a case in point. Before I owned my web design agency I set up my first website myself. I did it on a shoestring but I was comfortable learning the ropes because I'd worked with a whole host of website content management systems in the past. I soon realised the value of having a professional web presence and quickly outgrew the free Googlesites website I had set up for myself with its limitations on design and functionality. I soon found myself paying an independent developer to move me over to Wordpress as I just didn't have the time to do it myself but I wasn't all that pleased with the results. I certainly didn't have time to worry about search engine optimisation either - it was as much as I could do to remember to submit my URLs to search engines so that they might at least know I was there. It's not that these things in themselves are particularly complicated if you have a reasonable level of IT knowledge, it's that it's hard to prioritise doing things for yourself when you have clients to look after whose needs and deadlines come first.

As my portfolio career evolved, so did my website but I found myself having to learn html and spending a quite ludicrous amount of time doing updates. Don't laugh but on one occasion it took me five hours to add a new tab to a menu. Admittedly it involved designing and resizing a new icon using Adobe Illustrator and fathoming out the appropriate code to use but for such a small and deceptively simple task, it really was quite a monumental waste of time. Especially as I was doing it myself because I was 'saving' money by using a free, open-source content management system for which I was not paying for support. 

I learnt the hard way that it's not only the upkeep and maintenance of websites that can be disproportionately time consuming when you try to do it all yourself. There's also security to think about. I kept putting off upgrading my version of Wordpress and its plugins (because there's lots of steps to creating a backup first and I could never find the time). Of course, this left the site vulnerable to hacking - it wasn't long before a hacker found a backdoor and brought my site down - they love websites of small businesses that have been around for a while and built up a bit of 'google juice'. By this time, I was convinced that my DIY website had been a complete false economy costing me far too much in terms of my time which could have been better spent. These days, I keep this free blog simple and I understand and accept its limitations because it suits my purposes for blogging. I'm now in a position where websites that relate to my main business activity are securely hosted and professionally maintained through my own web design agency, with the backup of an expert technical and creative team. I'm pleased to be able to offer the peace of mind, value for money and ease of use associated with this to my clients as well.  

Websites can be notoriously time consuming but they really aren't the only false economy pitfall that might befall you in your portfolio career. How about accountancy, admin and designing marketing materials potentially for more than one source of income? Whatever area it is, always have the wisdom to weigh up the savings against what is the best use of your time and acknowledge that sometimes, no matter how excited you get or determined you are about doing everything yourself, it just makes sense to bring in someone with more expertise than you.