If you haven’t already dabbled with outsourcing a bit, I highly recommend it. It’s amazing how many tasks can be outsourced to talented people in India for dirt cheap. And no, it’s not like I’m advocating child sweat shots where 5 year olds sew t-shirts. I’m talking about connecting with truly talented people overseas that happily work hard for your money.

Thomas Friedman, author of “The World is Flat,” raised enormous awareness for the outsourcing world with his #1 bestselling book. In my opinion, it’s a must read for anyone in business today, in any industry. Friedman talks a lot about businesses going overseas to find quality work at lower costs. Tim Ferris, author of “The Four Hour Workweek,” is a huge proponent of leveraging virtual assistants to outsource personal tasks like online shopping, travel arrangements, email management, etc.

You’ve got to try this stuff! Even if you don’t own your own company, or you’ve got a content boss that’s too busy operating efficiently by yesterday’s standards, there’s plenty of opportunities to take advantage of outsourcing on a personal level while saving time and money.

With Elance.com, you can outsource any possible task that can be digital. It can be as simple as finding a graphic designer for a direct mail campaign or as complex as finding a lawyer overseas to develop a patent. If you’re interested in finding a cheap virtual assistant (between $5 and $7 per hour), you can get started with GetFriday.com. If you’ve got a particular business idea in mind with a digital component, post your project on Elance and take them out for a spin. I’ll post some of my personal experiences with this on the blog. (some bad but mostly good).

If you’re really interested, here are 4 must read books.

“The World is Flat”

“The Four Hour Workweek”

“The Black Book of Outsourcing“–an appropriate book if you’re interested in building a large company from talent overseas. It helps you with contracts and relationship management.

“The Offshore Nation”–I need to warn you…this book is very technical and mainly designed for large businesses looking to chop up pieces of business and sending overseas.

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