part of the dilemma of running a blog network on your own (yes no more partners now except for my lovely vie) is that you tend to micromanage and end yourself with a stack of endless “chores”. of course you only have 24 hours a day and if you’re like the rest of us you spend 1/3 of that time sleeping. that leaves us with only 16 hours left but then there are those long meals in front of the tv and going out to the beach, walking the dog, playing with the dog, swimming in the pool, et cetera et cetera. life such we call it. so most of the time you end up with only a couple of hours left for this thing i like to call money making (read: work).
of course you can hire people to blog for you. but you still have to edit every post unless you hire professional bloggers with top dollars. but what if you can’t afford that? even if you can afford that, you’re still stuck with wordpress upgrades, plugin updates, tweaking the design, seo, social networking, and so on. that’s definitely something you can never outsource, right?
wrong.
it all comes down to one question. do you want perfection (which has many different definitions, different for each individual) or do you want success? i like to think of perfection in terms of art. if you want to treat your blog (or blogs) as art then extending your arms by hiring others can be a tricky thing. over time the blog will not be so “you” anymore. it will be a group identity. you can never call it your own anymore. but if you want success, on the other hand, think of hiring others as leverage. leverage, as many would agree is “doing more with less” or in my simple terms “getting somebody else to do your dirty work”.
you can view it any way you want, but in my case i think it’s the motive that counts. if you realize that you want something bigger but at the same time find yourself incapable of expanding your own efforts, why not hire people who can. yes you will lose money, but that’s priceless freedom you’re purchasing there, buddy. and if your motivations are good you could be helping another right at the same time. you could be feeding a hungry blogger, or a designer, etc.
so, do you leverage yourself? i’m curious to find out.
JErm is a web designer and an ex-9-to-5-er semi-retiring in Bali. He runs a small 
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I reached kinda the same place with my blog (now horribly neglected). When I had kids, I realized that there just wasn’t enough time in the day to keep my blog exactly the way that I wanted it, and still be able to be a stay at home dad. That’s the main reason why I switched to wordpress.com. I lost the freedom to do everything with my blog, but gained the freedom of not being responsible for every detail of the upgrading wordpress, themes, etc. I decided that while I liked doing those things, what I wanted to do was just write, and still have time with my kids, so something had to give. I outsourced the more technical stuff so I would have time for the more important parts of my life. Of course, I don’t make money off my blog either, so that does kinda separate my situation from yours
hey james, long time. yeah you’re right, sometimes you have to let go of petty little things in order to grow. maybe i should outsource more after all. it’s hard getting a good blogger that will work for my budget though. lol.
Hi!
I am visiting ur site for the first time.
Great design.Nice and clean website.
You have inspired me to make my blog better!!
Keep it up!!
Hi Jerm.
I am proud to blog on my friend’s sites and maybe I can say that I am doing your “dirty work” right now… , but I still need to fight myself until I have my own free time to do something else…
The meaning of “rich” in my dictionary is to earn more money without losing my freedom. Do u agree with that? I don’t want to be a blogger for the rest of my life ^_^ So, I decided to make my own site and anything else… lol
peace… ^_^
amol » thanks for visiting and the kind words
johan » yeah man get your own thing going, you know i got your back