You’ve probably heard everyone and his dog talk about how great outsourcing articles is. And it can be. Outsourcing is an amazing way to reduce your own personal work load, while you’re simultaneously increasing your productivity.

However, just like outsourcing anything else, you need to make the decision to outsource articles from a rational perspective. In this post I’m going to show you exactly how you can make that decision, and know that the answer you arrive at is the correct one for your situation.

If you’re considering outsourcing articles, or outsourcing anything for that matter, there are three questions you need to ask yourself (and answer!) before you start.

1. What is my time worth, per hour?

2. How long would it take me to do this task?

3. How much can I outsource it for and still get a quality result?

That’s it. It’s not that complicated!

So let’s take a look at #1. How much is your time worth per hour? Well, the easy way to figure this out is to figure out how much you make in a given pay period, and divide that by the number of hours you worked. Or, you can look at it over a whole year. 2000 hours is a good average number of hours for a full time worker, so if you made $40,000 last year, then that means your time is worth $20 per hour. ($40,000 / 2000 = $20).

Remember, we’re talking about outsourcing articles, so on to question #2 – how long does it take you to write an article? When I first started writing articles, it took me a long time. However, one day I completely re-evaluated the process I was using (or lack of one!) and developed a system to write articles in 10 minutes, consistently. In fact, the system is so simple that I’ve been able to teach dozens of people how to produce the same results. So, for this question, we’re going to use 10 minutes per article – because I know it is possible for anyone to write one that fast using my system.

On to #3. If we’re outsourcing articles, how much does it cost to get a quality result? That’s a bit of a tricky question, because there are thousands of outsourcers out there that you could use. However, from personal experience, you can pay as little as $3 per article; however you get a terrible quality result. I’ve found that until I get up into the $10 per article range it simply isn’t worth my time, because I have to spend at least as much time editing their work as I would have taken to write my own article! So let’s take $10 as our answer for #3. You can easily spend a LOT more than this as well, if you want really great quality work – $10 is a middle-of-the-road decent result.

So now we get to play with the numbers.

How many articles can you write in 1 hour? At 10 minutes per article, that’s 6 per hour.

How much would it cost to outsource that work? 6 articles x $10 each is $60.

How much is your time worth? We’re using $20 per hour… so by using simple math, we’ve just proven that it is definitely not worth your time to be outsourcing articles! In fact, if you write them yourself, you’re essentially paying yourself 3 times what you normally make, or $60 per hour! That is the value of your output!

Now, you’re probably saying to yourself “but I can’t write an article in 10 minutes!”

Yes, you can. I’ve created a step by step system that teaches anyone to write articles in 10 minutes or less – it’s called 10 Minute Articles. It’s step by step, and shows you exactly how to come up with not only an article, but a catchy, traffic pulling title, excerpt, keywords and resource box as well – all in 10 minutes.

Remember, if you’re trying to decide whether or not your should be outsourcing articles, you need to consider those three important questions. Everyone’s situation is different, but those questions will lead you to the answer that is best for your situation!