As a busy professional, you wear many hats. You might be product photographer one moment and project manager the next, not to mention social media marketer, operations manager, accountant, and everything in between.
Small shops and one-person operations, although rewarding, require a lot of work. At some point, you might get so busy that it feels like you’ve lost the spark that made you so excited to pursue this career path in the first place.
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In this article:
- Why outsource?
- Getting started
- Finding the best photo editing option
- Working with your outsourced photo-editing partner
- Recruit Path for your virtual photo-editing studio
Why outsource?
I saw this tweet from Jason Fried, founder and CEO of Basecamp, the other day. He explains it perfectly:
Busting your ass doing what doesn’t need to be done isn’t a strong work ethic - it’s a strong waste of time.
— Jason Fried (@jasonfried) October 8, 2019
Outsourcing isn’t giving up on your work. It’s realizing your capabilities and the value you bring to the business and cutting the things that don’t support that.
Deloitte conducted its 2018 global outsourcing survey to examine “disruptive outsourcing trends, technology, and innovation.” They found that outsourcing gives companies a competitive edge by allowing them to be more agile, efficient, and effective. 84% of survey respondents have either initiated discussions, conducted pilots, or implemented at least some disruptive outsourced solutions.
Outsourcing frees up your time so you can focus on bigger, more impactful business tasks rather than time-consuming, nitty gritty photo edits. Burnout is a real thing.
Approximately two-thirds of employees experience some form of burnout in their career — and unmanageable workload and unreasonable deadlines are two of the leading causes. Outsourcing some of the tasks that add to the workload and put pressure on deadlines can ease these anxieties and mitigate burnout, letting you get back to the work you love to do. The founders behind online brand Speak Skincare started out by doing everything themselves. Eventually, they realized they needed professional help to elevate the brand and keep them motivated and focused on their passions. Once they started outsourcing, they were able to refocus on the important business matters. If you’ve decided to outsource product photo edits, the best way to get started is by documenting your workflow, if you haven’t already. This will help you determine when to send the photos for edits, how to send them, and who should manage the process. Let’s look at a hypothetical example for a retail/ecommerce brand: In this example, the outsourced step could happen between steps three and four, or between six and seven. The photographer could manage things like photo retouching, while the business owner might only need images resized and formatted for specific platforms. You’ll also want to consider deadlines. Are you typically working against the clock, or do you work in advance with plenty of time baked into timelines? This will also help you narrow down your search as you start to look at your options. And finally, document your photo-editing needs. In some cases, you might just need white background and sizing. In others, you might need more complicated photo retouching or even color changing for product variants. Again, this will help focus your search. From here, you can create a plan for outsourcing the edits. In Deloitte’s outsourcing survey, when asked what they would do differently next time they outsource, many answers were focused on taking a more strategic approach. And 34% said they would increase the scope of service. How do you find an outsource photo editing service provider? While you might feel rushed to make the decision, Deloitte’s survey also found that provider selection was an area many orgs would do over. To avoid this, improve your request for proposal (RFP) process. While this may mean more work upfront, it’ll pay off in the long run. Deloitte reports, “Many clients use a sole source approach to service provider selection, likely with the expectation that it is faster to execute the process with a single service provider; however, they will likely pay the price through higher fees, lower service levels, and less favorable terms. And, counterintuitively, it will usually take longer, since a competitive process creates more sense of urgency than a sole source approach does (though, of course, a poor deal can always be done quite quickly).” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. We’ve already put together a bunch of helpful articles on this very topic, which we’ll list below. But in sum: Once you’ve chosen a partner, spend a bit of time to onboard them sufficiently. The more work you do upfront, the easier it’ll be in the long run — and the more time you’ll save! Here are some tips for working with your outsourced photo-editing partner: We have more than 300 professional photo editors who carefully fulfill every order by hand — satisfaction guaranteed.
Burnout is a real thing
Getting started
Finding the best photo editing option
More reading
Working with your outsourced photo-editing partner
Recruit Path for your virtual photo-editing studio
