It’s time to make sure that social media arbitrage is something you are ready for.

Do you have more work than you can handle alone?

If your answer is yes, outsourcing might be a good plan. However, you need to be charging enough to afford to outsource, which brings us to question # 2:

Is your pricing model high enough to support outsourcing?

Remember, you need to be charging about three times what the actual outsourcing will cost you to ensure you are making a good hourly wage. After all, outsourcing doesn’t mean you spend zero time working - it just means your work will consist of managing projects instead of actually doing them yourself.

Do you work 40 hours or more per week?

If you are working less than 30 hours a week already, outsourcing is unlikely to increase your income significantly enough to make it worth your while. However, if you are at or over 40 hours a week, and can outsource for less per hour than your own standard rate, arbitrage is probably a great solution.

If you don’t currently do social media management, and simply want to do arbitrage from the start, do you have good management skills?

Being an arbitrager doesn’t demand that you know how to actually do all the services you offer, but it does demand that you be able to supervise effectively. You have to be firm about deadlines with vendors, and able to market services effectively to clients!

Are your clients willing to pay extra for premium services?

If so, you can also consider arbitraging some of the more sophisticated social services out there - basically repackaging and reselling their existing offerings. The advantage to doing this is that you are less likely to be “stood up” by a vendor, which can be worth the extra cost if your own pricing can take the hit.

Are you able to stay organized and on top of multiple accounts?

Social media arbitrage only works if you are capable of keeping your eye on the ball and dealing with multiple vendors and clients to make sure deadlines are met and quality is assured. Remember, everything that is done for your client under your name will reflect on you - you can’t exactly come back later and say “Oops, I’m sorry, the third party I hired to create your Facebook Timeline Design stole the images from someone else who is now suing you…”