If you are looking to get your online business fully automated by outsourcing, in particular search engine optimimisation. Which is highly effective to get you free traffic but some of the tasks are very repetitive and boring.
You need to find the best labour at the best possible price and the most quality. This gets a lot stigma with outsourcing, But this is totally wrong as my experience tells me the work ethic is enormous.
Anything you don’t want to do yourself you must outsource. The stuff that is tedious, outsorce and concentrate on the tasks you enjoy. eg if you enjoy market research just stick to that. Don’t spend time on building sites or link building. A lot of these tasks can be outsourced for a few dollars an hour.
For example I have a lady who works for me for 20 hours a weeks for $40 and all she does is link building to my sites. The traffic that this brings is enormous.
In my experience the Philippines staff have been the most dedicated and the work ethic fantastic. For web design and SEO.
You need to employ people on short term tasks. Maybe pick two at a time and compare which person works best for you. Once you are happy with that person, then you increase the amount of hours each week and the maybe fulltime. Provided you have the cashflow to support them.
Do not employ someone fulltime until you have properly evaluated them. Another example would be is that you need 30 articles written, give the task to two or 3 people at a time. Evaluate who does the task the most efficiently and then hire them.