Here is an example which I discovered only recently and which for me is 10x the awesomeness of house cleaning.

I like to work on casual games as a hobby, I haven't released many but it's something I like to do. I am a software engineer and have no art skills. You can make a game with no art, or make a port of some game for which the art exists. It is limiting.

Enter the miracle of Elance. You can find good artists on that site, with experience making art and animations for games, and they're very affordable. I think they charge less per hour than house cleaners in California. All of a sudden getting real art for your game is just an ordinary hobby-related expense, kind of like if I were into photography I'd spend money on lenses and Photoshop license fees.

(My experience was mostly with graphics artists, but that site is general-purpose, you can find people willing to do all sorts of work there, translation, programming, whatever.)