In the last 3 weeks I have been trialling a couple of virtual assistants (V.A) to assist me with administrative tasks and I have learnt so many new lessons along the way. The first thing for business owners wanting to outsource their work to a V.A is to interview them first before making any contractual commitment. You can trial their services for a 2-3 week period and it would provide sufficient time to test their abilities and resources available. Also be ready to pay for their services as nothing does come free, though it is definitely money worth spending to save you many precious hours.
How Will A Virtual Assistant Benefit My Internet Business?
Are you getting frustrated and overwhelmed with your work? I have been and that’s why I decided to find a virtual assistant to take over a majority of my administrative tasks. The reason for hiring is to eliminate non-dollar productive tasks that requires someone to complete and can be completed from virtually anywhere in the world. Hiring a virtual assistant can be the most rewarding feeling as well, because it also teaches you to delegate and to become a business owner rather than the person who runs the show all the time. Some of the benefits I’ve seen from my virtual assistants are:
Gives me more time to focus on business tasks where my strengths lie
With the right virtual assistants in place it allows you to create a smooth system that runs on automation
I can spend more time having fun and being outdoors rather than behind the computer
Watch Out If You’re Not Careful…
My very first virtual assistant I hired started with good intentions and showed promising signs. Though when I gave her an editing task to proofread my eBook and convert it to PDF with website links, she ended up spending over 10 hours on it. I was quite specific and laid out in detail what I needed and specified a deadline and time frame to finish the eBook by. Unfortunately I didn’t realise her English was average and she did everything completely wrong. Here is what I emailed to her:
Subject of TASK: Proofread and convert to PDF including links TASK:
Please proof read and check for any Grammatical errors. If errors are found, please update. Also please find any words ending with “zing†or “zation†and change to “sing†or “sationâ€. E.g. customization to customisation.
Add links to websites mentioned in the document. E.g. if FaceBook, add the link to document of http://www.facebook.com. You will see examples in the document of what I have done in the first few pages.
Once you have checked through the document, please convert to PDF. Make sure all links are converted to PDF as well and check to see if they work in the document.
Can you do this? If not, please advise. Please reply and confirm what you will plan to do to complete this task.
DEADLINE: Please get started after your next email and stop at 1 hour and email me your work. Please begin this task now if possible. The deadline is Tuesday 5pm AEST.
Thank you for your fastest reply,
She did email me an eBook but it was not the same document I emailed her to convert and it had other people’s advertisements in it. I got quite angry at first and was going to send a really nasty email. But I decided it wasn’t going to be constructive. So I requested for another virtual assistant from that same company specifying for an assistant with excellent English. I received a much better response and managed to get the correct eBook sent back. Though, I did mention to them that the previous assistant needed to receive more English training.
The lesson I learnt here was not to accept what you’re given, but to keep trialling until you find an assistant who meets your standards.
Where Do I Find Virtual Assistants That Are Suitable?
To date I have found my most reliable virtual assistant for $3.50 an hour on eLance and this is the site I continue to use to look for other people to work for me. There are many other websites that I recommend below:
Hire My Mom – A website to help you find female virtual assistants
eLance – Type “Virtual Assistant” in the search to find a variety of assistants from around the globe
Workaholics For Hire – A great virtual assistant service that helps you with urgent tasks for people with adhoc projects
What To Look For And Test In A Virtual Assistant?
Here are some guidelines I have used to look for a good virtual assistant:
Give them sample work and see how they perform
Evaluate their skills
Ask plenty of questions from the short listed candidates
Check their previous work and feedback statuses
Get a few recommendations for the Virtual Assistant you wish to hire from previous clients
Monitor their day to day progress by asking them to send you updates of their assigned tasks
Good virtual assistants are not expensive to find and there are many who are qualified to fit your budget. I would recommend giving it a go for a couple of weeks and it is the only way to know if a virtual assistant is right for your Internet business.
When I was working in real estate many years back we used a term called “farming”. If you refer to the term “farming” from Wikipedia:
The term farming covers a wide spectrum of agricultural production work. At one end of this spectrum is the subsistence farmer, who farms a small area with limited resource inputs, and produces only enough food to meet the needs of his/her family.
In real estate we used to be allocated to an area with around 2,000 properties that we would prospect, manage and sell our services to. Being focused on one area I would become the expert and people living in the vicinity would come to me for advice to sell or buy their property. This does not happen overnight and requires a lot of time and effort to “farm” an area, just like a farmer would spend time harvesting his crop. A farmer would spend many hours on the field planting the seeds and making sure the land was fertile and then wait many months before anything would start to happen. The same is true in business and I experienced it first hand when I was working in real estate. It took me almost 6 months before anything happened and I constantly kept marketing and promoting myself in the area using the same proven techniques. I did have doubt over the first few months because nothing was happening and I asked other successful agents for advice, but they kept insisting to stay persistent and focused on the same area.
The result was many sales and referrals. In the beginning I received 4 properties to sell totalling to commissions of about $50,000 for the month. Happening all at once, I didn’t really know what to do and showed I cared and respected them. The later months sales continued to grow and I kept doing what I did – farming the area.
Farming Crops Are Just Actions To A Result
You will find very many similarities with running an Internet business to farming an area in real estate. The key to succeeding in farming your crop of clients is to present a consistent image to your target market. The more they see of you, the branding of your business will stick like glue and they will forever remember you. But to get there you have to take action. It’s not about randomly firing out advertisements and sending out emails to people for the sake of emailing. You have to formulate a strategic plan that will market to your targeted audience and provide value. For example whilst working in real estate, the way I created a brand for myself was to write an article for my weekly letterbox drop. Firstly I gave great real estate information to people in the area and secondly I made sure my face was next to the article so when they read it my face was marketed with the information. Hence when they wanted to sell or buy a property, they would come to me because they started to see me as the expert in the area.
Here’s a three step approach to farming a crop:
Work out which is your target market.
Formulate which type of marketing would be best to present to them.
Take lots of consistent action to market your business.
Consistency Is Key To Farming
I have probably mentioned it many times already in this article, consistency is key. To succeed in your Internet business you need to provide value to your clients and show that your business is constantly available (not you personally, your business). This means constantly marketing and providing valuable content that will generate traffic to your website. Emailing them at least every month with great information and asking for referrals after every transaction. This will ensure your farming efforts will continue to grow with the same amount of work or even less as it gets easier.
Become The Expert
When you have strong rapport with your clients it is easy for you to become the expert in the targeted area. They will come to seek advice and ask for referrals for related areas which you may not cover. This allows you to establish strong links with affiliates or business partners to offer other services and products which you can receive commission as well. It keeps your clients happy and your business will continue to grow.
Farming your crop of clients is a very effective means to grow and sustain a long term business because you establish strong links with clients and also raise your business to become the expert in your industry. If you haven’t decided how to market your business, start growing your farm and take action today.
Today I’m going to explain to you how to build a winning Google Ad Campaign that will assist you with generating more traffic to your Internet business.
In this video I’m going to show you: (divided into 2 parts)
Recently I’ve been testing some new ideas with “outsourcing” for Internet Business Path and from what I can gather, it’s been able to increase my productivity by at least 200%. What I did before outsourcing work to people was to create a mindmap of what the business needed in order to grow and continue to run without my input. Below is the mindmap of my businesses in it’s simplest form:
If want to create one, a really good software to use is FreeMind. It’s very easy to learn and very powerful for any business because it allows a business owner to laid down their ideas in a logical path. Since applying a mindmap to my business I’ve been able to design the system to increase my productivity by 200%.
How Do I Outsource If I Don’t Have The Money?
Firstly let me say, if you don’t have the money to afford $3 – $5US an hour to pay someone to handle your tasks that needs to be done repetitively, then you shouldn’t be in business. Okay, I’ll be fair and tell you this: I had the mindset previously to do everything myself because it was always about not having enough money. I know how you feel when you first start running an Internet business or is still a one man show, but it’s having the courage to step out of your comfort zone and learn to delegate tasks to other people to do. It’s not going to be perfect at the beginning, but with a little training, some trial and error and time you will be able to leverage your time and increase your productivity.
Outsourcing Administrative Tasks
An example that I’ve been able to outsource for $3 US an hour is the ability to get my virtual assistant to check and reply to customer service emails every second working day. Provided that I have given the guidelines and information for how to respond, I have eliminated at least 10 hours a week of my time that I used to spend replying and following up emails. When you think about it, it only costs me around $30 US for a virtual assistant to free up 10 hours of my week. Isn’t that worth the trade off when my time is worth $500 per hour? There are many other examples I could give you on how to outsource your work, you can read more of it in my Internet Business Blueprint report.
A Web Developer Will Solve All Your Website Issues
If you’ve read my business timeline, you would know that I graduated with a Computer Science degree from UNSW. Even with a degree in Computing Science I’m still not a good programmer and I choose not to be. I would rather leave the technical issues for a web developer that I can hire on an ongoing basis and pay them to work on my projects. It would take them a couple of hours to do something that would take me all week. Hence the websites I design and this blog you are reading has been designed by a web developer I hire and I simply project manage the process to achieve a great result for my clients.
A Bookkeeper Will Keep The Tax Office Happy
If you’re like me and hate seeing piles of invoices and accounts unreconciled, then I know you would hate book keeping. It’s a crucial part of your Internet business and without it there’s no way to measure how well your business finances are doing. There are systems that allow you to keep track of your business online, but not all of them are compatible with the tax laws within your country. Therefore I still purchase accounting software that is meeting Australian standards, such as MYOB Accounting. I hire a book keeper to help make sure my accounts are up to date and to generate reports to show me the financial health of the business. I hire a book keeper on a monthly basis where I can have all my paper work batched and she will enter the information at one time. She makes sure that my books are up to date and tax is paid on time and I don’t get calls from the tax office. She would save at least 20 hours + a month of book keeping that I would have had to do myself, all for the cost of a dinner with my partner.
I’m Still The Writer And Internet Marketer
I love writing and expressing my ideas on Internet Business Path and will continue to do so for a very long time. I found that it’s a great way to communicate with people from all over the world and I love receiving feedback and comments. I do this because I’m passionate about Internet business and if you know me I usually share my ideas with my friends and family most of the time. I could outsource the writing to a ghostwriter quite easily and let someone else do the marketing, though I have learnt that these are my strengths and communicating and promoting my business is my passion.
Yesterday I had lunch with a group leader from my church and we discussed about how the “financial crisis” had affected most businesses around the world. He worked in a leading Telecommunications company and told me there were a few people being made redundant and their overall company sales had dropped. I gave my point of view and partially disagreed as some businesses were not affected as such. Some businesses that I believe are not affected are general medical professions, such as doctors, dentists, optometrists, etc, supermarket chains, such as Woolworths, Coles and IGA. I believe these businesses were least affected because they sell and offer services that people all need to stay alive and keep well. And here’s the but, Internet businesses continue to thrive as well. I believe there are a few reasons why they continue to grow and buck the trend:
Low Overheads Keeps The Bottom Line Healthy
The beauty of running an Internet business is not having overhead costs which may include an office, staff, and other expenses when running a brick and mortar business. You can run your Internet business from almost anywhere in the world as long as you have a reliable Internet connection. For the last 3 years I’ve been running my Internet business from home and the costs I normal incur are mostly from my electricity and internet bills. I do hire contractors from time to time to help with administration tasks but they are done virtually and not at my home. When you compare the cost of having a lease for an office to working from a room in your own home, you can save yourself at least a couple of hundred dollars in rent per week. This can amount to $10,000 a year which could be ploughed back into building your Internet business or even paying for a business trip overseas. Bottom line is, an Internet businesses will keep you healthy and less stressed when you see more money coming in than going out.
Money Is Created And Not Tied Up In Inventory
A majority of Internet businesses are information product based. They sell advertising, eBooks, membership sites and much more. Now the secret behind all this is, it doesn’t even cost them a cent to hold any stock. Could you can imagine an Internet business that generates positive cash flow from the interaction of an online community? It happens every minute as we speak. An example is when an Internet marketer has an idea to share. He or she will publish an eBook and sell it online to a hungry list of buyers, which generates instant cash profits. This is a very simple idea and there are many other ways to create money using information products. Even for a worse case scenario the book doesn’t sell, what have they lost? Nothing except for a bit of time they used to write the book and it doesn’t affect their business.
Can Receive Money In Different Currencies From Around The World
An Internet business starts to become a foreign exchange bank when they receive money from buyers across the globe. By having the ability to receive foreign currency using services such as Paypal, you open your Internet business to broader markets allowing you to trade in different countries all from your website. For example, if you live in Australia and charge your services and products in US dollars, you can be making quite a nice profit in these current economic conditions and also have your expenses paid in Australian dollars.
Overall, I see Internet businesses to be one of the best ways to yield a higher return rather than leaving your money in the bank or having it sit in the current share market. Have you considered investing your time into running an Internet business? If not I recommend looking into Internet business opportunities that will help you achieve great financial freedom.
This morning at 7am I went to Chatswood for a business networking breakfast event (and yes it was early for me). I was pleasantly surprised to have breakfast and network with such fantastic and motivated business owners from across the northern part of Sydney. We had a delicious breakfast served at a restaurant called D’Foreigner that provided excellent food and service. Lucy Martin from Juice Plus and a NEIS panel interviewer invited me a couple of weeks ago after my panel interview. I attended as a guest and was very excited to meet other people who were in business as well. 17 people attended the breakfast and everyone had an opportunity to exchange contact information and talk about their business.
What Is the Leads Club?
This breakfast event was not just any ordinary breakfast where business people come along. It was a very organised and systematised approach to helping both members and guests come together to share their businesses and to help each other generate leads. Hence the name the Leads Club.
Over the years I’ve been involved with network marketing and running other people’s businesses and never once have I been invited to an event like this. I’ve attended Toastmasters, local chamber of commerce events and many other networking seminars and this one has been the most effective for me. The first thing that struck me was how smartly organised and upfront they were about this meeting. Graeme Inglis from Smartline, who chaired the meeting today stated at the beginning that “we are here today to talk about our businesses and to provide leads or referrals on to each other“. By saying this at the beginning I felt more comfortable to approach the meeting from a business perspective and be open to share my business without any hesitation, knowing that I will be able to help others and vice versa.
How Can A Leads Club Benefit You?
For me I could see lots of benefits by attending the weekly meetings and becoming part of the club as the service I provide is quite applicable to most businesses. Though, there are some factors to consider and how a club like this may benefit your business:
Am I offering a niche product or service that is suitable for local businesses? e.g. I ran a Dragonboat business that sold paddles to Dragonboat club members. Unless you know or are involved in the sport it would be quite challenging to get leads from other local businesses.
Can I generate leads faster from other sources? If so, should I still attend?
Does this lead generation technique fit into my business plan?
If you are interested in getting more information about the leads club in your local area, visit Leads Club Australia or contact Catherine Lonergan on 0407 899 988 or via email catherine@leadsclubaustralia.com.
MARKETING YOUR INTERNET BUSINESS may already be your strength, or you are struggling and just getting by. No matter how your business is performing everyone can benefit by exploring some low cost marketing opportunities that will help grow your business. You don’t have to spend loads of money on advertising, it just requires some creativity and planning. Furthermore, not only does it add more dollars to your bottom line in money not spent on advertising it can also boost your confidence. Here are 12 tips for you to implement into your Internet business.
12 sales effective / low cost marketing tips:
Press Release – send a story about yourself relating to your business via email to a newspaper or magazine relevant to your industry. A story will increase your businesses public awareness and credibility and it is free marketing for you as well. Don’t forget to include a professionally taken photo of yourself.
Send Email – contact your existing clients and offer them something via email to entice to visit your website.
Public Speaking – offer a presentation at your local service club like Rotary or Leagues and ask if they would be interested in allowing you to present a subject of interest. Don’t do a sale pitch, offer something to people that will be of value and record the session to use for later public broadcasts. You can also use this in your credentials to show people you have spoken in public and is good for press releases as well.
Keyword Marketing - not enough businesses use this method and it’s low cost as long as you set your target and budget correctly. You can buy keywords relating to your business from as little as 5c per word. Be really specific and make sure your target audience sees your advertisement.
Post Advertisement On Noticeboard - your local shopping centre, schools, universities will have noticeboards for you to post up notices and advertisements. Use them and take advantage of them because many people still read noticeboard and give them an incentive to call (maybe include a tear off at the bottom of your notice).
Networking – join a business club or a forum in your area sharing the same interest. Attend these events regularly and swap business cards.
Setup A Stall – sometimes just setting up a store at your local fair or market creates brand awareness for your business and is a great opportunity to talk to people in the community and hand out brochures to offer your products or services.
Cross-Promote – contact other businesses that offer complimentary services or products to yours and work out a co-operative marketing strategy to promote together. It’s a win-win to help each other out.
Promote On Your Car – A very cost effective way if you drive around a lot. You can purchase magnetic signs to stick on your car with your business details. You will definitely get people looking because not enough people do it.
Give Away Vouchers – When a consumer purchases your product or service give them a discount voucher for their next purchase to entice them to come back to spend again.
Talk To People – Don’t worry, they’re not going to bite you! Talk to your friends and acquaintances, they will be more than happy to refer your details if you approach them nicely.
Write A Guest Post – This is becoming more popular across the Bloggersphere where you offer to write an informative article for other bloggers. They may have readers that you want to attract and they are interested in what you have to say, then it’s a great way to market your Internet business.
Try to implement a couple of these ideas over the month and test your results. The best way to find out if they work is to ask your customers when they contact you, “How did you hear about us?”. This is the best way to measure and learn from your customers as it can help you determine what is working and what is not. It’s all about trial and error to find the best marketing method for your Internet business.
I’ve noticed a lot of people are interested to install lots of plugins but really don’t make it profitable on their blog. You can have over 50 plugins that all work and make noise, but none of them are any good to make your blog stand out. (Additionally, my term of profitable also refers to helping you market your blog and also creating a brand). Since most plugins are free, it’s very easy to find them on the Internet and install them with WordPress 2.71. Furthermore I’ve provided a link to the download page for each plugin. Hope this list will help others and it’s in alphabetical order, enjoy!
Add Post Footer
The Add Post Footer is very useful in helping you cross sell products, a free eBook to encourage readers to subscribe or other top articles that are related to your post. It allows you to enter HTML code into the footer of every post you write and is very simple to use.
All in One SEO Pack
As you can see from the name of the plugin – it’s an all in one SEO pack that assists each post in your blog to be “search engine optimised”. You can either leave your header, meta tags and description of your post just the way they are when you publish, or you can fine tune them to be more specific to keywords you want to use for search engines. I’ve found at times I wanted to add additional keywords and change the description of my post instead of having the default WordPress summarised description. A must have plug-in for serious Internet marketers!
Bird Feeder
If you’re on Twitter and want to save time twitting – the Bird Feeder plugin will automatically feed your most recent posts in the format of: [your message] [post title] [short url] to Twitter. It’s great because you won’t have to double up by copying and pasting your posts back into Twitter or be on Twitter 24/7 (if you’re not already).
FeedBurner FeedSmith
This little gem, the FeedBurner FeedSmith takes your blog’s feed and redirects it to Feedburner. It’s better branding for your site and you won’t have FeedBurner’s domain name showing when a reader clicks on your RSS feed button, e.g. feeds2.feedburner.com/internetbusinesspath becomes internetbusinesspath.com/feed. For more detailed instructions.
Google XML Sitemaps
If you want to be found on Google, then Google XML Sitemaps plugin is a requirement for your blog. This plugin creates a compliant XML sitemap for the Google bots to crawl your site and it will help your blog achieve higher rankings if you want to be found on their search engine. Once you’ve install this plugin don’t forget to hop onto Google Webmaster Tools to let them know you’ve got a sitemap for them to crawl, otherwise Google won’t know.
Max Banner Ads
Monetising and profiting from your blog couldn’t be any easier. If you have advertisers and want a very streamline and easy way to insert their ads onto your blog, then Max Banner Ads is the plugin for you. I use this on my blog and it’s saved me a lot of time. It’s easy to use and can be very profitable for your blog.
RSS Feed Signature
The RSS Feed Signature is another great plugin to use within your RSS Feeds. It simply adds a customised signature to any RSS Feed that goes out to your subscribers. If you are keen on increasing your subscribers, I would suggest installing this plugin and add a “free eBook offer” to your RSS signature. If you subscribe to my RSS Feed you’ll see the link at the bottom of each feed to take you to the free eBook offer. You can read more about how to download your free eBook from the RSS feed.
Top Commentators Widget
This plugin allows your blog to display a user who has posted the most comments. The Top Commentators Widget shows other readers your highest commentator and will encourage people to find out who they are by clicking on their name. Also the highest commentators websites will be linked automatically onto your blog and can increase your search engine rankings as well. Therefore getting you more traffic and more comments all at the same time.
What Would Seth Godin Do
Most people would know Seth Godin as his name is associated with Internet Marketing Guru. The What Would Seth Godin Do plugin simply displays a welcome message on your blog for first time and returning users. It may ask them to subscribe if they’re a first time user or thank them for coming. It’s a great tool to have to create the “experience” for a user coming to your blog.
WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping cart
If you’re like me who offers advertising on my blog and needs a simple way for advertisers to pay you, then the WordPress Simple Paypal Shopping cart is an easy plugin to install and use. It allows anyone to pay you using Paypal which is used by millions of people worldwide and can save you time having to respond to advertiser’s email with your bank account details and so forth. The plugin has functions to let you add a “Add to cart” button and creates a shopping cart module when the advertiser or user decides to pay you. It will then redirect them to the Paypal website to pay. Very simple to use!
If you haven’t tried any of the plugins above I would highly recommend adding them to your blog. So give it a go!
In the last 3 weeks I have been trialling a couple of virtual assistants (V.A) to assist me with administrative tasks and I have learnt so many new lessons along the way. The first thing for business owners wanting to outsource their work to a V.A is to interview them first before making any contractual commitment. You can trial their services for a 2-3 week period and it would provide sufficient time to test their abilities and resources available. Also be ready to pay for their services as nothing does come free, though it is definitely money worth spending to save you many precious hours.
My name is Tyrone Shum and I'm on a journey to outsource and automate my business to allow me to work only 12 hours a week. On this website I share with you my outsourcing strategies to achieve this goal and I have a passion to teach others about what I do. Read more 