You can never do it alone and on your own. Harnessing the use of tools that will make you work faster and reach more people as you go about the Internet marketing business is essential for your success. While you may be an extremely talented person, you can definitely use some help specially if you are aiming to reach consumers by the thousands in the Internet jungle.
There are two things that you need to learn about the Internet marketing business that, when used together, will yield you increased likelihood of business success. Automation and outsourcing are these two things. Let us look at each of them in-depth and see how they work together in making you a more efficient and productive Internet marketing.
Automation
At first, you may find some ease doing things manually. But as your business expands, you may find difficulty managing all the operations on your own. The memberships, which is of particular interest to the Internet marketer, has the capacity of building exponentially, and you may not be able to follow up on them as frequently as you would like if you do not make use of automation in your system.
Simple defined, automation is all about making use of mechanisms to be able to reach more people. Some people think that automation is a drab activity. But actually, you can render your automation techniques a personalized touch to it with help of software such as Super Squeeze Page Generator.
You can find that automation makes your life easier. You just have to paste some script or program that will help you manage more members and more activities in less time.
The last thing you need when you are doing Internet marketing is to be bogged down by the more menial aspects that do not really lead to you making more money and bringing in more people to your site. Automation helps solve part of the problem. But when the needs go from mere programming to actual human legwork, we go to its partner.
Outsourcing
Partner to automation, outsourcing is delegating specific tasks in your business to other people, possibly more qualified than you are to do that specific job. Some of the people you can outsource include writers, programmers, web designers and the like. People you can outsource for this job are known to specialize on the job, and spending money on them is little compared to the amount of work they will saving you from. You have to be able to get the best in these fields.
This increases your productivity and gives you more time to focus on what you do best, which is, Internet marketing at its very core. You no longer have to worry about not being able to meet standards in writing, designing and programming since you have already acquired the services of people who are good at it and know what they are doing.
Once you have done these two, you will find all your systems constantly updated, manned with the best hands from different industries, with you raking in the dollars that can help you become one of the few Internet moguls who learned to master these techniques in their business.
Joel Christopher is the author of this article. He is a best-selling author, speaker and mentor, known worldwide as The Masterlistbuilder. To find out more on how you can triple your leads, sales and profits.
Go to http://www.Masterlistbuilder.com
This is a guest post by Justin Brooke. Justin writes some great articles over at SiteFling
I think you’ll agree that there is always more work, but not always more time. I mean you can always think of another task to do but you can’t always just get another hour.
That’s why it’s so important to systematize your work, outsource it, and repeat with as many of your tasks as you can. When you do this you get more time out of your days and your business starts to scale.
For example, let’s say you have 12 traffic generation methods that you have to manage. If those traffic tactics take you 2-3 hours each day to update, manage, or tweak then that’s 2-3 hours everyday that you’ll never get back.
However, if you can record a video of yourself doing these tasks you can almost always teach someone else to do them. If you have someone else doing these tasks for you, now you’ve just gained 2-3 hours per day that you can dedicate to more traffic methods or other income producing tasks.
Repeat that process just 3-4 times and you could be getting whole days worth of more time to add new growth strategies to your business. What could you do with an extra day worth of time per week?
This is how I’ve grown my business past the point of my competitors being able to keep up. I’m just simply able to out work them because I have more man hours to play with.
Here’s my process, so you can duplicate it…
1.) Go to http://manila.craigslist.com.ph, that’s the Craigslist section for the largest city in the Philippines. You’re going to post an add for a virtual assistant or technical assistant or whatever title you want to call it.
2.) Tell them you are looking for someone with strong Internet skills, able to use excel spreadsheets, and read/write in good English. Tell them you will provide training and give them a description of the tasks they will be performing. Then offer them 20,000php ($400 USD) per month.
Example:
Virtual Assistant Needed For Internet Company
I’m looking to hire and train someone to do the majority of our
Internet based advertising tasks. The job will pay 20,000php
per month and reading/writing in English is required.
You should have good knowledge of excel spreadsheets and be
able to do basic tasks like email, web browsing, and Internet research.
Your daily tasks will be:
- Researching new keywords
- Repetitive form submission
- Analyzing performance statistics
- Logging statistics into spreadsheets
- Creating performance reports
- Tracking growth of performance
- Must be able to work 8 hours per day (night or day is your choice)
- Must be logged into Skype for all 8 hours
Again we will provide video training on all these task, but you should
be comfortable with the type of work before you apply. If you are
interested please email us at xxxx@gmail.com with your resume and
a paragraph explaining why you are better then the rest of the applicants.
We will not hire anyone who is not willing to tell us why they are not
better then the rest of the applicants. We’re looking for superstar
employees only, please don’t apply if that’s not you.
3.) Once they reply to your ad you setup an interview them over Skype and ask them the basic interview questions. Things like what happened to make you not be working at your last job? Tell me about a problem you had to solve at your last job and what you did to solve it? If you were stuck on a task and didn’t know how to finish it would you email me for help or just do it wrong?
4.) If they pass your interview by answering your questions the way you like now you should ask them to do a small test project to see how they perform. If they are not willing to do this I DO NOT HIRE THEM. The test could be something simple like go to Google, find the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, when you get there type in any topic about [your niche here] and create a spreadsheet with the ten keywords that have the “most searches per month.”
5.) If they pass the test to your likings then you hire them and give them training videos. The way I create my training videos are with Jing.com (free) or Camtasia (paid). I basically, just record myself doing the task and talking out loud about what/why I am doing. Make sure you tell them to take detailed notes about the videos when they watch them. This is so you know they watched them and what they learned.
6.) After you have given them the training it’s time for a practice run. This would be on a sample campaign, something you don’t want to go live right away. The reason for the practice run is to see how well they perform and if there is anything you need to help them figure out that they or you might have missed in the training.
7.) Finally after the practice run has gone well… You give them a live campaign to run.
Tips For The Long Term
Managing The Daily Tasks
Having to manage your assistants everyday takes time away from you and that defeats the point of having them working for you. this is why we use project management software like Basecamp or DeskAway.com.
With DeskAway.com we can give create multiple users and assign projects to them with task lists. Our assistants know that everyday they are to login to Skype and then login to DeskAway. Without even having to ask us anything they just get started on their task lists assigned in DeskAway.com. Sometimes 3-4 days will go by without me ever having to talk to my assitants but the work is getting done.
There is even room in DeskAway for them to uload any files associated with each project. Thats where they upload any reports or spreadsheets dealing with that project so we can see what has been done each day.
Finally there is a place for them to log how many hours they worked for each task so we can assess how well they are performing. We often offer bonuses if they complete tasks faster then the day before or they get get a certain number more tasks done in a whole week.
Paying Your New Assitants
With Xoom.com you can have a paycheck delivered right to a Filipino assitants door! You can even fil your Xoom account with Paypal and make it really easy. It’s your choice whether you pay monthly, bi-weekly, or weekly. Some of our assitants prefer bi-weekly and some prefer weekly.
Official Paperwork
I am not a lawyer and you should seek legal advice to find out the right way to things. However, we make each new employee sign an aggreement that they are being paid as a sub-contractor providing a service to us. Then we just give them a 1099 for tax purposes.
That’s pretty much everything you need to know about getting started with outsourcing. We have our assitants doing everything from writing articles, building landing pages, building backlinks, sending emails to potential partners, and even helping us contact popular bloggers for a spot as a guest post!
If you have any questions about this stuff or want more traffic tips then head on over to my blog at http://www.sitefling.com/blog we write daily about topics that make your websites kick ass. Or you can hit me up on Twitter http://twitter.com/JustinBrooke, I’m pretty active and answer just about every @ that comes my way. I’d love to get to know some of you.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this post, and I’ll stick around to answer any questions that come up in the comments section below.
Here is a really good sermon by Joel Olsteen that a friend sent me. The title is “You’re Closer Than You Think”
It’s basically about not giving up and expecting your dreams to come to pass no matter what. He talks about the intensity of problems increasing the closer we get to our goals. And the worst time to give up is when we are experiencing the most problems.
This isn’t typically the type of thing I would put on this site, and I am more of a spiritual person than a religious person, but I think this is a really good message for anyone working hard in their business and not seeing the results they had hoped for. This video may help. Enjoy.
P.S. there is about 2 minutes of advertising for his book before the sermon starts, so hang in there.
This was an article I found by Dr. Donald E. Wetmore. I just love it because I am a nut about not wasting time and it is so easy to do when you have an online business.
You have 24 hours in every day, seven days a week for a total of 168 hours to accomplish what needs to be done in your life. And every day, 11 time thieves gang up on you and work to take some of that precious time away from productive use. Let me introduce you to this inconsiderate troupe.
1. Poor planning. People don’t plan to fail but a lot of people fail to plan. Without a plan of action set up before your day begins you are likely to get caught up in “stuff”, responding the loudest voice that gets your time and attention. Will you have been productive for the day? Sure, but not as productive as you might have been.
2. Crisis management. When a deadline sneaks up on you it robs you of all choice and you are controlled by the clock. Crisis management, for the most part, is poor time management because you’re rushed and stressed, letting things slip through the cracks and often having to go back and redo what was not done well in the first place. Most of what puts you into crisis management is within your control, you could have seen it coming.
3. Procrastination. All the planning in the world does not substitute for the doing. Many find that they just can’t get going on the things that will make a big difference in their success. They have “permanent potential”. First thing in your day, get going on the most difficult tasks and get them out of the way.
4. Interruptions. Unanticipated events coming your way, in person or electronically, can steal your time away. Many interruptions are necessary and part of what you get paid for. However, most are unnecessary thieves of your time. Be less willing to automatically give away your time just because they demand it. Rather, determine whether or not they deserve it.
5. Not delegating. “If you want a job done well you better do it yourself.” What a thief! Look at everything you have to do and ask, “Is this the best use of my time?” If it is, do it. If not, delegate it. There’s a world of difference between “I do it” and “It gets done.” Leverage your time through others and don’t allow the things that can be delegated to steal your time.
6. Unnecessary meetings. If two or more people get together and nothing productive comes of the time spent together, that meeting was unnecessary and, sadly, most meetings are time thieves. Before meeting ask, “Is it really necessary?” If it is, then meet but take action as a result of the meeting and not let it be a time bandit.
7. The “shuffling blues”. Many people manage their time through piles. Piles of appear on their desk. Piles of “to be read” emails on their computer and lots of “to be heard” voicemails stored away. The piles require frequent review creating the shuffling blues, which surrenders valuable time. Keep a clean work environment. When encountering something new, schedule it to your day planner under the day you plan to tackle it and then put it away so you are out of the shuffling blues.
8. Poor physical setup. Not having the things you need the most often within arm’s reach and having a lot of the things you rarely need close by causes you to waste a lot of time wearing out the carpet retrieving what you frequently need. And of course, as you pass others they will often pull you aside to steal some of your time. Have the most needed stuff near by, within arm’s reach and save that stolen time.
9. Poor networking. Quality relationships with others can be a huge time saver as they open doors for you with all kinds of opportunities. Failing to develop a good network base will cause you to waste time creating what you might have had through your network. Be a good networker. Help them whenever possible. You want a friend? You have to be a friend.
10. Bad attitude. Nothing sinks a day more effectively than having a poor attitude. It causes you to dwell on the problems and not the solutions and makes it possible to throw the day away. When you are burdening others with your problems and complaints you are stealing your time and theirs. And the truth is that when you complain to others, 85 percent of them really don’t care, and the other 15 percent are actually glad it’s happening to you.
11. Negative people. Some people are the life of the party, and some people are the death of the party. The problem with having negative people around you is you wind up spending a lot of your time listening to their complaints rather than focusing on your success.
Arrest each of these time thieves. Sentence them all to solitary confinement and re-claim your productive time. You deserve it.
