Your Outsourcing Questions Answered

Over the last few months I have been running teleconferences every fortnight for my students and I have accumulated a lot of common questions that gets asked regularly. It was very interesting to find out that it's not just my students that have these questions, but also many business owners around the world have asked these questions as well. How I know is I regularly check forums to see what is happening within outsourcing.

What I've created below is a video that goes for around 20 minutes and it answers a lot of the common questions and I even give away a lot of tips on how to leverage your Internet Business. So take a moment now to watch it:

Transcript:

Hi, Tyrone Shum here from MassOutsource.com. Welcome to this video! This video has been created so that I can help answer any of the questions that students and any people such as business owners from around the world have asked and a lot of the questions has to do with outsourcing and how to setup their business so that they can be outsourced to people over in the Philippines.

What I want to do now is go through and answer the most common questions that people wanted to have answered and also be able to give them guidance, some tips and also strategies on how to be able to outsource their business. This whole video presentation is for you to be able to benefit from and gain some knowledge and be able to get out there and start outsourcing your entire business. Hopefully with all the information that I provide here, you’ll be able to take away, get started and take action straightaway. So enjoy this, and just see how I’ll be answering a lot of these questions as well so it can benefit for you:

Where do I start?

This is a very common question and also very good question too. A lot of people who are just starting out and internet entrepreneurs wanting to run a business online and also those running the business for 6 months to 12 months plus are getting to the point where they say “I don’t know how to explain, how to grow and how to leverage business…” then basically you’ll want to look out outsourcing as the next level to be able to get your business running to where you want it to be. So where do we start with this?

The first thing I do is just to gain some experience exactly on how to go about outsourcing. I know you’re not going to get it right at the beginning and this is the reason why I’ve created this video for you and also to be able to answer these questions for you.

I know from experience when I first started to outsource a lot of work that I’m doing in my business, I struggled because I don’t know where to go, how to get the right people in place and also what systems to put in place and give them the right tasks to do. A lot of times I’ve been through and been ripped off as per sé and also not paid the correct price, a lot of times wasted as well. I don’t want you to go through that. I want you to fastrack your success to be able to achieve the goals that you want in your business.

Now, the first thing that we want to look at is getting some experience and also some knowledge. Let’s take step back – the most important thing that I believe in is Knowledge. Get some trained knowledge on how to go about doing it. What I would do is there are some free videos that I have in my MassOutsource.com website – 10 free videos on Where, How, and When to manage these people and a lot of these are towards hiring people from the Philippines. Go through and have a look on those videos just to be able to get started. It’s all absolutely free so there’s no strings attached.

Though, to gain experience, if you just have the knowledge and you don’t have experience, you wouldn’t be able to succeed in outsourcing your business. The first thing I would do is to either go out or find someone and hire them on a contract basis just to give them one project to start off with, learn to manage with them and learn to train them and see what they can do. Once you get that first trial over, and you know what to do from there then you can start to hire these people on a full time or part time basis.

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Setup Your Business Emails Using Google Apps

Something very common new business owners overlook when starting an e-commerce business is not having a professional e-mail address. I have had people give me a business card and the first thing I notice is an email address that says “motorcyclestore@gmail.com”. Using free services like Google, Hotmail or Yahoo is not a smart option and I highly recommend moving away from this. In this post I will show you how to set up your own business email address that will cost you nothing going from “motorcyclestore@gmail.com” to “info@motorcyclestore.com”. If you know how to setup a Google Mail (GMail) account already, this will be a breeze for you and no one will know that you use Google Mail to send your emails.

Have A Professional Email Address

Here are the reasons why it is important to have a business email address when you are running an e-commerce website:

• A business email address makes your business look professional whether you are the sole operator or a company with 100+ employees.
• You keep all your business correspondence separate to your personal emails.
• You can have multiple email addresses for different departments such as sales, support or orders.
• The business email address can always be transferred without having to notify contacts.

The next question most commonly asked is what email addresses should we setup?

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Magento Commerce Review – The Best Of Open Source E-commerce

There has been a lot of publicity surrounding Magento and if you have not heard of this software, then you must of been lost on an island. Since their launch back in the Summer of 2007 (31st March), this software has improved and evolved over the last couple of years taking in the tremendous amount of feedback from users. The company behind this project is Verian who are leaders within the open source industry. They have created a shopping cart that is feature rich out of the box and Magento Commerce has become a leading shopping cart for open source e-commerce platforms. I recently reviewed Zen Cart writing about the Pros and Cons, and if you haven’t read the review, I would suggest taking a look at it to use it as a comparison.

An Overview Of Magento Commerce

As of the date of writing this review, I have tested Magento Commerce version 1.3.1. It is one of the latest and most powerful open-source e-commerce solutions that I have come across. These are some of the features you will find within the box:

• Marketing Promotions and Tools
• Analytics and Reporting
• Search Engine Optimization
• Site Management
• Catalog Management
• Catalog Browsing
• Product Browsing
• Mobile Commerce
• International Support
• Checkout
• Shipping
• Payment
• Customer Service
• Customer Accounts
• Order Management

Rather than give rewrite the benefits of Magento Commerce has about their software, you can read more and try out their demo on their website at: Magento Commerce.

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Getting Business Offline – Partnership Marketing

Most business owners who run Internet businesses heavily rely on generating a majority of their revenue from customers online. That means they are potentially missing out on opportunities found offline. This is why I want to explore in this post the idea of partnership marketing, which will compliment any Internet business.

What Is Partnership Marketing?

Partnership marketing is a strategic way to aligning one’s business with other organisations and businesses to equally expose partner brands to one another’s customers. Typically these partnerships are formed when two or more companies find value for their customers in each other’s products and/or their services. This type of partnership marketing is happening all the time on the Internet and an example online is John Chow’s partnership with Market Leverage. John Chow has an audience that Market Leverage can promote their products and services to, which in turn John Chow also receives greater exposure through Market Leverage’s existing client base. This makes it a win-win situation for both businesses.

Then we come back to the offline world and partnership marketing is about finding people who offer complementary services and products that work alongside your business or help expand the offering for your customers. Some more examples could be an arrangement between an electrician and a painter, or a hairdresser and a beautician. As you can see both businesses compliment each other and provide additional value to a consumer over and above their experience compared to just one product or service offered to them.

Where Can You Find These Partnerships?

The best way to find partnerships is to go about it the old fashion way – network with people by getting out, mixing and meeting them personally. It is about your brand being seen and the benefits are substantial. It gives you and your business the opportunity to:

• Introduce your brand, your products and services and your company background
• To learn new ideas and concepts for your business
• Find out what is happening in and outside of your market
• Meet new people
• Be referred
• Find new suppliers and consultants
• Generate new leads and prospects who could be your potential customers
• Connect with people who you know and like
• Increase your sphere of influence

Through networking you will be able to also establish new ideas and share your thoughts, so be prepared to listen and learn. It’s also a great way to present your Internet business in a personal way.

Why Is Partnership Marketing So Powerful That Makes It Work?

When we start our Internet business, we have found that finding a customer and building a relationship with them is the key to creating a sale. Without customers you do not have business. The same is true, without a relationship with potential business partners your Internet business will struggle to grow and it will eventually die. This is what makes partnership marketing so powerful. Most business relationships start off either in reputation or directly in sales by referral or word of mouth. In my personal experience, 80% of the business that comes into the Dragonboat business comes from referral or word of mouth due to the business relationships I have build with clients over the years. This is also known as third party endorsements and is usually spontaneous, objective, honest and free! Therefore it carries more weight than most other marketing tools available. Additionally I still believe that face to face contact is vital to any Internet business.

How To Manage Partnership Marketing Effectively?

When you establish a partnership with other business and create a program that will benefit your customers you will want to manage it correctly. Here are five tips to help you:

1. Brainstorm what you can jointly sell and who can sell if for you. Are you finding businesses to partner with formally or informally? What other businesses around you have the same target market? What are your expectations of return on investment (ROI)?
2. Find Your Partners that have already build a database and would benefit from your business offer. Your offer should be win-win for both businesses and the customer.
3. Create great sales copy and provide your business partners with the sales pitch and the related promotional material. Make it easy for your business partners to promote your products and services. The less work they have to do the more likely they are to promote your business.
4. Continue to look out for new business partners. Once you have established a few business partners, continue to recruit new partners to add to your business. It helps to cast your net out and to have back up business partners just in case others do nothing with your products and services.
5. Look after your business partners. Contact them regularly, update them with new promotions and changes. Give them tips on how to successfully promote your products and services and how it will compliment their business.

Review and Monitor Your Partnerships.

Keep track of where you get your business from through scripts you can implement on your website or when you give a link to your business partners. Make sure you are measuring your responses from customers and to track your business partners who are bringing you the most traffic to your website. You can always reward them for their efforts when you are able to get good statistics and the results. That way you can be sure where to spend your time and resources on.

Good luck and get out there!

Tyrone Shum
Partnership Marketer

How To Find A Virtual Assistant That’s Right For Your Internet Business?

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:

1. 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 “sation”. E.g. customization to customisation.
2. 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.
3. 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
• Able Virtual Assistant Services – Virtual Assistants located in Canada

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.

Tyrone Shum
Virtual Assistant Recruiter

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