DAY 1: Analyzing The Viability Of Your Niche
March 1, 2010 by Tyrone
In the next 3 weeks, there will be a guest post series about Search Engine Optimization and how you can improve and optimize any niche website. It’s been a huge topic from within my membership course and it’s something that can be easily outsourced. So let’s get started…
“Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the ‘gotta have it’ scale.”
– Zig Ziglar -
Learn how to pick your own battles.
This may sound like a joke for many of you, but this is the primary reason why many sites or online businesses fail online.
Having a niche marketing strategy, that is focusing on a specific topic rather than a broad query allows you to perform better as you are competing with much less other sites on internet.
Your visitors will be much more targeted and thus will convert better.
Getting yourself into an overly competitive market is a recipe for disaster and a way to ensure that your site will never be found.
On the other hand, entering into an overly niche market may result in insufficient traffic volume to monetize your site or store and ensure your survival.
Remember, because you think you got a great idea doesn’t mean that other people share your feelings!
In the end, it’s all about money
Depending on the nature of your site, the way you plan to monetize your efforts may differ from site to site.
However, as a general rule, you’ll be monetizing your site through one or more of those following methods:
- Ecommerce– selling products, be it physical or digital.
- Affiliate Marketing– selling other people’s product and getting a commission for it.
- Advertising– selling ads space on your site.
- Services– selling your skills.
Regardless of the method you intend to use, you should have a number in mind as to how much money minimum you expect or you need to make out of your website for it to be worth your time.
I won’t elaborate much on it as this goes with all the information you should have gathered already in your business plan. You have one right? It would be foolish to start a business without one!
Ok, for the sake of illustration, I’m going to say that I want to start a new business online selling “nail polish”.
After my estimation, I also know that I’ll be making $1 profit for each bottle sold, and based on the marketing strategy I have established, I estimate that I’ll be able to sell 2 bottles to each customer in average.
Now, based on my expenses and personal needs, I want $2,000 of net profit per month to make this project worth.
How To Outsource Your Small Business In 5 Ways
February 2, 2010 by Tyrone
You may probably ask yourself, “How can I outsource if I’m still starting up?” Well, there’s already the answer to that. The reason is when you are running a small business, you are the jack-of-all-trades where you play as the worker, manager and even the administrator all by yourself. Additionally, the more tasks you do on your own, the lesser it is to maintain the productivity of the work done and in effect, less efficient results to maintain greater profits in the near future.
Do Smart Business Owners Ask For Help?
Yes, they do and everyone should realize there would always reasons to seek help to expand expertise and opportunities. For me, I admit I’ve been through all the hassles of handling things by myself but since I have started outsourcing say, my Dragonboat business, I’ve had the best relief of having the chance to communicate with the suppliers and plan ahead of time to develop my Dragonboat service while my customer support staff stays responsible in answering queries, processing orders and payments as well.
If you’re thinking I’ve been spending too much as a start, no! Generally I’ve decided to outsource since it’s just a cheaper part of investment overseas while receiving a high quality of work in less time and effort. Now, let me show you how I’ve been able to realize that outsourcing while starting up really works:
What to Outsource?
Get to this mindset: Think of the things that you’ve done during the day and what actually gets done in the long run when you outsource it. I’ll draw an example to make this easy – emails for instance has always been part of your daily routines in the business and if you thought you have always checked on the new ones, then try to realize how your virtual staff can even filter, organize and respond to them in less time in daily basis. See? That’s a big break. Start to outsource anything that goes around a routine which cuts off at least 2 hours of your day administering to friends, customers and the likes.
When to Outsource?
There are just two things: when you know everything that has to be outsourced and when you know nothing about the tasks that you are currently outsourcing. As I said earlier, outsourcing can help you maximize the expertise in the business through the expanded efforts of your virtual staff all done at the same time. When you’re not good at graphic design for example, let an expert do that for you then it’s up for you to decide on a good, better and best outputs. Secondly, you can outsource the things in which you already are good at to give your virtual staff the right information and get things done the way you wanted. Also, checking on minimal errors on your part can be a lot easier than to implement the whole project yourself.
Why to Outsource?
It’s simply because you can do other things outside of your business but can think of more ways on how to increase profits as well. Outsourcing gives you enough time to plan, draw more targets and set better strategies for your earnings. Thus, the less work you do, the more it frees up your mind to activate your plans, grow profits easier and also enjoy the rest of your weekends.
Top 5 Tips On How To Outsource Your Business Whilst On Holidays
January 25, 2010 by Tyrone
These last few weeks have been the most fun and productive times in my life. I just got back from a trip over to Hong Kong and Thailand and to share with you what I did, I’ve created a little video right below here that shows one of my most memory events whilst on holidays:
The reason why I show you this event is because when I look back over the time whilst I was away, not once did I check my email or have to worry about what was happening in my business. I literally left my laptop and mobile phone in Australia and I headed overseas and just had FUN! When I came back I was not surprised to only get 32 emails that were from my virtual staff and personal friends. Last time I traveled overseas when my business was not setup with the proper systems, I received easily over 200 emails in that same period of time. What a change it was!
How Did I Setup My Business To Allow Me To Be Stress Free Whilst On Holidays?
The key is outsourcing. I have a business that has core systems in place that allow full-time virtual staff to manage and run the business whether I am working or not. I spend a majority of my time creating video content which is the heart of my business and my members appreciate this. The rest of the work that still needs to be completed, such as customer billing, technical issues and marketing are all outsourced to people I hire from the Philippines. Though, even having full-time virtual staff working for me it is still vital to have proper systems in place. I am going to share with you the top 5 tips on how you can prepare your business to allow you to enjoy a stress free holiday:
Tip #1: Plan Ahead Of Time
Within my business, delivering video content is like running a TV show and if I want to ensure that my viewers receive what they paid for, then I need to follow a schedule. The best way to look at this is if you are writing content for a blog or uploading video to an online channel website, then you need to plan at the beginning and consider what you want to deliver to your market. As the saying goes, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Before I left for my holiday, I already had created over 8 videos which will be delivered over one and a half months. That way I am already prepared ahead of schedule. The same thing also applies to virtual staff and you will need to discuss with them the necessary work to be completed over the course of the year.
Ask About Outsourcing Your Internet Business
October 26, 2009 by Tyrone
Continuing on from the 10 part video series on how to outsource your Internet business, it’s time for me to open up this for discussion. I’ve received a huge response asking me to create other videos and I will definitely do my best to add more to the blog. Before I do, I would like to share with you some of the questions that have been asked already:
- How do you track outsourcers for the time they put in?
- Can you start a brand new business from the ground up and do it all by outsourcing without knowing everything about Internet marketing?
- How much should you outsource? All or only some aspects?
- How do you prevent staff from stealing your ideas and personal information when you tell them about a project and don’t deliver?
- How do you handle taxes in the US when you outsource an employee fulltime?
Ask Your Questions About Outsourcing
Now, for me to create more videos that will help you outsource your work, I would really appreciate if you could spend a few minutes answering some questions below:
Question 1: If you could learn from a coach who is an expert in this area about outsourcing an Internet business, what questions would you ask? (List as many questions as you want)
Question 2: Describe in a few words what is your main reason for outsourcing your Internet business? (e.g. more time, more money, expand business, travel, charity work, etc.)
Question 3: List some tasks you need staff to help you complete on a regular basis?
Question 4: Specify in hours the amount of time you want to work in your Internet business?
Question 5: If there was a coaching program to assist you with outsourcing your Internet business, how would you like the material to be presented? (You can select one or all)
-
- Video presentations
- Audio only recordings
- Workbook and manual
- All of the above
You can either
- Leave your answers in the comments section, or
- Answer them privately by clicking on this link.
Also as an incentive, I would like to give you a report that contains some really valuable interviews and 10 resources that I recommend to use when you complete this survey. So to get your report, simply answer the survey questions provided here or comment here.
Thank you and talk soon.
Tyrone Shum
Creator of Mass Outsource Videos.
To ask your questions click here now.
Podcast: Troy McDonald’s Listcrew
August 21, 2009 by Tyrone
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Download the MP3 [ 55 minutes - 38MB ]
Troy McDonald – Listcrew.com
Troy’s been in the Internet marketing industry for over a decade and personally knows people like Frank Kern and Kirt Christensen. He started making money back in the days when the Internet was built upon emails and newsgroups, which was the main form of communication. Move forward a decade and even with social media such as FaceBook, Twitter and other forms of web 2.0 communications, he still believes in using email to communicate with his customers. This is one thing he believes will not change in years to come as he says in the interview.
In the past, Troy has spoken at the Internet Marketing Super Conference and has been a facilitator for Tony Robbins. He has sold numerous Internet businesses as well and continues to succeed online with his most recent website launch of Listcrew.
The reason why I interview Troy was to find out how to build large email lists that could successfully generate income, since his been doing it for over a decade. It is a topic that is hotly talked about all the time. Additionally if you combine your list with Troy’s system you can collaborate with other like minded people in your industry and build an even larger list. Best of all this system is FREE to join.
Personally, I have been using Listcrew for a few months and it has shown some great results. Just in one week alone my email list increased by 70 subscribers. So I can verify that this system works!
