Switching Your Internet Business Onto Autopilot
August 10, 2009 by Tyrone
Setting your Internet business on autopilot requires you to determine which systems can be automated using technology and which systems can be outsourced to people. Focus on eliminating unnecessary costs by using technology first. Then hire staff to handle the rest of the systems. For example if you had to enter in all your transactions from your website into your accounting software, could this have been eliminated if a script was written to do this automatically? It may cost you $10,000 a year to have a staff doing data entry, when it would have only cost you $1,000 to get someone to write the script that will last forever. Here is a three step process to switch on autopilot:
- Outsource your customer support
- Find a good webmaster to manage your website
- Have a business manager to handle day to day tasks
Customer Support
The first step any Internet business owner needs to take is to outsource or hire staff to manage their customer support. In my case, I hired virtual assistants who didn’t need to be in the office and could answer all customer support issues anywhere for me. I provided them with a list of commonly asked questions, which is the website’s FAQ page and also a manual that outlined some procedures of the business. For the better part of it, it doesn’t cost as much as what people think. Most virtual assistants can start as low as $3 per hour and they can be found online. To date my best virtual assistant costs me $2 per hour. Here is a list of leading virtual assistant sites where I have found my best virtual assistants to date:
Podcast: Article Marketing Talk
July 17, 2009 by Tyrone
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Download the MP3 [ 18 minutes - 12MB ]
Our Step By Step Guide To Article Marketing
In our weekly podcast, we are exploring article marketing. The reason why we wanted to share this with you is to help you understand why article marketing is a crucial traffic generating tool for your Internet business. If you do article marketing correctly, it will help rank your website higher across multiple search engines and also bring in more traffic from many different sources.
Within the podcast we’ll teach you:
- How to create unique content that readers will find interesting and click through to your website.
- Why you need to structure your article in a certain way to achieve the best outcome
- Our top tips on how to get your articles marketed quickly and tools to speed up the process
- How to research the market to write about a topic your readers want
Secrets Of Outsourcing Your Internet Business
June 22, 2009 by Tyrone
Recently, my friend Adam suggested I take a look at replacemyself.com, which is a website that shows you how to train and outsource your business to people in the Philippines working for you full time starting from $250 US per month. Although the information provided is not free, it was extremely valuable and for the price of $97.00 US, it is definitely worth it! It sparked my interest because I am already outsourcing tasks to assistants in the Philippines and I wanted to see how this system could improve my business further. Before we get into the details of this system, I am going explore what outsourcing is and how you can use it within your own Internet business.
What Is Outsourcing?
For me, it is taking routine tasks or areas of my business and hiring good quality people to do them for me at a fraction of the cost. One of the main reasons why I outsource a majority of my business is to eliminate the tasks that I am not good at and focus on tasks that utilises my strengths. For example, I currently have all of my emails and telephone support outsourced to a team of assistants. Therefore I am able to focus my time and energy to do more podcast interviews with leading experts and deliver them through this blog.
How To Find A Virtual Assistant That’s Right For Your Internet Business?
March 13, 2009 by Tyrone
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 “sation”. 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
- 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
