You’ve heard that outsourcing is a great way to grow your business (that’s true).
Because, let’s face it; you can’t do everything yourself.
While it may seem like common sense, it’s not always so easy for new entrepreneurs to acknowledge. They tell themselves that they’ll save money if they just do it all themselves.
Perhaps it’s the control freak in us who wants to stay in charge of every aspect of our business, or the frugal shopper who wants to save money by just working on projects ourselves.
There’s another reason why outsourcing is important: when you try to do it all, you’re taking 2 big risks.
The first is that some tasks and projects won’t be done as well as they well as they could be if you had more time, or the necessary training. This could lead to distributing inferior products or low-quality content that won’t help move the needle.
The second risk, and it’s a big one, is that you’ll simply burn out and not be able to stay on top of your market.
No matter how many skills are in your arsenal, or how many years of experience you have, there are always tasks that can (and should) be done by seasoned professionals. As the old saying goes, just because you can do it yourself doesn’t mean you should.
With an outsourced team, you can get the help you need to grow your business faster than ever before, and without worrying about human resources and employment taxes.
Better yet, if you stick with hiring professionals who are experts in their field, you won’t even have to train anyone to complete the tasks you assign to them because they’ll already be experienced and ready to take on all that you have to offer.
Connecting to seasoned professionals gives you the leg up, allowing you to compete, head on, with some of the biggest names in your niche.
In other words, it levels out the playing field.
And while you’d like to get started right away, maybe it all seems a little overwhelming.
You’re not sure where to start or what steps to take to get the process rolling.
Good news: You can get started with outsourcing in just four easy steps. Read on…
Your first step is to figure out what to outsource. Ask yourself these questions:
What jobs do you need done? Here you need to evaluate all areas of your business, including: Writing, copywriting, graphics, design, programming and other technical jobs, marketing and customer service. Then draw up a list of jobs you have in each of these areas.
Then figure out how long it would take you to do a particular task. Next, multiply the hours it takes you to a complete a task by your per-hour worth.
Example: Let’s say your time is worth $75 an hour and it would take you two hours to create a graphic – that’s $150 of your time. If you can find someone to do it for less, then it is indeed cost effective to outsource the task.
Once you’ve figured out what tasks you need to outsource, your next step is to advertise the job in order to attract as many qualified prospective freelancers as possible.
One great way to do it is to post your project on a freelancing board like Fiverr, Upwork, Freelancer or Craigslist. You’re bound to attract plenty of qualified candidates!
At this point you’ll get to choose from among a lot of vendors. But don’t make your choice based on price alone.
Instead, you need to do your due diligence to find the most reliable freelancer who’ll get the best results for you. That means checking the freelancer’s feedback rating, testimonials, business history and portfolio.
Once you’ve researched all the candidates, select the best one and hire him or her. Then move on to the next step…
Whether you get mediocre or great results is largely going to depend on what you do at this step. That’s because you need to do the following.
Provide a clear brief and instructions. Your freelancer may have some amazing talents, but mind reading probably isn’t one of them. And that’s why you need to provide a clear and accurate “no guesswork required” brief for your freelancer.
At this point you’re probably thinking at the whole four-step process sounds simple enough. And you’d be right. But you may also be looking to fill in the gaps.
Example: Where can you get sample briefs and protocol checklists? How, exactly, do you do your due diligence? And what are some of the other reliable ways to find freelancers?
Well, there is a lot more to be learnt about outsourcing; far more than can be covered in this short post, but if you’d like to know more about this, then click on the featured resource below where you can pick up a free report that covers this topic in more detail. Download it, read it and take action 🙂
Everyone has certain goals they want to reach. It might be weight loss or finances in your personal life, or specific business growth goals in your career. Regardless of what milestones you want to achieve, you won’t get there if all you have is the end result in mind.
There are four easy steps you can take to ensure your goals are met. It’s a process that allows you to map out where you want to be and take steps to get there with ease.
In order to know what steps you need to take, you have to know how you’d like your journey to end. This is your outcome or end result. You have to be able to concretely define what you want that result to be.
This is the bottom line of everything that you’re attempting to do. Many people aim for something without ever knowing what they want the end result to be. The problem with not knowing your end goal is that you won’t realize it once you’ve reached it – if you even reach it at all.
Your end result changed from a generic goal of losing weight and getting in better shape to the end result of competing in the marathon, which has a specific length and is on a specific timetable.
Only you will be able to determine your end goal. It might be to finish college, grow your business by $50,000 in the coming year, lose 25 pounds, and so on. Have a large, verifiable goal to reach.
Knowing the end result is imperative for whatever it is that you want in life. You need to know this to be able to work your process. This might mean that you figure out different end results for different areas of your life.
What would make you happier, specifically? Visualize that end goal that you want. For now, don’t worry about timing. You’ll be working on that as you develop your specific goal setting strategy.
Goals are something that can be used to improve your life. By having goals, you can check to see if you’re on track for how you want your life to turn out. Goals are helpful tools that can keep you headed in the right direction when you need to make a decision that involves changing some aspect of your life.
Encouragement is a by-product of having goals. Whenever you have a setback, goals can encourage you to keep going. By seeing how far you’ve already come, you realize that you’ve already made some strides forward.
Dreamers who do very little action taking often focus on long-term goals, forgetting that they need a specific path to get them there. They stay paralyzed, feeling the long-term goal is too far out of reach.
Having short-term goals means that these are things that you do in the present or in the very near future – such as within a week or a month. An example of a short-term goal might be setting up an email autoresponder system within the next 14 days so that you’re ready to build a list.
A long-term goal is usually something that you can’t reach as fast as a short-term goal. A long-term goal is one that you plan to reach within a few months or a year or longer after making it.
Long-term goals will be realized over time as each of your shorter milestones are achieved. For instance, your long-term goal might be to have a list of 100,000 subscribers.
So, your short-term goals might be:
…and so on.
Each time you’re able to look at your list and cross off an item that you achieved it helps you build momentum toward reaching your ultimate goal. Whatever your goals are, you shouldn’t let them just sit there as nothing more than an internal dream that you have.
You need them around visually so that they can help remind you of what you desire out of life. You need to be able to see whatever it is that your goals are so that you’re reminded to take action.
You can create a vision board with pictures that will help keep you motivated. Or you can write them down in a notebook and list the reasons why you want that goal.
Reaching any goal will require you understanding what it is that you already possess that can help you meet that goal. It also takes you understanding what you lack in reaching that goal so that you can level up your skills to achieve it.
If you wanted to run a marathon and you were in fairly good shape, you would understand that your physical condition was something you already had. But if you were out of shape, you would understand that you couldn’t run a marathon until you got into shape.
You would understand that you lacked the physical conditioning. Defining that would help you set mini goals of getting fit, so that would then feed into your larger goal of the marathon accomplishment.
You can dig down and create mini goals for as many sub-levels as you want, too. For example, physical conditioning is a mini goal to competing in the marathon. But what are some mini goals for the physical conditioning?
Creating mini goals helps you focus all of your energy on the bigger goal. Focusing on the bigger goal can make you feel overwhelmed and cause you to talk yourself out of trying.
Each mini goal that you set needs to be specific, too. This means that you divide these up into tasks. You would need to use a calendar in order to set a date for reaching each task that falls under your mini goal heading.
You then break down the date by the time that you have to work on the goal. When you have goals that have a conclusion date, it helps you stay on track to reach the bigger picture.
Goals, even mini goals with a conclusion date of “whenever” rarely get finished. You need to know when you should start that mini goal and when it needs to be completed.
Give each task under the goal a deadline. For example, a mini goal of walking a 15-minute mile within 15 weeks might require you (if you’re starting from a 30-minute mile) to shave one minute off your time each week.
That’s a doable mini goal, and the timeline is specific enough for you to have clarity in reaching it. Everything that you do under a mini goal should be something that matters. The more specific it is, the better it will be keeping you on track.
Mini goals need to be created in such a way that you’ll be able to see progress. If your goal is to start your own business, then one of your mini goals might be to write a business plan.
Next, you would write down when you need that plan finished by. Another mini goal could be having a mentor look over the plan and give you tips on how to further polish it up.
Each step that you take should have a purpose that propels you toward the end result of your bigger goal. If you can remove the mini goal without it impacting the overall goal, then odds are high that the mini goal may not be needed.
List the deadline that it needs to happen by. Make notes under the mini goal that tell you what you must learn to reach that goal. Is there a class you need to take? A book you have to read or a seminar you must attend?
All of those should be listed under the mini goal. Make sure that you understand if completing the mini goal can be done alone or if you’re going to need someone else’s help with it.
You should list all of the possible roadblocks that could happen during the course of trying to reach each mini goal. After you list the roadblocks, write down all of the ways around them.
What this does is help you be prepared for whenever a setback crops up. They will – and it’s always best to have your offensive strategy in place before you need it.
Before you can take any action, you want to brainstorm ways to achieve your goals and mini goals. You want options, not a single path that you think will work. It allows you to think outside the box.
Some people refer to brainstorming as creatively solving a problem before it happens or while it’s ongoing. Without brainstorming, most people come up with between two and four ways that they can reach their goals.
When you start brainstorming from a research perspective, you often find better ways to do things, shortcuts and money savers. Don’t be afraid to network with others and ask for their best practices, too.
As you write down your thoughts, you may start to see how some of them are connected and might possibly overlap one another. This will help you see how you may need to prioritize or even group certain action steps.
When you brainstorm, you’re free thinking – and that can often let your mind pinpoint a better way to do something. Some people find it helpful to brainstorm on their own, while others can’t seem to move their mind away from a certain focus in order to come up with action steps.
If this happens, it can be helpful to brainstorm with someone else who understands the end result that you want. Brainstorming with someone else is as simple as having a conversation.
You simply tell them what you want to accomplish and say that you’re trying to come up with action steps that you need to take. Many times, having someone else to bounce ideas off of can yield new ways to get things done that you may not have thought of on your own.
Brainstorming can also be helpful when it comes to seeking a solution about an action step. Some action steps require more effort than other ones do. You may end up needing to do more or find additional help.
If you don’t have someone to connect with as a personal contact or even an online forum friend, you can start researching the best way to achieve certain goals online.
Be very specific when you search. For example, if you needed the mini goals to build a list, you might type in “steps to build a list” and see what came up. You might discover a blog post or infographic that details these steps:
Maybe you didn’t have one of those listed in your mini goals, but now that you’ve seen it online, you can add it. It’s easy to forget all of the small steps involved in achieving a larger goal, and you don’t want to forget something important along the way or feel caught off-guard if you realize it in mid-stream and have to reorganize your goals on the fly.
It shouldn’t require much time to brainstorm – or research. If you’re visiting other sites, just pop in quickly, scan the resource to see if you already have those steps on your list, and jot down anything that might be missing.
Once you’ve finished, it’s time to take action. You’ll be putting into place the ideas that were generated from your brainstorming session. When you begin to implement change, you have to understand that it’s normal to feel a sense of unease.
Most people are resistant to change. Just know that it’s normal and don’t let it throw you off course.
Create motivation as you start making changes. You have to be your own biggest fan when it comes to what you’re doing. Celebrate all of your small milestones. It doesn’t have to be expensive or huge – just recognize your efforts and honor your accomplishments.
The fact that you’re working toward a goal and doing things to get you to the finish line is something that should be respected and admired. Sometimes, there’s nobody there but you to toast to your success.
As you implement change, make sure that you monitor what happens as you make the change. You want to be alert to head off any negative situations or obstacles that arise from implementing your action steps.
There will be some obstacles that you can’t foresee and that you can’t head off. For those, you’ll want to try to get to the root of the problem quickly. Understanding why there’s a difficulty implementing a change can help you know how to get back on track.
You also want to keep in mind that while you’re implementing change now, you’ll see some small benefits right away. However, seeing the end result of some of the other changes may take a little time.
As you implement these changes, make sure that you’re continually revising your goals because as these changes take place, your goals will also change. It’s okay to fix goals along the way, too.
Sometimes, when you’re on the path to something greater, and you’re educating yourself, you discover fantastic new ways of doing things! This might mean changing a mini goal, or even altering your large goal completely!
One thing you shouldn’t do, though, is allow yourself to get distracted by too many good possibilities to the point that you’re forever chasing a shiny new object and never following through on the action steps you’ve mapped out to reach one milestone in your personal or professional life.
Having a strong mindset is critical to any goal setting strategy, so click on the featured resource below to get a free report on how to develop a strong mindset. Download, it read and take action 🙂
You don’t have to have any experience to be successful with an online business. Anyone can succeed – even if you’re brand new to working at home because you can learn as you go along.
There are many different avenues you can choose to take to get started. Much of your decision will be based on personal preferences, time available to implement it, and tools you need to launch it.
In this post we are going to cover 1 of the best (and simplest) business models to get started online.
Are you ready? Ok, let’s get started…
A great online business that you can choose is to become a service provider. A service provider is someone who offers his or her services to those who are seeking help.
There are many different types of service providers, and you choose one based on your skills and this is why it is so easy to start as you can build upon the skills you already have.
Some write fiction or non-fiction books for others. As a ghostwriter, unless the contract specifically states otherwise, you don’t get to claim the words that you write. You’re the unseen, unknown writer for someone else unless you have a prior arrangement.
Many celebrities and other public figures hire ghostwriters. You’ll need to have the ability to write in the language you were hired and set a competitive price so people will want to outsource to you.
You might choose to become an affiliate manager. This is a job in which you would oversee the core operations for someone who is selling their own info products. This can be an individual or a business.
The type of tasks that you would do might change day to day. For example, you might be responsible for making sure that the people who wanted to become an affiliate were top quality as well as check out their ability to promote and their promotion site.
You might also have to monitor affiliates to make sure that all the promotions are being handled correctly.
Sometimes affiliate managers are paid a salary, and sometimes they earn a percentage of the money the launch brings in.
Another area for a service provider is a VA. This is a virtual assistant, which means you basically help individuals or businesses remotely. So, you might have a client in California while you live in Wyoming.
The type of work that you do as a VA will be determined by the field that you’re in as well as what the client needs.
Sometimes it’s posting articles on a blog. Other times it’s answering emails in a customer service manner.
You could also become a site builder if you want to be a service provider. This is someone who builds an online site for clients.
The skills that you would need in order to this include knowledge of web design language, some graphic design skills (but this isn’t a requirement because you can outsource this task), and communication skills so that you understand the client’s vision.
You would need to stay abreast of changes within various search engines to see what best practices allow site owners to rise to a page 1 listing on their search engine. It’s more than just knowing keyword phrases.
You’d need to know both onsite and offsite search engine optimization strategies. Learning SEO isn’t difficult. There are courses, both free and paid, video as well as eBooks and other reading material that can teach you.
You might like becoming a service provider because you can choose the type of work that you do and can set your own hours. The amount of income that you can earn is up to you and you can also make money fast as a service provider because the client will often pay upfront or at least half now, half later.
To get started in any service provider area, you would want to make sure that whatever you choose is something that you do enjoy doing. If you don’t enjoy it, the work will make you miserable.
You also want to make sure that you either have the skills or can develop the skills that will match the type of work you choose to do. For example, if you’re already good with PhotoShop, you might find that doing graphic design type work is a good fit.
You could create banners, eBooks, images for websites, custom designs for clients and more. If you know that you like to write and you have a good grasp on grammar and punctuation, then you would most likely find copywriting or ghostwriting enjoyable.
What you can do is showcase work that you’ve done for family, friends or for a charity or cause. For example, if you want to get into providing design services, but you don’t have any previous work that you can show potential clients, you can create a flyer for the local animal shelter – or even make something up just to show samples of your abilities.
You can donate some time and skill to a cause that you believe in and use what you’ve created or done in your portfolio. It doesn’t matter whether the work you’re showing was something that you were hired to do or if it was just a freebie because potential clients just want to see how you compare to other providers in terms of quality and value.
You may want to create a website offering your services. This way, potential clients can look you up and have quick access to your online portfolio. You can create a blog using WordPress for around $10 plus hosting. For great, affordable hosting, go here.
For example, “Graphic Designer (or whatever it is that you do) for Hire” because when people are searching for a service provider, they’ll use the keywords describing the service they’re looking for.
If you want to land clients now, you can start on sites like Freelancer and Fiverr, but the pay as a beginner, especially in the beginning, may be pretty low unless you have specialty skills that are highly sought after.
The advantage of using sites like these is that they do have clients already looking for freelancers and you wouldn’t have to build a site of your own. Whenever you land a job, always have a contract to protect yourself and the client.
If you want to learn about 4 other online business models you can try, from affiliate marketing, to FBA/eBay and more, check out the featured resource below for a free report that expands on this post and covers 5 online business models that you can choose from. Pick one and get started today… 😊
Despite the recent growth of various online marketing strategies such as social media, email marketing still remains to be the most effective marketing tool for websites. A mailing list is therefore one of the greatest assets a business can possess.
Building this list however is not an easy task. Some websites have even resorted to buying lists in a desperate attempt to increase their subscribers but in the end this proves useless and even damaging.
The first step in creating a successful opt in page is increasing the traffic to it. Without people visiting the page, you have no chance of building your list. Below are some helpful strategies through which you can boost the number of visitors visiting your opt in page.
To get as many people as possible to visit the opt in page, you need to put your website in front of as many eyes as possible. The best way of doing this is through search engine optimization.
With an increased ranking, more web users will see your website and possibly visit it.
If you are just beginning to build your mailing list, getting the traffic you need naturally can take time. To jumpstart the list, make use of paid advertising. You can advertise using Google, Bing or Facebook ads among others.
Ensure that you have crafted your ads, especially those on Facebook, well enough so as to attract as many people as possible.
Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus are some of the best social media websites that you can use to triple the traffic being received on the opt in or squeeze page. Facebook is especially effective at this.
All you need to do is create a fan page and then get people to join it.
Be careful however not to spam your fans. Instead, strive to provide value and make offers that they cannot refuse.
This is another popular method of jumpstarting your list although you will have to pay for it. It involves using someone else’s list to market your website and create your own subscribers.
Of course, you can only use solo ads with other related websites. For those in marketing and business niches, a form of solo ads is Safe Swaps – http://safe-swaps.com
A word of warning though; not all solo ad vendors are made equal and there are a lot of poor providers out there so this is NOT for the novice marketer as you can lose a lot of money quickly. In all honesty, paid advertising via the likes of Google, Bing and Facebook are more reliable.
Many websites owners do not realize the potential that forums hold in getting more people to visit an opt in page and subscribe to emails. You can easily build a list with hundreds of subscribers simply by using forums.
As you build your authority on a forum, more people will be curious to find out what you are offering.
Article marketing has long been said that it no longer works. However, it should still be part of your traffic generation strategy, as you’ll still get traffic from those searching for information around a particular topic.
To increase the number of people who follow the url ensure that the article contains helpful and informative content and use more than one article directory.
Even better, post the articles to directories in a certain niche rather than general directories. Here’s an article directory where you can submit your articles: http://ezinearticles.com
Media releases are particularly effective at getting people to check out what you are offering.
To increase the effectiveness of press releases, create them regularly and submit them to different news websites.
Get in touch with popular bloggers and ask whether you can submit a blog post.
This tactic is all about exposure and you are borrowing the site owners expertise. The more popular the blog, the more traffic you will get.
People love winning things, and a contest of any kind will receive a lot of attention.
Ensure that the reward for the winner is appealing enough for people to want to participate.
YouTube is the most popular video hosting website. Take advantage of the millions of visitors who visit it every day to boost traffic to your opt in page.
Learn how to create a viral video that is both helpful and interesting. In the video and description, provide a link to the opt in page. You can also encourage people to share their video on their websites for more visibility.
After you have attained considerable traffic increases, remember that there is also the work of getting people to actually join your mailing list. But once you have established a steady stream of reliable traffic, you have tackled this major first step in email marketing.
If you want to know more about building your list after they have opted in, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about simple list building to expand your knowledge further.
People want to succeed in life. Success is often a result of planning. But what if the items you have on the plan are wrong? This could lead you to a place in your life you didn’t expect and not for the better.
Besides, it means that you have wasted your time. That’s why you need to focus on your priorities in life. These will be a better guide in helping you map out your journey and will influence the kinds of goals you will need to set to reach them.
After you have listed out your important items, use the number scale to rate the items. You can choose how you want the scale to be measured, but suppose it is 1 being the lowest priority to 5 being the highest. You can do this in a spreadsheet so that you can resort after you have done this for all the items.
Sort from highest to lowest. These are going to be the focal points of your goal setting. You can choose to try and include all the items on your list or you can decide to eliminate any that are below a certain number like all the items that have a priority of 1 or 2.
That is up to you. But you do want to make the list as manageable and as meaningful as possible. If they don’t really mean that much to you they won’t motivate you to achieve them or help you to keep going when you hit an obstacle.
For each of the highest priority items, the next step is to figure out what it will take to achieve them. List out high-level mini goals for each item. You can choose to prioritize these in much the same way, but at this stage of the process, it is not completely necessary.
If it’s enough to be defined as a work unit, i.e., a task that you can easily perform, then you probably have gone far enough down. If the item can be broken down into further sub-tasks, then that is the next step.
By using this list-prioritization process, you have a much better chance of containing tasks that are the right ones to meet the objectives of your goals.
Now when you have these goals, it’s time to come up with a plan. And it is really useful to come up with a yearly plan before anything else and we’ll have a look at this in more detail now…
Many people don’t believe they need a yearly plan. They believe they know enough about themselves or their businesses to bypass any planning process. Some people can get away with doing this. But, for most, having a plan and updating one on a yearly basis is essential to keep on track.
The plan lets you see what needs allocation of funding. You can see how your expenses are affecting your bottom line.
If you have employees working for you, a yearly plan can help manage them. You can find out what vacations they are planning, and you can ensure that they are scheduled for training that you may require of them.
You can’t account for everything that they may encounter over the course of the year. But, as long as you have the major events on your plan, you can make alternative plans.
There are going to be changes, and as the year goes on, you may find some initiatives are no longer relevant. But, overall, a plan is a great tool to help your company.
Without a plan, people and companies tend to flounder. They spend more money than they should, and they start projects that they often don’t complete. They have no way of knowing whether those projects are even going to help the company at all.
It’s difficult to work as a cohesive unit when everyone is off doing whatever they feel like doing. Even if you have a manager who delegates the jobs, without a plan, the manager will also create projects as he or she goes.
It is important to get everyone to participate, but once you get an agreement, they need to be held accountable. Business is difficult enough without having some kind of plan or map to guide you in the right direction.
Once you have your yearly plan, it is fine to break this down into smaller, more manageable chunks. In fact, this may be advisable as a yearly plan may seem too big to achieve. By breaking it down into monthly, weekly and even daily goals, you can keep on track and reward yourself along the way and before long you will have reached your yearly goal 🙂
Of course, using goal setting exercises and plans takes a lot of self-discipline which many of us lack, so if you want to learn about how to harness the power of self-discipline, please download the featured resource below, read it and take action 🙂
