Lessen Your To Do List & Still Get Things Done

If you are like most work at home moms, your daily to do list seems endless. You probably finding yourself wondering, “Will I ever get ahead?” or “Will I ever get it all done?” Sure you can – but not alone. It’s time to start outsourcing and shaving away things on your list that are not necessary to run a profitable business.

First, it’s time to admit there are things on your list that you feel you must do that really aren’t necessary. These types of things can be adjusted or removed completely so you can be more productive in your day. Some common culprits include:

• Checking your email repetitively
• Logging into a social networking site daily
• Chatting via instant messenger while you work
• Doing all of your own article writing or submissions
• Continuing to do tasks that you dislike (such as bookkeeping)

Next it’s time to make the changes. Take time to decide if these tasks should be eliminated completely or outsourced to someone else. This will shave down your to-do list and increase your productivity. Here are some examples of ways to shorten that list and still get things done.

Instead of checking email every time you get a notification that you’ve got one, set aside 2 or 3 times a day to check and reply to all emails. Are you addicted to Twitter and keep it open all day long? Change your routine and only hop on to chat a few minutes in the morning while drinking that first cup of coffee and in the evening once your work is finished for the day.

Now for things that can be handed off to someone else. Does it take you an entire day to complete monthly bookkeeping? How about article writing, do you dread writing and struggle with doing so to the point it takes hours to turn out one article? If you find yourself taking tons of time to do certain tasks such as these, start looking for someone who specializes in those areas and get some help.

As work at home moms, we may THINK we can do it all, but the reality is we can’t and there’s really no reason to try! It’s time to stop trying to be Super Mom, Super Business Owner, etc. In order to be truly successful we need to learn that this requires allowing some things to go by the wayside, while obtaining assistance with other things. Only then will you be truly able to handle the extra long to-do lists.

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Google Documents – Free Time Management & More

Most of us struggle to find affordable time management tools that we can use as work at home moms. With limited funds it is absolutely essential to find tools that will be both useful AND affordable.

Google offers many valuable tools that are better than just affordable, they are FREE and they can also be a valuable asset to your business. They can help you manage your time wisely and assist in planning, collaborating and connecting with those you work with, including clients, partners or assistants.

One of these tools is Google Documents, which gives you a way to save documents to the web giving you the ability to access them from anywhere. This is one of its best features. Now, when you are out of town, you can have access to your important documents without having to worry about copying your files to a jump drive or worse, not having access to them at all.

Google Documents allows you to create both folders and labels which will help you to organize your documents to be found easily in the future by both you and those you might be collaborating with on a project. Yes, it even allows you to share your documents with others via file sharing, with the option of allowing them to edit the document or just view it.

There is even the option to chat with the person you are collaborating with in the same window where you are doing the edits. You both view the document simultaneously and can see the changes that the other person is making instantly.

You can also email the documents to others as an attachment right from the screen where you are editing the document. No need to open email in another window to quickly send one file.

Other valuable options include the ability to save documents and spreadsheets as Microsoft Office, Open Office, or PDF files. You can upload and download files to and from your computer as well. You can also star files for quick locating or even hide them if necessary.

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Beware of the Social Networking Trap

Social networking, though very popular today, can become a trap that can actually decrease your productivity and suck up hours of valuable work time.

So be careful!

A few of the more common culprits include Twitter, a micro-blogging tool which allows you to communicate with followers (friends) instantly. Another is Facebook, a social networking site that allows you to join a network by geographic location, create a profile and add friends. Of course we all know about the infamous MySpace as well.

There are also other social networking sites, all which are useful in their own right and do offer some valuable opportunities to network. But if you don’t value your time and approach your networking wisely, they can have a negative affect on your business.

If you are like most online business owners, it’s not uncommon to long for a connection with the outside world. These social networking sites offer this adult interaction making them like magnets we can’t seem to get away from. If we aren’t careful we can easily spend hours or in some cases, entire days chatting away with our new found friends. This comes at a cost to our business, Moms!

Instead of putting in valuable work time, that for many of us can sometimes be hard to come by, we waste it away chatting. It’s best to use these sites wisely, by scheduling into your day specific yet limited times to chat.

Just like other areas of our business, we must have a plan for networking too. Ask yourself, “What is my purpose for joining and interacting on these types of sites?” Some people choose to use Twitter as a way of announcing new and exciting information about their business and keeping their customers abreast of what’s going on.

Others may use them for catching up with online friends and as a truly social connection. That’s perfectly fine. However, you’ve got to limit that time if you want to be productive in your business. A virtual water cooler is definitely a plus for us work at home mamas, but even in the real world, a boss wouldn’t let you sit in the break room all day long chatting it up with your co-workers. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to do it either.

Either way, use of these sites can be beneficial to business owners if used for the better of our business or our sanity. Always allow yourself as much focused worked time as possible each day and throw in a little chit-chat but don’t let your business suffer because of it. After all, we all know there will be plenty of distractions in our day without adding another one to the bunch.

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How Outsourcing Can Affect Your Retirement

As work at home moms, we are responsible for our own financial futures, which includes our eventual retirement. This can have its positive and negative points. It can be a good thing in that we can decide how we save for our future and be truly in control of that savings. It can also mean that we may not have enough put aside if we do not make the right choices in our business now.

The good news: We are in control of this situation! We can decide when we retire, how much we will have set aside and how our business will continue once that time comes. After all we don’t want to be a work at home moms forever. One day it will be nice to be a foot loose and fancy free, grandma, without the worries and stresses of work.

One way we can accomplish this goal is to outsource in our business. Whether you want to continue working doing only those things you enjoy or just want to be able to take a break whenever you feel like it to vacation with the grandkids, it’s time to start thinking about retirement. It’s never too early to start planning how you want to retire.

Here are some things you can start doing right now to ensure a smooth retirement when you’re ready for it.

1. Determine when you’d like to retire.
2. Determine how much money you’ll need to make when you do.
3. Make a list of the things necessary to keep your business running and profitable.
4. Create a manual of how to’s for your business. Put detailed instructions on how you do things and update this manual as things grow and change in your business.
5. Begin outsourcing certain tasks that can be completed even if you’re not around.

Outsourcing is the key if you want your business to continue at its current pace or growing even more when you’re ready to retire. You’ll need help. You can’t do everything by yourself forever. Think about other businesses, when their owners retire, does the business just close up shop? Nah, they hire other people to run it and your business can do the same.

Side Note: Even if you plan to sell your business at retirement, following the above steps will make your business even more attractive to the buyer and make it easier for you to command a great price for what you’ve built up.

Do you want your business to continue making you money, even if you are retired? It can with some forethought and planning. By creating a plan now, you can easily reach your retirement goals as a work at home mom. How will you plan for your retirement?

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To make outsourcing for your business a snap, join us at Outsourcing Sweetie. Learn how to train and hire the right people, quickly, easily and without all the guesswork.

Looking to Outsource? – Don’t Forget Your Kids

For those, like me, who work from home with little ones around all the time, you know how hard it can sometimes be to get everything done that needs to be. One way to tackle this problem is to outsource to your kids.

Yes, even children as young as toddlers can be of help to you as a small business owner. Here are a couple of solutions to getting things done in your business and keeping the kiddos occupied, having fun and learning valuable lessons that will serve them well in their adult lives.

Children as young as 2 (or maybe younger in some cases) can complete chores such as cleaning up their room, folding and putting away their clothes, and helping to load the dishwasher. For younger kids (toddler age), take the time to teach them everyday household chores. You might be thinking, “That’s great Alice, but honestly I can do it faster myself.” Sure you can, but remember, doing things faster, isn’t what outsourcing is all about.

For older kids, enlist their help in not only household chores, but your business as well. Here are just a few things that children of all age groups can do to help their small business owner parent:

Filing/Shredding
Adding Content to Websites
Checking Emails
Rewriting PLR Content
Article Writing
Article/Press Release Submissions
Cleaning
Bookkeeping
Packing/Shipping
Getting Mail
Word Processing

Yes, it does take a bit of extra time in the beginning. You have to show them what to do and how to do it, but in the long run it will serve both you and your child well. Enjoy the opportunity to spend time with your children while teaching them. It’s a great experience and eventually, they will be able to do things on their own without your assistance. Although usually by that time we wish they wanted our help more. ;-)

Do You Need an Affiliate Manager? Why of Course!

In my last post, I touched on getting started with your own affiliate program. In that post I hinted to the fact that you can outsource setting up and maintaining an program to an affiliate manager. I don’t know about you, but the less busy work I have to do, the happier I am. ;-) Less busy work gives me the ability to concentrate on planning and marketing my business so that it continues to grow.

In case you’re wondering some of the things an affiliate manager can do so that you won’t have to, here you go:

• Recruit new affiliates
• Follow up with affiliates through an autoresponder
• Teach those new to affiliate marketing and the program how it works
• Maintain an affiliate center
• Pay affiliate commissions
• Keep affiliates informed of new and upcoming product launches
• Help brainstorm ways to get affiliates motivated i.e. contests, specials, etc.
• Aid in evaluating what’s working and what isn’t with your program and implement changes to make it more profitable
• Create promotional tools (graphics, text promotions, etc.) for affiliate’s use

Just because the list above doesn’t seem very long (there is more that an affiliate manager can do but these are the basic areas you’ll be looking at) or the tasks performed by an affiliate manager don’t seem difficult does not mean it’s not a time consuming task. Recruiting affiliates and keeping them happy is a job all in its own, especially if your affiliates are new to this form of marketing and might require a bit more hand holding in the beginning of their efforts. Having someone on hand to help with all that helps ensure that your affiliate program continues to grow and become more profitable.

Generally speaking, affiliate managers are often paid a retainer fee plus a percentage of commission. How much you’ll pay will depend on how much work you need your manager to do and their level of experience.

Starting Your Own Affiliate Program is the Ultimate Outsourcing

For the past couple weeks, we’ve been talking about promoting products as an affiliate. Let’s take a look at it from the other side and actually creating your own affiliate program. One of the simplest ways to generate more income in your business is to implement an effective affiliate program for your products or services.

Think of an affiliate program as simply outsourcing – but even better because you only pay for results. Sure, you have to do the work to get your program up and running, recruit affiliates and maintain it, but for the most part, your affiliates will be doing the hard work for you. Not only that, they will do the work over and over again.

But really – think about this for a minute. The best part about managing your own affiliate program is, unlike other tasks you may outsource in your business, you don’t have to pay a dime for the work until it pays off. Only pay affiliates a commission when they make a sale.

Just like with any other outsourced assignment, you’ll need to give your affiliates tools and resources to help them get the job done. The least of which should be promotional graphics and text ads. The more resources available inside your affiliate program, the more enticing it will be to potential affiliates. It’s also a smart idea to set up a list that affiliates can join so that when you add tools to their arsenal and release new products or services, you can let them know. The sooner they can begin using and promoting your items, the faster you’ll reap the benefits.

Managing an affiliate program is one of the most valuable tools you’ll have as an online business owner, but only if you can bring affiliates on board who are motivated and eager to sell for you.

Resources:

If you’re ready to get started with your own affiliate program, here are some free tips to help you get tons of affiliates who are ready and willing to do the hard work for you.

Affiliate Marketing – Tips for Finding Products for Recommendation

Last week we talked about why I sing the praises of affiliate marketing as an income source for your online business. Now that you see how easy it can be to add it to your business, let’s talk about finding the right products to promote.

First and foremost, I want to stress that you shouldn’t jump on board every single affiliate program you come across that fits your niche. Not only is it not wise to promote nilly-willy, but it also can damage your credibility as an expert if you send out an email to your list every week with a new product recommendation. They will begin to wonder just how much you really care about their needs versus just wanting to make a buck.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here are 5 Tips to Help You Choose Affiliate Products for Your Business.

1. Look for products that will help those in your target market.
Let’s say your website targets parents of toddlers. You’ve created an autoresponder list where moms and dads of toddler aged children can sign up to receive tips to help them potty train their boys and girls. Therefore look for products that deal with potty training.

2. Find products that take your readers by the hand or better yet, do the work for them.
People don’t like guesswork and in fact, they don’t usually like work at all. Whatever you can do to make it easy for your readers to achieve a goal or accomplish a task will go a long way.

3. When choosing a product, do your homework.
Find out as much about the product as you can. This may seem obvious, but the more you know regarding the product or service you are recommending, the easier it is to sell it and the better your chances of making a sale. It also helps ensure you send your readers to reputable products sold by reputable companies.

4. Don’t be afraid to ask for a sample product or review copy – or just buy the product.
Many product owners are happy to let you take a look at their material in exchange for a testimonial or review of the product. However, consider that buying the product yourself gives you a more complete picture of the customer experience – from order fulfillment, customer service and follow-up. If you get it free, you don’t see those aspects.

5. Check out the affiliate program.
This is a whole other post in it’s own, but if you find a product you’d like to promote, sign up for the affiliate program and find that you get no help what-so-ever when it comes to promotional tools, it’s probably not a good sign. Examine the program. If a product owner is serious about making money on his or her product, it will show in how they present their program. Also, do Google searches to see if there are any complaints by affiliates regarding non-payment or other potential issues.

Affiliate Marketing – Why I Love It & You Will Too

Affiliate marketing is defined by wikipedia.org as

a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.

An easier way to say this is “referring someone to a specific product or service and getting paid when they buy from your recommendation.”

As you may or may not know, I promote affiliate products and have my own affiliate program where others promote my products as well. A good chunk of my income comes from promoting other people’s products and services. Here are just a few reasons I love affiliate marketing:

1. I don’t have to create all my own products to earn a nice living.
2. I don’t have to process orders or provide customer service on affiliate sales.
3. I can serve my markets’ needs without having to supply all the products.
4. No matter which niche I’m working in, I can find products to promote in it. There is no shortage of affiliate programs out there.
5. I can conduct market research and see if my market is interested in a particular product before I decide to add something similar product to my own product line.
6. I can easily track how my promotions are doing and make changes to products, promotional methods and more as necessary.
7. I get to focus on creating great content and building relationships, which I love to do.

These are all great reasons to be an affiliate marketer, but the number one reason I LOVE affiliate marketing…

I can do the work to promote something once and reap the benefits over and over.

For instance, if I write a product review for an ebook about scrapbooking, I can post that to my website with my affiliate link and it is there for good. Every time someone reads that review, whether it’s the day I add it to the site or a year later, and clicks through my link to purchase the ebook, I make a commission. How sweet is that?

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Take a Break & Come Back Refreshed

Many moms who own their own business will work themselves to death to try and get ahead of the game and grow their business as fast as they can. They fool themselves into thinking that working endlessly at the beginning will help them get to success faster.

Unfortunately this is not always the case. Don’t misunderstand me here; it does take a lot of hard work in the beginning to grow your business. But that hard work should be FOCUSED work…not just working for working’s sake. And it should never come at the price of things like your marriage, time with your kids or your health.

I’ve seen it time and again and even dealt with it myself on occasions. Moms work themselves to the bone, never taking time to just get away when it comes to their business. They become burnt out and find themselves spinning in circles with their tasks in their business and before they know it they’re wondering why the kids and husband are withdrawing from them and why it seems like every time they turn around they’re getting sick.

The worst part amongst all this destruction is that sitting at a computer all day rarely builds your business any faster than carefully planning and scheduling your days. Let’s be serious, the longer we sit at a computer, the more tired we become and our focus is the first to go. We start checking stats, checking out forums, dropping by Facebook and getting lost on Twitter. We aren’t REALLY working at all.

It’s ok to take a break from your business. As a matter of fact, I’m asking you, for the sake of your business, to take a time out and do it frequently.

Just cut off that computer for a day or two each week. And each day, make sure that you schedule and limit your time at the computer. Close the door to the office and spend time doing something (anything) other than business for a change.

Here are a few ideas of things you can do with the time normally spent working.

• Go to the movies with the kids.
• Call up a friend and have a girl’s afternoon.
• Work in your garden.
• Volunteer at your children’s school.
• Read a book (one that’s not work related!).
• Finish those things you’ve been meaning to do around the house.
• Go all out and fix your spouse’s favorite meal. This gesture will go a long way.
• Go on a date with your spouse.
• Plan a mini-vacation.
• Create a scrapbook or other crafty items.

Breaking the habit of working day in and day out won’t be easy, but it will be worth it. I guarantee that when you come back you’ll find a renewed sense of energy you thought was long gone.

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