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?

Resources:

Want to know more about how cool affiliate marketing is? Sign up to receive free affiliate marketing tips here.

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.

Mila is Right, But Don’t Use it As An Excuse

Mila posted a very interesting and important article on outsourcing in this month’s IBMoms Newsletter. If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to do so. It’s down the page a bit and entitled:

“The Truth about Outsourcing – STOP Throwing Money Down the Drain!”

Mila makes some very important points and addresses what I have been teaching my students who are ready to get into outsourcing. Outsource smartly by having a good understanding of your business needs and constantly evaluate where your spending your money.

Mila mentions the 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss and I can see where people might go over the deep end to try to achieve the ideal nearly work-free lifestyle. Personally, I like working and have never thought of trying to reduce my workload to 4 hours per week (15-20 hours per week feels just right to me). Besides, if you’ve read Ferriss’s book, you’ll know that he sells huge volumes of his product and he has the resources to outsource everything. If you’re making a few sales per day or per week, that luxury may not be available to you. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Another important point Mila made was the mention of the 80/20 Rule or the Pareto Principle which can be applied to many aspects of life and business. When business management expert Joseph M. Juran took the principle and applied to business, he came up with “80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers”. Others have also extended the principle to show that 80% of your income probably comes from 20% of your work. In other words, we are likely WASTING a lot of time as individuals running our businesses and that also applies to the people working for us.

So if you’re working 8-10+ hour days and are even outsourcing, take a look at what you’re doing. Shave of ineffective activities for yourself and your staff. That alone will save you a ton of money.

Mila also says:

“So instead of outsourcing tasks that aren’t money producers, cut them out altogether or find a way to stream line your process (see previous article for more).”

But that’s where I want to clarify something that I feel is important and I’m guessing Mila will agree too. Not everything you outsource will directly translate into profits, so you cannot always look at the tasks someone is doing for you and decide if it is profitable.

One of the most important benefits of outsourcing is removing the time-draining, mundane necessary items off your plate, so you have more time to focus on profit-building activities. For example, your assistant may answer public emails, attend to administrative tasks, etc. None of those things DIRECTLY make you money, but the reduced stress and ability to focus is invaluable to your business. Still, don’t just blindly outsource the mundane – evaluate that too. Are all those tasks really necessary and how can you streamline the process, just as Mila says.

But here’s what I really want to say –

Mila’s advice is very sound…if you’re already outsourcing. If you’re not getting help with your business, what she said is not an excuse to decide that you can do everything for yourself.

Please:

• Set yourself up for a business that allows you some freedom and breathing room. Have a support system in place that allows you take time off when your family needs you and your mental health is screaming for it.

• Have a user-friendly, technologically automated and professional business that keeps up with the times. Use skilled graphic designers, programmers and other people with specialized skills that you don’t possess. Although you do need to understand the needs of your unique business, you certainly don’t need to learn how to program complicated code and move pixels around.

If you’re just getting started with outsourcing, you now have the awesome advice of Mila at your fingertips and you can do this smartly. Invest a little, grow your business and repeat. It’s as simple as that.

Related Resources:

• 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss: Although you may not be ready to or have the desire to reduce yourself to working 4 hours per week, the book is definitely a good read with some good advice along the way.
• Outsourcing Sweetie: Want to do this outsourcing thing, right? Get the education and tools you need to make your outsourcing a whole lot easier.

Turn Your Job into a Business

Whether you’re simply tired of your 9 to 5 job, are a new mother who can’t bear the thought of leaving your children in the care of someone else or if you’re just received notice that you’ll be losing your job – take heart. There are many opportunities to turn your job into your own business.

Here are some tips for turning a service you provide for your current employer into your own service-based business.

Take the Time to Research Your Options

Don’t just automatically quit your day job and assume the money will come pouring in. You’ll need to do research to determine if the service you currently offer is one that would make a good business venture. Some examples of jobs that have successfully been converted to businesses include bookkeeping, tax preparation, administrative assistant, web designers, graphic designers, sales jobs, and many others. Take a look and see what other independent service-providers are out there working in a similar field to yours.

Realize the Work Involved

By starting your own service-based business, keep in mind that not only will you be doing the actual work, but you’ll also be responsible for running a business. This will require more time on your part that are necessary to running a business. For instance, business owners don’t get paid each month for keeping track of, reporting and analyzing accounting for their business, but you still need to find time to do it. You will also likely incur additional costs in setting up your home office, creating a website (click here for a free 10-day trial) and finding new clients.

Beware of the Trading Hours for Dollars Trap

It’s easy to get into a routine of spending countless hours working on your business. It’s not uncommon for service based business owners to find at the end of the month, they’ve made very little money in comparison to the time they spent to earn that money.

One way business owners can combat this problem is to charge what their time is worth in the first place. Just because a business is new does not mean the owner should charge rock bottom prices in order to get work. Be honest with yourself and if you deserve more money, don’t be afraid to give yourself a raise!

You can and should also hire subcontractors to get some of the client work and tasks complete. No, I don’t mean anything complicated like hiring employees, but instead find independent contractors that can help complete various tasks in your business.

This might mean finding someone who can assist in areas such as customer service, bookkeeping, or even being a backup for the actual services you provide your clients. Independent contractors work for themselves and take care of their own costs and taxes, therefore leaving you to pay only for the work they actually do for your business. No need to worry about taxes, unproductive time, lunch breaks, equipment costs, etc.

If you enjoy what you do for your current employer but have found yourself in a position that leaves the need or just plain want to work for yourself instead, turning a current job into your own business is not impossible and definitely worth a second look. Just be sure to research and plan ahead to ensure the best possible outcome.

For Further Research: Search for service-based business ideas at Business Idea Library.

Tips for Defining Your Target Market

Many moms love to follow their passions when it comes to starting their business. The result is often times a business they love for a while, but that leads to killing the original passion because no one buys. This can be frustrating to say the least. That’s why researching and pinpointing your target market is crucial and the earlier the better.

Target markets don’t have to be a tricky part of business, but without a bit of planning you just might end up starting a business that goes no where. Here are a few tips to help you identify your target customer – which is the hardest part of the battle. Once you know who you want to target it’s a lot easier to cater your ads and other marketing to those people who are ready, willing and able to buy.

Stop thinking like and trying to compete with the big dogs.

Places like Amazon.com target a general audience and let’s face it they have the capital to make their business profit this way. Moms just don’t have that kind of dough, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take our piece of the pie. By focusing on a tighter niche, we have the ability to make money even without having to cater to everybody on the planet.

Give your market a place to turn and tell others about.

If you focus on a specific customer base, you have the ability to give them your FULL attention. This will keep you from spreading yourself too thin and burning out. Find your “perfect” customer and focus on their wants and needs and become an expert in that area. You’ll find a first time customer will have a better chance of not only recommending you to others, but also remaining a life long customer because they trust that you are going to be there and know what you’re talking about.

Stand out among the competition in your market.

Narrowing down your target customer makes it easier to cater to their wants and needs, therefore making it a lot easier to separate yourself from the crowd of others trying to sell their numerous products and services to people of many interests.

Once you have your target market chosen, you’ll want to do some research to determine if in fact it will be a profitable one. One of those ways is with a keyword research tool and here’s a quick and easy to follow WordTracker tutorial to help you out.

Fear Pay-Per-Click No Longer

If you’ve ever used pay-per-click advertising, such as Google Adwords, for your business, you know it can be intimidating at first. Many of us, including myself the first time I tried it, have lost our shirts because we willy-nilly bid and wrote ads that we hoped would get people to click on them. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work so easy.

That being said, pay-per-click doesn’t have to be frustrating or difficult if you take your time and create well-crafted campaigns. As a matter of fact, when done correctly, this type of exposure can help to set us up for long term profits by bringing in many first time customers who eagerly turn into life long customers to our business.

Here are a few tips to help get your Adwords campaign off to a good start without all that hair pulling.

1. Create specific landing pages for each of your campaigns.
What I mean by this is: Don’t link to your homepage with every ad you create. For example, if you sell baby slings and are bidding on the keyword phrase “Moby Wrap” for a specific ad, be sure you are sending your visitors to the exact page of your site that lists the Moby wraps only. Also be sure you are using Google’s “Website Optimizer” tool to create landing pages that perform the best they possibly can.

2. Build your ads around your keywords.
Don’t just throw an ad together that tells what your site or product is about. Spend some time putting together ads that actually incorporate the keyword phrases and searches you are targeting. Put yourself in the shoes of your potential customer and create ads that will answer their specific needs.

3. Test different versions of your ads.
Google allows up to three ads per ad group to be used. This is a great way to test various parts of your ads to see which gets the best results. Just remember to only test one part of the ad at a time to avoid confusion as to which component is or isn’t bringing the results you want.

Mila & I have created a Step-by-Step Adwords Tutorial to make setting up your first campaign easy with step-by-step instructions via video and a fully illustrated tutorial.

« Previous Page — Next Page »