I didn’t want to just give you a list of job posting sites and turn you loose. The failure rate would have been catastrophic. Instead, I wanted to find a true solution for your outsourcing needs. Ask and you shall receive.

Exclusive Access Below

http://robbbailey.com/virtualstaff

After one ACL surgery to my right knee, several attempts at finding VA’s through other Filipino-based job sites over the past few months, and lots of trial and error, I’m finally recommending one that I’ve personally used and had success with. Check out Chris as I interviewed him about his fantastic service.

1. Start By Getting the Outsourcing Mindset Right First – Train yourself on how to groom, manage and pay your new VA using Tyrone’s Mass Outsource program. Tyrone was nice enough to give my subscribers access to his sold-out training program, which isn’t open to the public. You can get access by clicking the link on this blog post: http://robbbailey.com/blog/outsourcing/tyrone-shum-expert-interview/
2. Hire Your New VA – Use Chris Ducker’s virtual staff finding service to pluck a rock star out of the bunch. Hand over some of Tyrone’s money-making training videos to your new VA so you can immediately train them the way that fits into your business best. Video is a powerful training tool. Tyrone has over 36 video tutorials you can use in Mass Outsource, pick and choose the ones that fit your needs. You can hire your new VA using Chris Ducker’s service here: http://robbbailey.com/virtualstaff

What I recommend doing is signing up for Tyrone Shum’s Mass Outsource training program (sold out for everyone except for YOU; Tyrone gave me a secret link to get into the program for a limited time).

Tyrone’s Course

Then couple that training program with Chris Ducker’s hand-picked VA staffing service. You can literally just hand the trainings found in Tyrone’s course over to your VA and tell them to follow the steps in those trainings exactly. That’s what I did!

My New VA’s Trainings

If you watched my interview with Tyrone you know that at the end of the call Tyrone gave out some names of good outsourcing experts. Chris Ducker was one of them, and I owe Tyrone a great deal of gratitude for sharing that information with me. I hope you find some value in this… it’s already making a huge difference in my business!

Here are 10 easy tips for increasing your blog’s traffic:

1. Create Some Good Pillar Content

An important first step in writing a blog is to choose which subject you’re going to blog about. Measure whether you can sustain writing your blog consistently or not by making a list of at least 50 “pillar” article titles. Just start with the titles at first.

1. Write 5-10 Pillar Articles — If you come up with a minimum of five “pillar” articles written to start off with, you’ll have a good foundation for starting (or kick-starting) a successful blog.
2. Avoid Reporting News –  A “pillar” is something basic and timeless, concerning your subject. Hot news flashes are time sensitive and don’t make good pillars. For more on why it’s better to be an expert rather than a reporter, read my post on Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting.
3. Don’t Tell, Show — Explanatory or informational pillars are the best, like a “how to” session. So make your pillar’s title something like “How to Start and Manage Your Own Book Club”… rather than, “This Month’s Picks from Oprah’s Book Club”.

Another example of a good pillar article is to write an article as a list, similar to the blog post you’re reading right now. The human brain loves to compartmentalize information quickly. Reading a list is a lot easier for the brain to process than reading fifty paragraphs of text.

Reasons why lists are good for pillar content:

1. Lists organize your info — making it look neat.
2. Lists are easy for other people to link to — it’s a quick and dirty solution for a common problem.
3. Lists are easier to read — and most online readers are lazy. People are more likely to stop and read a list because they know they can digest the content quickly.

So think of your pillar topics as lists, such as “3 Ways You Can Maximize Your Workout Routine”, or “5 Easy Tips For Getting Better Gas Mileage”.  Basically, make sure your content is scannable to the human eye.

The more interesting, pertinent and useful you can make a pillar article, the better. It will be the base on which all your blogging rests. A few good pillars on your blog will give readers an idea of what you’re all about and interest them enough to keep them coming back for more. Keep the pillar article at around five hundred words, fairly short and very informative for the best results.

2. Name Your Blog Well

Blog names are very important to a successful blog. It may not be easy to find just the right name, but there are a few things to remember when naming your blog.

1. Make it short and sweet — not necessarily sweet, but concise may be a better word… Long blog names are hard to remember, especially if they don’t have much to do with the subject matter in the blog.
2. Make it easy to remember — it should be something easy to remember so that when your readers tell others about your blog, nobody forgets the name.
3. Use a .com if possible — using a .com is very important for the sake of getting new readers (which, after all is the reason for blogging to begin with). The .com is easy to remember and in common usage to most people.

Making the name fit the subject is good, finding a way to incorporate key words in the name is even better!

3. Publish Content Consistently

Consistency is very important in writing a successful blog. Not every article has to be a shining star or a pillar, but there should be at least one every day and the pillars will appear almost magically among them as you continue.

1. Write Often — Giving your readers something different to read every day is one of the best ways to insure that they’ll come back for more. Keeping up on your subject is important to daily posting, it’s good to make sure that you have something new and interesting to say in every article on your blog. Remember, you’re writing for an audience and it’s your job to keep them interested.
2. Create A Good Content Base — Once your audience is established, and to draw more readers, daily additions are important for your blog. Keeping it fresh and constant for the first several months or a year will allow your readers to be forgiving if you slow down a bit from time to time. As long as what you do blog about keeps their interest and is updated with fresh material with every new article.

In the early days of your blog, it’s perfectly acceptable to write more than one article per day, as long as you have something of relevance to say.

4. Give Before You Receive (Comments)

Give before you recieve. Another good way to bring in new readers is to do a little traveling to the blogs of others. If your comments are clear and focused, as well as interesting or thought provoking, the readers of the other blogs will flock to yours to see if you have more to say that they want to read.

1. Like Attracts Like — It works best to comment on blogs that are along the same topic lines as your own so that their readers will be curious about what you have to say and visit your blog.
2. Reciprocation works both ways — When you comment, most blog sites allow for the commenters information to be shown so that it will be easy for the readers to find your blog.

Being a prolific blogger and commenter will increase your traffic as well as building your reputation. The more blogs you visit and comment on, the more readers you’ll have for yourself. It doesn’t take long and it is well worth the effort.

5. Give Before You Receive (Links)

Trackbacks are a necessity in building your blog readership. A trackback is simply a backlink that’s automatically created as a comment on the blog post that you linked to in your own post. Providing a link so that your readers can see what the other blogger has to say is good, getting a trackback (backlink) from that blogger is even better. Trackbacks basically automate reciprocal linking between bloggers.

• Example: Neil Patel’s blog, QuickSprout.com, has a really cool post called “51 Creative Business Cards That Will Make You Look Twice”. Since I linked to Neil’s post in the previous sentence, a trackback link pointing back to my blog will appear just above the comments section (Neil has a lot of trackbacks and comments) as soon as this post is published.

The links serve two specific purposes:

1. The sharing information, and
2. Building your readership.

Other bloggers will reciprocate by linking to your blog so you get their readers as well as your own. The effect of trackbacking is that you share your ideas and efforts with as many people as possible and make your own blog better known at the same time.

6. Encourage Commenting on Your Posts

Reinforcing your blog by encouraging and responding to comments is another essential in making your blog readers happy and growing in number. When you leave a comment on someone else’s blog, you start a conversation and keep it going by responding to the comments of others.

The same principle works with your own blog. When someone leaves a comment for you, reply and start a discussion, debate or conversation with your readers. The comments may not always be friendly, but if you respond and work to change the mind of the commenter, it makes interesting reading for your blog followers and builds your reputation as a blogger.

7. Blog Carnivals

Blog carnivals are another excellent way to get your blog into a wider market. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from other blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to compile a list of articles on a specific topic for a particular week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host’s post, so people that have articles featured in the blog carnival enjoy a spike in new subscribers.

You can participate in blog carnivals by creating pillar content (posts on your blog) then submit to a carnival host… or three!

1. Google “blog carnival list“ — see what carnivals are currently accepting entries.
2. Google “[keyword] blog carnival” — find specific subjects to enter your posts to.

This not only brings a spike in traffic to the blogs in the carnival, it also adds readers who will last beyond the carnival. It also inspires other bloggers to check out your blog since your work and their work was entered in the blog carnival. There’s a lot to be said for good will here; again, the more you participate, the more reciprocal activity you will get on your own blog. If you like someone else’s article, write them a comment!

8. Submit Your Blog

You should check out blogtopsites.com and submit your blog for consideration. It doesn’t take long to do. Go to blogtopsites.com and find your category, then enter your best or latest pillar. Or both.

• http://blogtopsites.com/

The readership increase won’t be immediate, but it will be steady. Having a few new readers per day doesn’t sound like much, but it grows with time and builds your audience and reputation both. In the blogging world, readership is the key to success and the more readers you can expose to your blog, the better. A visit to blogtopsites.com is just one of the many ways to bring in new readers and therefore new fans.

Another great blog directory that has a great Facebook application is Networked Blogs.

• http://networkedblogs.com/

You can set up an RSS Feed to automatically update a “blog” tab in your Facebook profile, so every time you publish a post it’s taken care of. Your Facebook “blog” page will show the new post within minutes!

9. Submit Your Articles

If you want a steady increase in readers, you can have it by going to EzineArticles.com and submitting some of your pillars.

• http://ezinearticles.com/

This enables other bloggers to read your material, share it and link to your blog from their own. Again, the building of readers isn’t immediate, but over time and the increases last as long as you continue to write timely and interesting articles that others want to share.

Doing this every week or so gives your blog more exposure to a wider audience and carries even further in the cyber world as others use your blog in their own.

10. Write More Pillar Articles

By far, the most important factor in any successful blog are the pillar articles. No matter what else you do will be as important, even if you’re following all the previous suggestions.

Content Is King!

Without really good pillar articles, your blog will never gain the readership that you need. Advertising by commenting, linking and submitting are only as effective as the pillar articles that your blog displays. Getting readers is one thing, keeping them is another matter. If your pillar articles aren’t strong, timely and interesting, the readers won’t keep coming back for more.

After a year, with one pillar article per week, you’ll have a 52-pillar base that really works!

I don’t know about you, but I know it can be more than a task creating an opt-in box. Even with all the tools that come with Aweber and other email/autoresponder services, the forms never quite coming out looking like a custom job. Unless you pay someone to create a custom job.

And who wants to do that?!?

Creating an opt-in form that will look professional, work efficiently and get people to actually opt in is tough. So if you could create an opt-in box that converts really well, looked like a custom design just for your website, and took only five minutes to implement, would you be stoked to hear about it?

You’ve probably heard this before,

“The Money Is In The List!”

We all know the bigger the list you have, the more people will not just hear but actually listen what you have to say and the more you will earn. This is because with a bigger list you have a greater opportunity to promote more things and send more readers back to your site. However, the trouble is most people just can’t build a big enough list!

So what’s the best way to grab an email address from a visitor?

Lightbox Opt-in boxes.

Lightbox Opt-ins increase your website’s opt-in rate DRAMATICALLY without scaring people away. I started using this plugin and my opt-ins have literally skyrocketed five-fold from a few per week to a substantial amount! Michael, the plugin creator, went from a measly 17 a day to 109 the very next day, and 542 in the first week. Over time, his opt-in numbers have remained constant.

This new WordPress Plugin can literally quadruple your email subscribers overnight and only takes 2 minutes to set up.

Honest, it’s a simple 4 step process which took almost no time to create.

You can customize your Lightbox choosing the layout, theme and colors, making your Lightbox appear just the way you want. You can also schedule exactly how often a person sees your Lightbox when they navigate to your web page. With the work involved to set up your Lightbox and the cost of your purchase, the plug-in will more than pay for itself.

Click below to view the video presentation:

Check it out here:

• http://robbbailey.com/popup

One satisfied customer reported 78 more opt-ins than the day before and with less traffic. Also Michael, the creator of PopUp Domination, has even included a BONUS presentation on exactly how he makes money from his list, mostly on autopilot, simple set-and-forget stuff which over the last few months, has made him tens of thousands of dollars with barely any traffic.

Here are the benefits:

1. Plugin takes 2 minutes to install. No joke!
2. Simple interface with just the right amount of customization options.
3. 4 Beautiful high-converting themes (no more testing your crappy design)
4. 15 different color combinations and 8 “click here” button variations.
5. On top of that, they are adding new designs to the plugin monthly!

To be transparent, I do make an affiliate commission if you decide to pick this plugin up. But if you don’t think this plugin is of value, try doing it the old way and see how much time you waste playing with code and forcing your visitor’s hand to the sidebar of your blog. This plugin has already paid for itself and I’ve only had it installed for one week!

http://robbbailey.com/popup

They do have the standard 60-day money back guarantee if for some strange reason you don’t think it’s worth the money. I would have paid three times what they’re asking! Check it out and let me know what you think…

Folks, I’m horrible at a lot of things. Book keeping being ‘numero uno’.

Jess keeps me in check by letting me know I should focus on my strengths and let her handle the rest (which just happen to mostly be her strengths). Cool how that works out…

I asked her to read Tim Ferris’ 4 Hour Work Week so that she could understand all the mindset stuff I preach around the workplace like it’s goin’ outta style.

Here’s what she wrote:

When I first started reading the 4-Hour Work-Week by Timothy Ferriss, I was immediately interested, although a little bit skeptical.  I read,

“Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan. There is no need to wait, and no reason not to.”

and I thought, this will be the best book ever.  Who doesn’t want to hear about how you could enjoy your life now, instead of waiting until your 70 and retired? So I started reading and here is what I found.

From the beginning, I thought that the whole mentality of the 4-Hour workweek was just how to minimize your responsibilities and work as little as possible. But as I read it, I found out the basic premise of the book is not how to be lazy, but how to have the time to do what you actually want to be doing.

Cartoon Courtesy of AustinKleon.com

I mean, who doesn’t want to be able to continue to work and have an income, but do so in a manner that  they can also visit Oktoberfest in Germany or run with bulls or climb Kilimanjaro? And who doesn’t want the freedom to do those things now, before you’re really too old or have too many responsibilities to enjoy it?

The whole entire point of this book is to teach you how to be extremely successful in your business by maximizing your time at work, eliminating all distractions (i.e. millions of emails, unnecessary meetings, chats with coworkers, etc.), and outsourcing any task that is feasible to a virtual assistant.

Inside this book, you will find detailed methods of how to become indispensable to your boss, ease him or her into the idea of you working from “home” (wherever that may be), and then practicing principles that he details for you, line by line on how to be successful and accomplish all of your work goals, all the while accomplishing your personal goals as well.

Tim gives you excellent starting points, charts on how to decide what your dreams are and the income necessary to achieve them, and then how to get there. His personal story is one of an entrepreneur, but his principles could apply to any position, although if you’re working for someone else the salary is not necessarily dictated by you.

Either way, you can apply some or all of these principles and begin exploring how to really enjoy your life and do what you want to do right now, not 30 years from now.

I will say the book slowed down a little bit for me in the  middle, but everyone else I have talked to who read it, finished in a day or two and absolutely loved it, so that might just be me.

If you take nothing from this book regarding the outsourcing or working from home, what you absolutely need to put into practice are  the time management tips and prioritization guidelines that are throughout. His insights are invaluable to becoming more productive and less distracted in your workday. And in this day and age with a thousand things pulling at our attention every minute, these tips are an awesome way to get started at being more focused each day at your job.

So, overall I give a huge thumbs up to the 4-Hour Work Week! Go out and get it, you definitely will not be disappointed.

~jess

Thank goodness I’m outsourcing a ton of tasks in my business, otherwise I’d be way behind on just about everything.

Tyrone’s Program is Sold Out – Exclusive Access Here

http://www.massoutsource.com/rbailey

Press play to begin streaming the audio or right click the text link and choose save as or save link. Download audio file (Robb_Bailey_Interviews_Tyrone.mp3)
Download the MP3 [ 52 minutes - 60.5 MB ]

Click here to Read the Transcript [toggle]

One good thing about the injury is it made me delegate even more than I normally would right now. It also made me realize that I need to start reaching out to other experts for help. I just don’t have the time to create all the content I normally would if my knee was healthy.

If you haven’t already, take a second to read my outsourcing tips:

• Outsourcing to Virtual Assistants: 3 Pre-Hiring Tips for Success

• 4 Lessons my Tomato Garden Taught Me About Outsourcing

Following up with my previous outsourcing posts, I decided to call in a little help from Outsourcing Expert Tyrone Shum. Tyrone is very successful as an outsourcer of various online businesses, but he’s probably best known as the creator of his Mass Outsource coaching program.

Tyrone’s program sold out very quickly earlier this year, but for a very short time he agreed to give my subscribers a backdoor link to get into his program. At the very least, you should go grab a cup of coffee and listen to the video interview I did with Tyrone. He reveals some very good sources for finding VA’s in the Philippines, and he also tells you what type of tasks he outsources on a daily basis.

Very good content in there, even better is Tyrone is just a cool guy to talk to. Very down to earth, he genuinely enjoys helping people become successful with their business by outsourcing. One thing I noticed is that Tyrone has remained extremely humble despite is success as a guru.

I can (without a doubt) recommend that you subscribe to his blog feed, and if you find value in the course, definitely pick up a copy of Mass Outsource. I do make a referral fee for recommending Tyrone’s course, but to be honest with you I don’t think there is any way you can lose with his outsourcing trainings.

Just find someone competent, hand the trainings over to them, and turn them loose. Tyrone teaches you how to do everything, from A-Z.

I personally am going through Tyrone’s Mass Outsource program, and as of the date of this post I am reviewing its content. I’ll update with my progress on Tyrone’s Mass Outsource teachings as I go through the course.

Happy outsourcing, feel free to comment here on what your thoughts are about Tyrone and his insights.

So far, there haven’t been a ton of rules to go by. Or not a ton of good ones, anyway. I’ll cover some guys who seem to be teaching outsourcing the right way in later posts, but for now I’m focusing on where to start.

SIDENOTE: This post’s images were taken from David Walsh’s e-book Source Control, which I highly recommend reading. David is one of the few who have really grasped automation, and his e-book is definitely worth the read if you are serious about outsourcing. It also comes with some sweet forms and documents to help you with tasking and communication. It’s one of the few must-reads on my Resources page.

You can also catch up on my outsourcing escapades in my previous posts, 4 Lessons My Tomato Garden Taught Me About Outsourcing.

UPDATE: My recent interview with Outsourcing expert Tyrone Shum is now available. Grab a cup of coffee and check it out, he reveals where you can find VA’s in the Philippines for as little as $2/hr.

Giving you a list of sources to find your next VA and setting you loose would be (close to) as wreckless as letting my teenage sister drive off in my car before giving her driving lessons. You just need more experience with this type of thing if you’re going to be successful. To prevent you from slamming into a telephone pole after your first push on the accelerator, I’ve decided to take a little more time to explain the outsourcing process that I’ve come to find success with in my own business.

After working with several assistants, virtual and in-house, one thing I’ve learned so far is becoming glaringly true:

“If the success of your outsourcing can be attributed to the talent of individual assistants, you’ve got more work to do.” – David Walsh, muselife.com

What does that mean exactly? If you can’t plug an average-Joe into your system and have him or her succeed, you’ve got tons of work to do. You need to have a system that achieves actionable results in order for this outsourcing thing to work. Your outsourcing tasks should be repeatable, help make you money (directly or indirectly), and be easily done over the internet.

The three steps are coming, but first a little mindset education. Guess what…

It starts with you

First things first. Which tasks do you need to outsource? You will not have success outsourcing anything to anyone unless you have a process that is easy to follow and understand. Think McDonald’s. They can plug anyone into their chain, teach them a system, and the exact same burger gets churned out from every Mickee Dee’s location in the WORLD.

You might not be in the burger business, but the faster you learn how to create a system to outsource, the faster you will have freedom in your business. You want your outsourced tasks to be short, illustrated, and clear.

Pre-Hiring Tip #1: Top Grade Your Tasks

This one seemed obvious to me at first, but I caught myself writing down some pretty stupid things to outsource in the beginning. Be careful what you’re asking your assistants to do. Make sure they’re smart choices that make sense.

Let’s review some uses of time as it relates to a VA that are questionable at best. Please refrain from asking your VA to do things such as:

1. Cleaning up your junk email folder that has 12,000 emails you’re never going look at anyway
2. Managing your cat’s Facebook page
3. Making your dentist appointment for you
4. Researching which beer pong table has the most bounce per square inch
5. Aggregating more Paris Hilton and Britney Spears blog feeds for you to read

The point of this whole thing is to free your time from work by automating your business, not enriching your social life with the latest gossip so you can speak intelligently about it at your next book club meeting.

Let’s talk about some possible scenarios where outsourcing makes sense:

• Scenario 1: Say you build WordPress websites for a living. One of the things you can outsource is the setup and installation of all your WordPress sites to your VA. By outsourcing this task, you save approximately two hours per installation. If you’re a busy designer, you might be spending 10 hours per week just doing WordPress setup (activating plugins, installing the files, uploading the theme, etc.). Would you pay $20 to get 10 hours per week or more back?

• Scenario 2: Another example is publishing blog posts. Let’s say you have a blog on your site that supports your business, but you are constantly battling the task of keeping your content fresh. You’ve got lots of ideas, just no time to do them. You can have your VA research a topic of your choosing online, request they give you some “cliff notes” on the subject”, then send it to you for review. You email the writing back to them so they can upload it to your blog. You might spend 20 minutes actually writing, 10 minutes editing, and the rest of your week focusing on money making activities. Instead of taking five hours, writing two blog posts takes one hour. Nice work.

I personally hate formatting blog posts and doing anything involving a server. You should too… I highly recommend dropping such tasks immediately. Unless you love it, and that’s your business to do it. Otherwise, see ya later. Get it off your plate as soon as humanly possible.

Start to define all of the FIXED actions in your business that are replicate-able. Outsource those actions first.

Pre-Hiring Tip #2: Create Trainings on Your Tasks

Once you’ve decided which of the tasks you are able to replicate, take your fixed actions and demonstrate the process. If you’ve got training videos on how you want your new WordPress blogs to be installed with a checklist of action items to go with it, you should be able to get excellent results from your VA. If not, you either need to find where you can get it, or create the training materials yourself. Lots of digital products include training videos that are perfect for training your VA with.

I use a piece of free software called Jing, which enables me to snag screenshots and record short screencasts of my computer desktop. This allows me to instruct my VA’s by SHOWING them what I want to see when they are completing my tasks.

Tools I use to create trainings for my VA’s:

• Google Apps – Docs I share with my team (written instructions and outlines)
• Gliffy – Visual diagrams, great for complex stuff like flow charts and instructional graphics
• Jing – I use Jing almost every day to record and share video screencasts of my desktop

We live in a growing information age: YouTube and Google will give you most of what you need for free if you’re asking your VA to do simple tasks, in many cases. Some things that are readily available on YouTube are WordPress training videos, keyword research videos, and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) training videos.

It’s very easy to instruct your VA to watch a sequential list of video trainings, then instruct them how you want that training applied to your business. This is a lot better than simply saying, “I want you to optimize my website please”.

Like the saying goes, “There are lots of ways to skin a cat.” We only happen to care about one: The way that you want your cat to be skinned.

You should map out the steps it takes to get the job done, and make it so that if someone had to, they could get it done from A-Z without asking too many questions. Think of the IKEA instructions that come with every IKEA product. They don’t even use words, but somehow every language in the world understands their pictures for putting furniture together.

Pre-Hiring Tip #3: Prepare to Screen Your Candidates

I made this screenshot obnoxiously large because you need to differentiate yourself by creating some tools that get your potential candidates submitting information on YOUR TERMS. Think about it, these freelancers are looking all over the internet, just like you are, scanning a thousand job sites with listing pages full of job descriptions.

Get them off the listing sites and filling out information on your terms. Once they apply, you can give them a hoop to jump through, such as “briefly review my website and write a short paragraph about what I do”.  Anyone who doesn’t complete that task is immediately stricken from consideration. This will help you narrow your field down (90% wont’ do this) to the people who are serious and/or paying attention.

Use outsourcing documents and templates to help you screen your potentials.

The goal here is to extract as much relevant information out of your potential candidates as possible to help you narrow down your hiring pool. Here are the steps:

1. Create a New Hire Screening application form that’s web-hosted for your applicants to fill out online
2. Create a Virtual Assistant training guide (PDF) that explains your business and acclimates your VA to your company structure
3. Create an Accounts and Resources guide that gives your new VA all the logins, passwords, and URL’s necessary to complete their tasks for you
4. Create a list of links to any training videos you want your VA to use

Now you can sit back, relax, and know when you plug a VA  into your system, they have a very high chance of success. Pretty much anyone can get the job done if they’ve gone through the hiring process with you. That’s because you have taken all the guesswork out of the equation and created a system to work instead of a variable-filled nightmare.

This is what it takes to outsource for $2/hr. folks.

Conclusion

By no means do I expect for you to be an expert at outsourcing after reading just this one post, but it is a great place to start. Laying this foundation will enable you to have much greater success outsourcing than you otherwise would with no education or experience.

I will continue to post on topics such as where I find my VA’s, what parts of the world are better for certain tasks than others, etc. Please let me know if there is something you’d like to see here and I’ll do my best to cover it.

Happy Outsourcing!

Guest post by Yaro Starak

This article is by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

• www.BlogMastermind.com

Every seminar or internet marketing course targeting beginners expounds on both the expert and reporter methodologies and the difference between the two. A content based business model and one involving blogging for money involves people starting as reporters and stepping up as experts when it is feasible.

Bottom line is, YOU WANT TO BE THE EXPERT!

Beginning bloggers lack the skill and knowledge to do more than leverage the content of the experts. Those who have, through experience and investment of time and study, acquired the status of expert will earn greater financial rewards as well as social accolades. This is due to the fact that as experts being held in high esteem, they reap the dividends of opportunities and people seeking them out rather than the other way around;joint ventures, attention, elevated conversion rates, publicity.

There is no shortcut to becoming an expert. Therefore, it is mandatory to begin as a beginner (reporter) and work toward acquiring the tools to become an expert. While some bloggers have initial expertise, blogging journeys nearly always commence with reporting (blogging) about the events immediately surrounding the reporter.

Since experience is a requirement for an expert, the ratio of reporter to expert is inordinately large. While in the reporter phase, the attention the blogger works so diligently for seldom comes and when it does, the acclaim of the expert is enhanced rather than that of the reporter. This is simply the nature of things.

When a student has a mentor from whom they learn internet marketing, they frequently take away the concept that in order to make money online it is necessary to follow the same path of becoming a teacher of others to make money online.

This, of course, results in hordes of inexperienced and unproven students trying to accomplish an end without having taken the steps needed to gain the expert status needed to succeed.

If you simply clone over and over, a narrow corner of huge concept with nothing unique to set it apart you soon have something exceedingly common and therefore worthless. There is nothing wrong with teaching a singular idea such as internet marketing but it can not be the only thing.

While your journey may be begun by observing your mentor and their method you will soon need to take off in new directions rather than keeping yourself mired in a place which has fast grown into a glutted market. Consider the multitude of products of which you are aware that fall under the heading of internet marketing; affiliate marketing, email marketing, pay per click, SEO, and all the sub categories and how little there is unique to recommend them over any other. The siren call to do more of the same should be resisted.

Teaching others to make money online is probably not an area in which to declare your expertise unless that is what you have invested the last decade of your life doing.

What you, yourself, are doing, the experience you are gaining daily, the nuances and practices you are learning to implement are the journey on which you should concentrate your reporting. This, rather than the work of others should comprise your blog content.

When you have learned some technique from the experts there is nothing wrong with sharing that (as well as a link to their product) as it relates to what you are doing and report your results rather than theirs. You want to be sure you are expressing your own stories and points of view rather than simply repeating those of an expert as this is what makes your blog uniquely YOUR blog.

The process of becoming an expert is rather like that of growing up, you wake up one day and realize you are there and have gotten there simply by performing one day after another something that you do and which most other people don’t do and reporting it on your blog.

People are often experts without anyone, including themselves, being aware of it since they fail to take advantage of some knowledge they already have. If you want to remain a reporter, by all means do so. However, if your aim is to become an expert and shake off the cloak of reporter status you need to make the conscious choice to leverage your experience and start teaching.

Experts, just like those who are traveling the path of becoming experts, continue to learn daily on their journey. You should be able to observe and exhibit your current knowledge along with the knowledge you are gaining on a daily basis. When you do so, you may very well find that you are already an expert in one area or another as witnessed by the life they have lived so far. Many experts are not recognized as such simply because their fear failure prevents them from voicing their knowledge.

When employed as communication tools, the web and blogs have the ability to allow you to reach a remarkably vast array of individuals. The exceedingly limited effectiveness of communicating one on one would virtually eliminate any possibility of achieving expert status acknowledgment. Perception is all important and the network of people reached through your consistent blogging can bring amazing results in people’s perception of you.

Starting as a reporter is mandatory if where you want to go as an expert is not related to an area where you already have experience or expertise but the path of a reporter need not be be permanent.

There are many enjoyable aspects to being a reporter. Sometimes it is a choice to stay in that role and it is a perfectly acceptable journalism career. There is less stress, you can still be part of a particular community and you needn’t deal with the success and all the baggage that entails. If it is your choice to become an expert however, you will need the requisite strength and desire to be your own advocate and make your skills known and demonstrate them repeatedly.

You need to be aware, through remaining focused and patient, of what you learn and have the ability to teach those lessons so that others can benefit from them. Your area of expertise need not be a giant arena, it can be a small and specific field as is the case for most experts.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

• www.BlogMastermind.com

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click the above link.

Is that true? How do we know? What kind of source is this information coming from?…

All viable questions as we enter the Information Age. With digital graphics getting better by the second, seems like anything can be falsely enhanced. Even people!

No fear, though. As my grandfather’s grandfather used to say, “The proof is in the puddin’, son…” Actually, no he didn’t. Come to think of it, I never even met the man. But somebody’s grandfather did. And that guy is a pretty smart dude. Cause physical proof still makes the mind believe.

So here is my proof. Probably more for me than anything else, this confirms the reality that I just made money as a pro. It validates the words when “I’m a real estate investor” comes out of my mouth.

I’ve closed my first wholesale real estate deal.

• 5965 Linnet St listing page on my website

I’ve made it. Yesssssss…..

My First Wholesale Deal

This is a check for the purchase amount that I used to fund the REO purchase we closed on three weeks ago, fully returned to me at closing:

Below is the profit split check I received for wholesaling the Linnet property to RBD Ventures. We held this house for a total of 22 days:

If you’re crunching numbers, that’s a whopping 5% ROI in 22 days, which equates to an annual return of over 81% on my money.

Quick note: Cashing my first wholesale deal check is definitely CAW-worthy.

CAW = “Celebrate All Wins”

If you are a business owner, you MUST stop for a few minutes. Smell the roses. Then get back to work. (it only takes a minute)

Celebrate All Wins, big and small. There’s no corporate award for doing what you do every day, only your personal satisfaction for being successful within your business. So follow the CAW-rule, and celebrate it whether it’s your Win, or your team members’ Win.

VERY important to stop and celebrate. It reminds you why you’re doing all this stuff.

The Details

For this real estate investment, I invested with CT Homes, LLC on a joint venture project.

The property was a single-family house (REO) that rehab project manager JD Esajian locked up in contract after it fell out of escrow with a buyer that backed out. I funded the deal with my own money, with plans to rehab the property with JD and split the profits 50/50 when we sold the finished (rehabbed) product.

Our JV agreement:

• I would fund, project manage, and help sell the property after it was rehabbed.
• JD (who found the deal) closed it out with the bank’s REO department, and would team up with me to rehab, market, and sell the property.

That was the original agreement. The great part about investing is, you usually have some options if you buy the property at a deep discount like JD did.

Turns out, we bought it so low, we were able to wholesale the house to local rehab investors. I made a few phone calls as we closed escrow with the bank to let some local rehab investors know we had a good rehab project. Last Wednesday we sold this property to residential rehab specialists RBD Ventures, without making a single improvement to it.

The guys over at RBD will do a great job rehabbing it, I’m sure. They do great work! They’ll have an opportunity to rehab this property to near-new condition and sell it to a retail home buyer.

Plus, they’ll make a tidy profit on it (no less than $25,000) in just a few months’ time.

Everybody wins.

This is why we invest in real estate

If I hadn’t found a wholesale buyer for this deal, JD and I would have rehabbed the property ourselves and made a higher profit margin. This project would have taken a few months, but we also would have gotten a bigger payoff.

Still, the wholesale business is a great one because we assume almost zero risk in moving this property that quickly. We bought an insurance premium to cover the property in between closings, shuffled some paperwork around, and made a few phone calls. All in all, probably a total of three full days’ work each — which I’ll take all day long.

Now we’re on to the next project.

JD and Paul celebrated with me by taking a moment to take a picture, shake my hand, and tell me to get back to work so we can buy and sell another one.

After The Closing Table

I want to encourage new investors to hustle until they close their first deal. Closing the first one changes everything.

But I also want to offer a word of advice:

Partner with someone trustworthy for your first deal.

Often times, the best way to do this is to partner with a more experienced investor in your area. You can probably find one at your local REIA.

You won’t make as much money as you would otherwise make flying solo, but the knowledge you gain by being around a more experienced rehabber, wholesaler, marketer, or other professional will make you a better investor in the long-run. You’ll pick up things that just can’t be replaced by experience.

I chose to build a foundation for my business that will ensure long-term growth and stability. That meant educating myself, finding a mentor (or three), passing on risky deals, and establishing my business structure properly from the start.

My personal goal was never to be the biggest or the best flipper in San Diego by the end of the year. As of January 9th, 2010, my goal was to learn as much as I can about this business and earn while I learn. Realistically, I’ll probably only close a handful of deals, and I’ll be lucky to break six figures. Next year’s goal will be to streamline the operation and build off of the foundation I’ve built as a successful investor this year, resulting in higher profits.

That is how I have chosen to pursue this business. You should decide what your goals are and methodically slay them one by one. Then make new ones, and do it again…

Post comments below if you’ve set a goal and recently crushed it. I wanna hear about it!!!

He actually understands social media from a very practical point of view. Sean’s systems contain really targeted solutions for using Twitter as a tool to create real-life business relationships.

After all, if you’re just selling yourself all day long without any human interaction to back it up, all you’re doing is just throwing a bunch of spam out there, praying it sticks, then hoping someone buys your stuff.

Who wants to do THAT?!? Not me…

Interacting online is supposed to result in some sort of real-life benefit. Otherwise we’re just tooling around in the Matrix, goofing off.

See the video above for a step-by-step on how I used Sean’s tips to convert a Twitter follower into a potential buyer for my latest real estate investor deal.

Using Sean’s techniques, I took my Twitter account from zero to over 6,400 followers in less than 2 months. To date, Sean has over 100,000 Twitter followers.

This stuff works. You should do this. TODAY.

Want more specific details?

Ok, here are some specifics on how I got this done. I highly recommend you pick up two tools I’ve been using to be successful with Twitter.

The tools Sean and I use:

• Hummingbird -  Twitter software that safely adds followers for you, without getting your account banned.
• Twixplode – Sean’s e-course on using Twitter effectively. I can’t believe how affordable his coaching is – unheard of!

There is no magic ball here, these are just simple solutions that you can start using in the next 5 minutes, with a brand new Twitter account, and start having immediate results.

DISCLAIMER: Let me just come right out and say that this blog post contains affiliate links that compensate me and/or my company should you make a purchase of these products. You CAN do a lot of this stuff WITHOUT buying these tools. These tools are designed to automate your Twitter efforts and get you very fast results in a very short period of time.

I’m not ashamed to promote these two products because I’ve seen amazing results in a very short period of time using them myself. It’s been less than 2 months and my Twitter account has over 6,400 followers. Yes, I know I already said that. It’s worth repeating.

Plus, the video above speaks for itself. I feel no need to sell, only to inform.

I find tremendous value in the amount of time and frustration that Sean’s system has saved me, and want to share them with you. Otherwise I wouldn’t be wasting my time writing this post.

There is a wealth of free information on Sean Malarkey’s blog, and similar to my lack of fear about recommending the above products, I’m not afraid to recommend Sean’s free tips. Go there, subscribe to his newsletter, and get all the free information you can from him.

You’d be a fool not to… This is a smart dude.

I did the same thing, got the free stuff and devoured the info. After I implemented some of his free tips, I decided that investing a coupla hundred bucks for the tools was a great investment for my business. Looking back, I’d say it was worth much more than that (considering I just found a bunch of serious buyers to store in my database for future deals).

My recommendation?

You should take a look at what’s free first, then decide for yourself whether Twitter fits into your plan. If it does, then use these tools.

If not, then think about what other form of marketing gets you tons of eyeballs on your product for near-free. Not too many of them out there.

A Few Words on Automation

I personally don’t want to sit around punching the “follow” button 500+ times a day, but then again I’m kind of an automation junkie. I’d rather be surfing while Hummingbird adds my followers for the day. I’m not kidding.

It seriously works like that.

For a very small amount of money, you can put your Twitter account on steroids and get your business on the fast track.

If you missed my previous posts on Outsourcing, check this one out:

4 Lessons My Tomato Garden Taught Me About Outsourcing

It will get you stoked on making your business almost hands-free. After almost 2 months using Twitter, my assistant and I have worked it out enough to where we have my Twitter account on near auto-pilot.

Now she handles the tasks using the tools in this post, which takes her a couple of hours per week to manage. I get an email from her with a daily update on the numbers, and I reply, “Great Job.”

Then we move on.

Every week I spend an hour or so worrying about my Twitter account. This is automation, people.

Get into it!

Tomatoes are one of my favorite fruits, mainly because an off-the vine organic tomato tastes like candy if you grow it right. My godfather is a vegan and grows lots of organic vegetables in his front yard. I’ve been eating strawberries from his garden since I was a kid, and through adulthood began to appreciate all the other good stuff he’s constantly growing.

That yard is where my obsession with off-the-vine tomatoes began.

My godfather taught me that once fruit leaves the vine (or branch), all the sugars begin to turn into starches for self-preservation. I’ve never been able to get excited about store-bought tomatoes since learning that fact. They just don’t taste as good.

Plus, there’s the logistics of it. Just seems silly to have something that ends up tasting like cardboard shipped all the way to my local big-name supermarket when I can have the good stuff growing in my own yard for near-free.

I just wrote this, then erased it because it’s a lie:

I’m kind of a farmer at heart I guess.

Actually, I’m a lazy SOB just like everyone else is. The thought of farming sounds cool, but it’s not really what I’m interested in doing much of.

I don’t want to do the tedious farming work myself… I just want to pick all the fruit, vegetables, and berries from the bushes, vines, and trees. Then I wanna eat it all, and feel fat and happy…

So i guess I’m just an opportunist at heart. Awesome.

I’ll just come out and say it, I’m a horrible gardener. All my plants are turning yellow, and the sprouts that popped up from the seeds look to be withering away. Gardening is not as easy as I originally thought. I’m already failing miserably at my dream.

This first time around, I went about it all wrong.

• I didn’t do any research on the most effective way to grow tomatoes for my yard’s sunlight, growing conditions, and rainfall.
• I didn’t research how much effort  it would take to grow, maintain, and harvest the fruit.
• Most of all, I didn’t calculate the amount of time it would take for all this; That was the killer.

Fortunately for me I love learning, and view mistakes as an opportunity to learn some things I didn’t know before.

Turns out, this minor gardening failure relates pretty closely to all the outsourcing mistakes I’ve been making in my real estate investing business thus far, so I decided to share those mistakes through my rookie stab at tomato gardening.

I’ll keep you posted on the garden sitch. In the meantime, don’t go holding your breath waiting for caprese salad a la Robb. Here are the four lessons:

1. Outsource Earlier – Speed is key

I should have outsourced this entire project from the beginning. Looking back, it would have taken me an hour to research and maybe another to outsource. Not much cost was involved, and I would have been eating tomatoes in a matter of weeks.

That would have gotten me to my end goal the FASTEST.

But I’m a dummy, and I wanted to try it myself first. Not only that, I wanted to try a couple of different things. Then I got fancy… Then all my plants died. Bummer!

I tried a try a few different ways to cultivate my new crop. I tried to grow some of my tomatoes from seeds, some from smaller plants, and some that are a little bigger that should bear fruit within a month or so. Kind of an experiment to see which ones would do best and yield fruit quicker. (can you see where this is headed?)

All of these plants and seeds were planted next to each other and I hoped they would yield varying tomato types, all in the same flower bed.

Here was my thinking:

Assuming everything is fair and equal, meaning they all get relatively equal amounts of sunshine, water, and nutrients, I should get lots of different tomatoes at different times through the process.

Big mistake. First of all, my end goal wasn’t to run a science experiment. And that’s exactly what the above statement sounded like. My goal was to eat good tomatoes within thirty days. This is an important lesson.

It’s very easy to get caught up in the tasks rather than the end goal. Decide what course of action it takes to get to your end goal the fastest, then implement it TODAY.

Here is what I should have done:

I’m going to spend 15 minutes researching tomato gardening on Google. I’m going to spend 15 more minutes posting about tomato gardening on my Twitter and Facebook accounts to see if any of my friends can offer advice. Tomorrow, I’ll do a quick analysis on time and money spent doing it myself vs. outsourcing to my neighbor’s gardener. After that I’ll call the gardener to quote me a price and let him know that my end goal is to have organic garden tomatoes ready for picking within 30 days.

Do you see the difference here? Setting clearly defined goals and thinking about the steps it takes to get there and achieve the END RESULT is paramount. For me outsourcing this task would have gotten me the FAST results I needed without question.

Instead it’s been two weeks, my plants are all dying, and all that time and money I spent has been wasted. Back to the drawing boards.

So how fast is your speed of implementation? This one would have taken me about an hour and a half of my life instead of many many hours doing it myself. Time I’ll never get back… Plus the gardener would have had me on my way to fresh tomatoes in a couple of weeks.

Decide what you want first. Then figure out the best way to get fast results. The people who are successful in life always implement fast – pay attention to how they do it.

Remember: Your Speed of Implementation determines your success.

Speed of Implementation: Know it, love it, live by it.

2. Outsource Smarter – The Pareto Principle

Ever heard of the 80/20 rule? Pareto developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. I kinda hoped it was tomatoes, but whatever. Peas will do.

Pareto also observed this phenomenon in business. It is a common rule of thumb in business that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients. Look around and you’ll notice this truth. It applies to a lot of things in human nature.

Why is this important? Because focusing on the wrong end of the spectrum ends up creating a catastrophe; Both in the garden, and in business. Spend most of your time doing what you do best, and you will yield the best results. That alone will almost guarantee you more success in life than when you were previously tomato-blog-ized.

For me, this task would have been done much better by someone who knows how to garden (obviously).

Here’s why:

1. I wasn’t educated on the process
2. I’m already time-poor, so spending the time to learn a new hobby isn’t wise for me
3. For a very small amount of money I could have hired a pro

I’m definitely NOT a gardening pro, and had I outsourced this task to someone who does this stuff all day, every day they probably would have done it ten times better and in half the time.

Last week in my business I had a server issue and all my websites went down for a period of time. I ended up having to switch everything over to a new hosting service, which ate up a week of my life that I’ll never get back.

Here’s why:

• No revenue was created.
• Nothing positively productive got done.
• The only thing that actually got accomplished was fixing problems that could have been prevented in the first place had I outsourced this stuff to a pro.

This week my assistant and I hired a Filipino webmaster virtually, full-time, for $250/month. Now I can focus on getting more deals in my real estate business instead of worrying about FTP servers and mod-security. Plus my sites are updated while I sleep. Oh, he’s also going to handle all my social media accounts for me soon. All for less than $2/hr.

Moral of the story? Harvest your fruit.

Spend 20% of your time focusing on your strengths, and you will most likely see that 80% of your results will be taken care of. That leaves 80% of your time to worry about 20% of the rest of the results, which I’ll take all day long. Don’t waste time digging ditches and cultivating crops unless that’s your area of expertise, and the results will warrant spending that time on it.

Outsource it to someone who knows this stuff already. And do it on the cheap. It’s not tough to do. You will thank yourself when you’re eating tomatoes in a month’s time with no worries.

3. Outsource to Play Defense – Protect your time

Don’t get caught watching the tomatoes grow. I just wrote that. Sounds famous, doesn’t it? Someone famous should coin it. If you’re famous, you can use that…

A lot of people get caught doing this. They are strapped to their job/business/tomato garden. Your #1 asset in life isn’t money, it’s TIME. I would rather spend zero time working for 50% of my business profits vs. killing myself and having no life for 100% of the profits.

With regards to the garden, there are a lot of other things I could have been doing.

(things I outsource to my assistants)

I could have been:

• Drumming up new business ideas, or
• Outsourcing other tasks in my life, or
• Having dinner with my fiance’, or
• Relaxing so I’d be more efficient the next day.

Instead I was frustrated, tired, and dreading doing any work at all because of a stupid, stubborn science experiment idea. Digging ditches is hard work!

For me, outsourcing = freedom. I want to spend more time improving myself, working on cool projects, and sharing myself with the people that matter in my life. Hopefully you do, too.

Everything else should be suspect. Seriously. But you can’t outsource everything… So how do I decide which things in life are worth outsourcing?

There are usually three questions I ask myself when I decide to outsource:

1. Education – Am I on this subject? Am I willing to learn about it? If so, how much time am I willing to take to become educated about it?
2. Time – How much time will this task take me to implement? If I’m unsuccessful, am I willing to spend even more time fixing it? Who do I know that can do this faster and better than I can?
3. Money – What is the price of outsourcing this task? Does it make sense to trade the cost for the amount of time I’ll save learning about the subject?… Performing the task?… Maintaining after that?

Notice how time is a factor in almost every decision? You have to get good at defending your time. Otherwise your dying tomato garden or flailing business will monopolize it.

Then you’re just reduced to a miserable human being.

Admit it… You would be too if your business AND tomato garden were in the dumps. Maybe you already are. I’ve seen plenty of that around lately, so don’t do that. Stop it if you are.

You can see that outsourcing the creation of my tomato garden was a no-brainer. I’m not educated about gardening, nor do I have the desire to become an expert at it – and most importantly, I’m time-poor. The only thing left to consider is the cost. Nowadays it’s easy to find cheap labor for quality work.

Considering how much time the garden has already sucked out of my life, for the same cost I already spent, outsourcing from the start would have cost a negligible amount of money greater than I’ve paid to date. I would be happy to pay three times what it cost me to outsource this if I did it all over again simply because of the time factor. And I would have had better results ==> TOMATOES!

4. Outsource Repeatedly – Find More to Outsource

Once I find a good tomato gardener I’ll probably see if they can also cut my lawn once a week, trim back the trees in my yard, and landscape the other flowerbeds on our property.

This won’t cost much more, but it WILL free up several more hours per week for me, which is priceless.

Outsourcing allows me to go make more money, start a new business, or go on vacation with my tomatoes. (You can choose how you want to spend your free time, but I highly recommend that it involves tomatoes)

Once you outsource, you might get addicted:

• Try one small task first
• Tweak it until you have automation
• Do it again. This time on a slightly bigger task.

Start with your biggest weaknesses. Mine is obviously gardening.

For most people in business, this is technology. So start there if this is you. Then focus on your end goal. Watch your results, improve, and repeat.

While the money keeps rolling in and your time becomes free again, you can pat yourself on the back for outsourcing your server setup and maintenance to a virtual assistant. When it crashes, you won’t have to do anything but tell your assistant “good job” after it’s been fixed. Then get back to whatever else you’re interested in doing.

Seriously. It’s like that….

I don’t care how poor or rich you are, the only thing that matters in life is time. Time is more valuable than any currency, commodity, or asset. Think about it. What good is money if you have no time to live your life? You can always make more money, you can NEVER create more time.

Conclusion:

Growing your own food is a good little muse for managing your business. Both crops and businesses are cyclical in nature, and with each new step in the cycle, a different need is met to ensure growth. At some point you will have to outsource something in your life or business. Maybe you already are, but you’re not necessarily viewing it this way.

To help with that, try this formula:

Think of how much money you want to make in a year. Let’s say it’s $120,000. Figure out the hourly rate based on this number. For our example, that’s $125/hr.

When you’re doing tasks from now on, ask yourself:

“Is this task a $125/hr. activity?”

If the answer is no, figure out a way to outsource it. Keep outsourcing until you’ve met your income goal.