I’ve been waiting to publish this post for what seems like ages…..!!!

Finally, after 6-months of beta testing with ‘real’, live clients, I am super excited and happy to formally announce the launch of my latest company – YourWebPA.com. In the video above you’ll find out a little more on the company, tour the offices and even meet one of my management team!

What is YourWebPA.com?

Good question. Eventually it’ll be your one-stop-shop for everything project-based outsourcing related – all work being done by people that work directly under me, here in my facility. However, right now it is focused on helping wannabe and ‘alreadybe’ online entrepreneurs get started (or boosted to a new level!) online in a fast, professional and cost-effective manner.

YourWebPA.com came about after receiving hundreds of emails and tweets from people over the last couple of years. They all had a combination of problems, that were becoming more and more apparent and all too ‘regular’ in occurrence for online entrepreneurs, so I wanted to put a service together that would stop all the madness and start getting people set-up in the right way to do business online!

The type of problems I have been seeing are things such as:

• Outsourcing work using ‘job boards’, or having freelancers ‘bid’ on their jobs, only to find people not delivering on their promises, time and time again.
• Working with over-priced companies, posing as so-called individual freelancers that were then just outsourcing the work to other, poorly-experienced people around the world.
• Outsourced work taking way too long to produce and finalize, even for very simple tasks.
• Deception and a regular amount of general bullshit being experienced, instead of a feeling of accomplishment through getting things done with outsourcing.

No ‘Pitch’, I Promise!

Fact is, I’m not gonna pitch my new company to you. I don’t need to… The services will speak for themselves – as will the quality of those services. You don’t need to take my word for it – read these testimonials from our existing clients that hired us for various tasks throughout our beta mode.

My Christmas Gift to My Tribe!

To celebrate the launch of YourWebPA.com, I am going to be doing something really special for my beloved VBL Tribe.

Starting right… NOW… You can all get an across-the-board 25% discount on ALL services at the site, right up to 12midnight (EST) on December 24th. This is my way of hopefully reaching out to as many entrepreneurs as possible and giving them the chance to begin 2012 on the best possible track in relation to their online business plans and ideas. Simply enter the discount code VBLTRIBE when checking out at the site and the discount will be put into effect.

You’ll see that our website is 100% functional, although it is still being tweaked a little. Can you suggest any changes? I’d love to hear your opinions, as always.

Got any questions on the services? Want to suggest additional services for the future? All good… Comment below. Thank you for patiently waiting for this to finally come along!

I’ve just got back into the Philippines, and figured I’d get cracking this week with this round-up from my recent (and second this year!) trip to the USA. The last couple of weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind, and I’m feeling a little tired, but also very excited about the next few months, at the same time.

The trip kicked-off with a trip to San Francisco, where I met with a couple of clients, had lots of fun hanging out with my man, Corbett Barr and enjoyed plenty of coffee at Starbucks, which was situated right in the lobby of our hotel – to my surprise and delight!

After a few days, myself and Mrs. VBL jetted off to LA and landed to another couple of client meetings, a dinner and then it was all about BlogWorld. This was something that I’d been looking forward to ever since I attended last year and then subsequently missed the first ever New York event earlier on in the year. This time around, however, it was going to be a little different, as I was going to be speaking!

My BlogWorld Speaking Experience

Unlike some of the speakers I met at BlogWorld, this wasn’t my first time speaking in front of an audience, of any size. I’ve spoken at many different conferences, seminars and training events in the past and before I left for my trip to BlogWorld, I was actually confirmed as the Keynote Speaker at the upcoming Visayas Blogging Summit in Cebu City, Philippines which is taking place at the end of November.

All that being said, I always get a little nervous before speaking in front of a crowd (there’s something wrong with you if you don’t!), and BlogWorld was no exception. Especially as the crowd there is very savvy!

I had already got into the mood by shooting my video promo for the event, and had a load of people coming up to me, doing mafia impressions at the show, which was awesome!

All in all I was very happy with the way that my session, which was well attended and on the subject of working with VA’s to help build, grow and monetize your blog, played out. Not only did all the preparation for my session pay off, but I was very happy to see several friendly faces in the audience, as well as some of the biggest names in the blogging world, too!

I did have a little video shot at the session, and as I have had several requests to put something together, I’ll do my best to go ahead and do that in the next week or so, after I recover fully!

Why YOU Should Have Attended BlogWorld!

If you didn’t get the chance to attend BlogWorld in LA then you certainly DID miss out. The event just gets better and better, seriously. Just to make you feel worse than you probably already do, here are my top 5 reasons why YOU should have attended:

• Networking opportunities up the yin-yang!
• The chance to learn from the best in the industry.
• The opportunity to meet and greet your online buddies.
• Swag, baby – lots of swag on the exhibition floor.
• You would have been able to attend my fantastic presentation, obviously!!!

For me, the big take-away is being able to hang out with people that I get on well with, admire, respect and general enjoy talking to. Here you’ll see myself, Pat Flynn and Darren Rowse posing for a snapshot at some point in an hour or so of just ‘chit-chatting’ together. Good times.

If you still want to check out the fantastic sessions that made up the entire 3-day conference, then you can! Simply hop over to the BlogWorld website and purchase a Virtual Ticket. You’ll get access to every session, as well as a bit of extra stuff, too!

Thank You to Everyone!

There are way too many people that I met at the conference, came up to thank me after my session, shook my hand on the exhibition floor and in the corridors of the LA Convention Center, as well as in the Speakers Room throughout the course of the event, to thank here.

However, a few people I’d like to point out and say thanks to are Corbett Barr from Think Traffic, ‘Handsome’ pro-blogger David Risley and Srinivas Rao from BlogCastFM for their unwavering support. I’d also like to thank Darren Rowse from ProBlogger for not only showing his support by attending my presentation, but also for sitting down to record a quick, but memorable video Q&A for the blog (coming soon!) and my buddy, Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income, with whom I spent plenty of time with, both during the event and after, in his home town of San Diego, where we relaxed together for a few days, along with our families. SeaWorld, baby!

And last, but by no means least, I’d like to thank Rick Calvert, Dave Cynkin, Deb Ng and the rest of the BlogWorld Team for all the fantastic support they showed myself and the other 300-odd speakers, as well as for their hard work in putting together an awesome industry event.

The next BlogWorld event will be in June 2012 sometime and probably in New York. Its a little soon for me to tell if I’ll be able to make it – but, I can assure you, if I can… I’ll be there with bells on!

Did you attend BlogWorld in LA? If so, tell us about your experiences at the show! And if you didn’t, what do you think you would have gotten out of it the most, if you had…?

This post by Timo Kiander, is part of ‘VBL Guest Post Season 2′.

Outsourcing is an evergreen topic in the world of online entrepreneurs. This is quite understandable.

Any business requires our efforts (whether when starting up or running it) and quite soon we may feel stressed out because of our workload. Especially if you are building your online business while having a day job, a family and some hobbies, available time becomes very limited.

That’s why outsourcing is so great – you can hand over the tasks you don’t like to someone else. At the same time you can focus on the more meaningful parts of your business instead.

However, as an entrepreneur, there are certain areas in your life that you shouldn’t outsource at all. They are very important ones and neglecting those will bring you lots of stress – harm and even worry – in the long run.

Although they are not directly related to your business, ignoring these areas will make your entrepreneurial life much harder than what it needs to be.

Your Family

Do you work hard? Isn’t this like a default mode for the entrepreneur – the more you work the more successful you come – right?

Well, what about the closest people around you, have you thought how they feel when you just work? Don’t you think they deserve your time as well?

I help you to answer this last question: Yes they do! In fact, you should make them a top priority in your life.

The surest way to alienate your spouse and your kids (and your friends too) is to be glued to your computer screen and ignorethe most important thing that you have in your life – the relationships to your closest people.

Keep gluing yourself to the screen enough and you will eventually realize, that the people that care about you now are gone tomorrow.

Don’t let this happen!

Action steps:

• Set clear limits when you work – communicate with your spouse and children about this
• Your business is important, but your family is equally important (keep reminding yourself about this constantly!)
• Spend time with your family by being fully present. No checking your e-mails through iPhone when spending the evening with your wife or thinking business related things when playing with your kids
• Be deeply grateful for the closest people of your life. Be utterly happy that you have these wonderful people in your life.

Your Health

Too often we take our health for granted – until we get sick or have a malfunction in our body. Usually we start thinking about our health more closely, when our doctor tells us to start exercising regularly and advises to change our diet. Because otherwise if we don’t …

Things do not have to be like this!

As an entrepreneur, it is very important to keep yourself healthy and fit. Your business needs a healthy owner to run it – you.

Take small steps at a time. Start exercising every day – just a bit. It doesn’t mean that you should be running 10 miles on a daily basis. Instead, much smaller doses of exercise will do just fine.

In fact, you could decide that you spend at least 30 minutes everyday doing some physical activity. It could be walking in the woods or taking a short bicycle ride in your neighborhood.

Once you get into the habit of exercising, it becomes your second nature.

Not only is exercising important, but you should pay attention to your diet as well. Cut down the amount of alcohol, sugar, coffee and you are on your way to a better life.

It’s your turn to take action now! You can’t outsource your health – you have to work on it by yourself!

Action steps:

• Start exercising 30 minutes per day. Find your own favorite way of moving and start out small – by listening to yourself and what feels good.
• Take some time off. It makes good to yourself to recharge your batteries every once in a while. Once you start working again, your mind is full of new ideas to implement.
• Check your nutrition. You are maybe thinking that since you are not sick right now, it doesn’t matter what you eat. However, the sicknesses and overweight come over a longer period of time. That’s why it is important to change your habits now.
• Remember to have enough rest. The amount in a night depends of the adult, but most likely it is between 7-8 hours (but it could be less). Take a 20 minute powernap in the afternoon, if you feel tired.

Your Passion

For some people, finding their passion is easy but for some, it requires years and years of exploring.

I belong to the latter group of people. In fact, I’m soon going to be 40 and I just happened to find my passion – the thing that I want to do when I grow up!

Since it took me quite a bit of time to realize this, the last thing that I would do now is to outsource it! When I have finally found “my thing”, I want to hold on tight to it. I want to invest time to mastering it, become an authority in it and help people to become better at it.

My passion means that I’m involved in it myself! I know, digital lifestyle would enable me to outsource most of the research, blog posts or interactions with others. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean I should do it.

I live and breathe my passion – it defines who I am.It brings me joy and happiness. Why should I give it away?

Action steps:

• Be proud of your passion – explore it even further
• Be grateful of having found your passion and that you have the chance to live it and master it
• Involve yourself heavily into your passion while experiencing a deep satisfaction of what you do
• Use your creative energy to take the most out of your passion. Enjoy the life that your passion is giving you.

Timo Kiander is a productivity and time management enthusiast, as well as author of the free e-book: “101 Tips For Becoming a Productivity Superstar”. Follow Timo on Twitter too.

This post by Sarah Russel, is part of ‘VBL Guest Post Season 2′.

Coming to Chris’s “Virtual Business Lifestyle” site always makes me feel happy.  From the smiling pictures of the virtual assistants working for his companies to the positive advice on how outsourcing tasks can revolutionize your business, it’s hard not to leave his page without feeling more optimistic about how much more work can get done when you harness the awesome power of outsourcing.

Of course, anyone who’s ever attempted to hire a VA without the right expectations or proper planning knows that this process isn’t always roses and sunshine.  This is my story of how I failed miserably (and lost hundreds of dollars) with outsourcing at first, as well as the lessons I learned that enabled me to take advantage of an outsourced business model successfully in the future…

I hired my first VA about four years ago. At the time, I was as green as an internet newbie can be and had just gotten involved in advertising CPA and affiliate advertisements on minisites via pay-per-click advertising.  Basically, I was jumping head first into a complicated plan laid out by an internet marketing “guru” for which I had neither the skills nor the aptitude needed to succeed.

But!  As it turns out, it wasn’t a problem that I didn’t have the necessary experience or knowledge, as my teacher promised I could outsource the entire system to a foreign VA and turn a quick profit while I sat back and cashed my payout checks (…raise your hand if you’ve heard that one before!).

You can imagine what happened next.  I signed up for the outsourcing program the guru was promoting, and within a few days, I had been assigned my very own VA.  When I received his very politely worded introduction letter, asking what tasks I’d like him to get started on, I froze.  It took me a few days before I was able to wrap my head around the process enough to let him know that I wanted help building websites and setting up PPC campaigns.

As you might expect, our exchanges didn’t get much better after that.  When he asked for more clarification, I wasn’t able to provide it, which led to work I wasn’t satisfied with.  I was so overwhelmed by the process that I’d let days go by without sending information, undoubtedly leading to frustration on his end as well.  After the month subscription to the service I had purchased expired, I cancelled the contract and resolved to never work with outsourced VAs again.

At the time, I blamed everyone but myself – including both the “crackpot” guru who sold me a course that no one in the world could succeed with (which is what you tell yourself after you’ve wasted tons and tons of money on something totally above your ability level) and the outsourced VA, who somehow couldn’t read my mind well enough to get the job done.

But as my business grew and stabilized, I began to reconsider that hasty decision to never outsource again.  Instead, using the tips I found on VBL and other outsourcing sites, I took the time to understand how to work with VAs more effectively.  Here’s what I’ve learned…

Rule #1 – Know your business better than you know your family members

A virtual assistant isn’t a “replacement you”.  Even if you train your VA for years and years, he or she will never have the exact same skills, outlook or opinions that you do – meaning that this single outsourced worker will never be able to fully take over and run your business the same way that you would.

Now, this doesn’t mean that virtual assistants aren’t useful (and obviously, I’m preaching to the choir with this one by posting it here on VBL) – it just means that the effective way to work with them isn’t to expect a single worker to handle everything, hands-off.  Instead, you need to invest time in mapping out your business processes, determining which elements make sense to outsource and finding a VA who is skilled in these particular areas.

But, as the title of this rule might suggest, it isn’t enough to say something as simple as, “I’m going to outsource my backlink creation.”  What kind of backlinks do you use in your business?  Paul and Angela style profile backlinks?  Unique article content posted to Web 2.0 sites?  There’s a pretty big difference between the skill sets needed to create these different types of backlinks, so if you plan to outsource your link building, you need to be crystal clear on what you expect your VA to do.

The only way to figure out what you want to outsource and who’s best suited to manage these tasks is with an in-depth analysis of your business.  Sit down one day and write out every single thing you do, down  to the tiniest detail.  Get the bulk of your business processes down on paper, but plan on spending at least a little time refining these lists in the future as you notice items you’ve missed.

Here’s an example of part of a detailed task list I put together for installing WordPress before hiring a VA the second time around:

• Log in to my Web Host Manager panel
• Create a new account for every new domain I purchase
• Use Fantastico to automatically install WordPress
• Configure the Akismet plugin with my key
• Install the All-in-One SEO, Google XML Sitemaps and Web Ninja Google Analytics plugins
• Add title, description and keyword information to All-in-One SEO

Once you have your list, make a note next to items that you absolutely must do.  These are the items that you are uniquely qualified to handle and that an outsourced worker could never be expected to take on successfully (news flash – there aren’t nearly as many of these as you might expect!).  Next up, make another note next to the tasks that you truly hate doing.  Items that you can outsource and that you don’t like doing represent the best place to start delegating to a VA.

Rule #2 – If something’s going wrong, it’s probably your fault…

Once you’ve identified these potential tasks to outsource and identified the right worker to handle them (see my Outsourcing Case Study for more information on how to do this), the fun really begins. JTraining your VA on how you want specific tasks performed is your responsibility, so in the initial stages of your relationship with your outsourced worker, it’s pretty safe to assume that if something isn’t working out, the blame probably lies with you.

Sure, it’s one thing if the VA you’ve hired has misrepresented his or her skills in some way (for example, saying he’s comfortable with Joomlatemplating when he’s never once logged into the platform), but otherwise, most problems result from miscommunications on your end that can be easily fixed.  The following are a couple of things I’ve learned that can help this training process go as smoothly as possible:

• Train one task at a time – Yes, I know you’re anxious to start outsourcing every single task that you reasonably can, but give your VA a break!  Imagine walking into a 9-to-5 job and being rushed through every single part of your new job in the first week – not cool, right?!  Work on one task or process at a time and only move on to the next one when you and your VA are comfortable with the quality of work being completed.
• Keep your instructions simple – I’m a writer.  I like flowery language and complex sentence structures that convey a point in the most elegant way possible.  But guess what?  This type of writing has absolutely no place in communications with your VA!  Even if you aren’t dealing with a language barrier, tasks, action steps and goals should be explained using the simplest possible terminology in order to avoid frustrating miscommunications.
• Set a time limit – I can’t take credit for this one – it’s a tactic I blatantly ripped off from Tim Ferriss’ “Four Hour Work Week”.  When introducing a new task – especially one that’s repetitive in nature – request that work be completed for a set period of time, at which point you’ll check the results and provide feedback.  It’s a great way to catch and correct mistakes before they affect the entire project.

Rule #3 – Don’t hide behind the computer screen

When I hired my first VA, I was so overwhelmed that I often took days to respond to him, and honestly, it’s a trap I still fall into sometimes today.  And as much as I can tell myself that I’m simply too busy as a business owner to respond to my VA’s questions, the fact of the matter is that I’m just being rude.

When you hire a remote worker, there isn’t the same immediacy that’s necessary in in-person interactions in your normal life.  While you certainly wouldn’t make a boss or a subordinate wait days for an assignment or follow-up to a question (or at least, you wouldn’t if you wanted to keep that day job!), it’s so much easier to let an email message from your VA get buried in your inbox without a response.

And while a lot of this is general “Golden Rule” type of stuff (treat your outsourcer the way you’d want an employer to treat you), there are a few lessons I’ve found that are unique to remote workers:

• Provide useful instructions – Explaining things to a worker who’s half the world away can be difficult, which is why I’m a huge fan of Skype and video training.  Personally, I use Camtasia to take a screen recording of me completing a given task (although there are plenty of free alternatives you can use) and send them to my VA via Amazon’s S3 service.
• Invest in your VA – If all of this training sounds time consuming, keep in mind that it’s going to take you even longer to replace a VA who leaves because you aren’t acting like the professional you are.  So if you find a good VA, invest the time in training him or her on your processes (even paying for additional training resources or software) in order to build a lasting relationship.
• Respect local traditions – In the US, working hours, pay rates and expected vacation privileges are somewhat standardized – but don’t fall into the trap of expecting that these arrangements apply to other countries!  Take the time to understand the expected pay rates and working conditions of the region from which you’re hiring a VA so that you don’t lose a good worker over cross-cultural misunderstandings.

Like I said before, I’m nowhere near perfect when it comes to outsourcing.  I still put off responding to emails, and I sometimes assign tasks that aren’t completely clear or that don’t make sense for my business or my VA’s specific skills.  But I’m working on it.  In many ways, outsourcing is like any other skill – you’re probably going to suck at first, but with time, energy and practice, you get better

So if you’re in the same position I was four years ago, where outsourcing feels like much more of a hassle than it’s worth, don’t give up hope yet!  Read the great material here on VBL and invest some time in making yourself a better employer.  With a little extra effort, you’ll be able to take advantage of all the benefits an outsourced workforce can bring to your business!

Check out Sarah’s marketing related blog over at www.CommonSenseMarketing.net, and be sure to hit her up on Twitter, too!

This post by Dan Norris, is part of ‘VBL Guest Post Season 2′.

The whole point of engaging a virtual assistant is to free you up to focus on the things that matter. So does this mean getting your VA to do all of the little things that aren’t important enough for you to do yourself? Not necessarily.

In fact if you want to dominate Google, you need to get your VA working with you on the important stuff that is going to get you there.

But let’s be honest, some of this stuff is tricky and most of it requires your direct involvement. So how do you do it?

I run a small web design business in Australia (only me and one other local employee) but we have managed to dominate Google including front page listings in Google.com.au for ‘Website design’ (pos 1), ‘website development’ (pos 1) and web design and many more against some pretty big competitors.

In my business, with a few simple tools and the right tasks, I work with my VA (let’s call him Ryan) on the core parts of our SEO strategy. In this article I will run through the tools and then quickly cover some of the main strategies we use and how Ryan works with us on them.

This is what you will need

First off you need to be organized with the technology, so for us this means:

• Our emails and calendars are managed through Google Apps and Ryan has an account on our Google Apps domain.
• For project / task management we use Insightly which enables me to manage all of our projects and distribute them across the team in Australia and Ryan. There are plenty of systems available for this. Insightly integrates directly into Google Apps which is the main reason we use it.
• All of our procedures are documented in Google Docs, with step by step instructions as well as videos I have created using Jing and uploaded to Screencast.com. Our SEO data is all kept in Google Docs spreadsheets.
• Any files that can’t be developed in Google Docs (such as Videos) are shared using Dropbox.
• We use Skype to text chat throughout the day (a lot of people advocate a daily email but at least when starting out I believe this is essential to talk throughout the day on Skype)

Did I mention that I’m a tightarse? All of the above tools are free.

So with the technology organised let’s look at some of the strategies I employ for our SOE efforts and how Ryan gets involved.

Strategy 1 – Domain strategy

 This is a great example of how I work with Ryan, use the free tools and have Ryan complete a task that you might expect would be difficult to delegate.

Part of our strategy is to find good domains in our industry and build them out into sites to either build their Page Rank (and be a good link source for us) or rank in Google for a specific term. For example ranking my main domain for ‘ecommerce website design’ in Australia would be tough, but ranking my site  ‘ecommercewebsitedesign.com.au’ is much easier (exact keyword match domain).

So I set up a weekly recurring task (in Insightly) for Ryan to monitor sites like dropday.com. I have all of my criteria written into the instructions (in Google docs). For example “search for any .com domains mentioning the word ‘web’ with a Google PR of 3 or more”. I’ve also got a video of me doing the tasks (recorded in Jing and uploaded to Screencast.com).

Ryan then runs through the tasks and copies any interesting domains into a spreadsheet (Google docs) and let’s me know when it’s ready for me to review (via Skype). This cuts out hours of work for me and all I have to do is quickly scan the spreadsheet if I find something interesting I’ll get online and delve into it more.

Monthly low authority backlinking

 For our general backlinking Ryan does all of the work including rewriting articles from our blog, spinning them and submitting to web 2.0 sites, doc sharing sites, article directories etc. He also submits our business details to online directories and then backlinks new properties to increase indexation rates.

In addition he creates social profiles on social sites, bulk submits our videos to video sites (video saved in Dropbox), bookmarks on social bookmarking sites and submits articles to high PR blog networks that we have joined. This happens every month and no longer requires any input from me.

Searching for high authority backlinks

There are a lot of strategies we employ for seeking higher authority links and Ryan is involved in almost all of them. One example is creating spreadsheets that find Forums in our industry that allow profile links and do-follow signatures and then creating accounts on these forums (I then have a monthly reminder to participate in the forums myself 1 hour or so a month).

We do the same thing with blog commenting, Ryan creates the spreadsheets and searches the web for do-follow and commentLuv blogs for me to comment on each month.

We do the same thing with online portfolio sites that we can submit to and the list goes on.

Long tail keywords

If your VA has good English skills and you are using them to do your articles you can also do what we do and have them build a list of ‘long tail keywords’ that relate to your industry and each month write a number of ‘pages’ for your main site on these topics.

We use the Google Keyword tool (free of course) and look for keywords with under about 100 searches per month. We have found we can rank for some of these keywords without any deliberate SEO.

My main blog only has absolute premium content written by me (or leading industry guest authors) but for the long tail words, I have Ryan create a short ‘page’ which is still indexed by Google (linked to in our sitemap) that can bring small amounts of traffic.

With this strategy you’ll find some keywords do well and some don’t but over time you build up the number of pages that are ranking and small amounts of traffic turns into lots of traffic.

Conclusion

In a short blog post I can’t cover everything we do to dominate Google for our keywords but I hope this opened your eyes to the possibilities of working with a VA on some core strategic tasks and not just on the smaller unimportant ones.

Dan Norris is obsessed with dominating the web and passionate about helping people who are keen to learn. His motto is ‘no secrets’ and happily shares everything he knows about the web on his small business web design blog and via Twitter.

This post by Matt Hooper, is part of ‘VBL Guest Post Season 2′.

As an outsourcing master, Chris will probably be the first person to tell you that achieving success with your virtual staff depends on you as much as it does on your virtual staff. When you are adding virtual staff to your business, you’re creating a team - a bit like the team above, that runs his Virtual Staff Finder company. A successful team relies on all of its team members in order for the team to thrive. Of course it is important to find knowledgeable virtual staff that will provide you with the support you and your business need but it is also important to make sure that all of you are on the same page.

Training is one of the most vital keys to success when working with your team. You may assume that they know how to do something, since it might appear trivial to you. That said, unless you have clearly defined what it is they need to do, there is always a chance for misinterpretation.

I’m not suggesting that you micro-manage your team since this isn’t why you decided to outsource in the first place. However, you do want to make sure that you train virtual assistants the right way. You want to clearly define what they are going to do, then document the process and then ensure that they know to consult the documentation when they have a question. For example, you may decided that one of the things that you want your VA to do is create a list of people on Twitter that @ reply you or retweet you. The best way to do this is to record your screen while going through the process once. After that, they will always have something to refer back to.

Leverage Existing Training Programs

You can take this process to the next level by purchasing a training program for your VA. There are many processes and systems you follow daily in your online business. There is a strong chance that someone has already created a course around these systems or precesses. There is no need to reinvent the wheel and spend hours creating video training resources when you can purchase a digital product for your VA.

There are a number of advantages to using pre-existing training programs:

• Gives your virtual staff a training resource.
• Doesn’t force you to waste your time creating hours of videos.
• Frees you up to focus on growing your business.
• Always available to your virtual staff.

You might find that you need to fill in the gaps and create a few short pieces of documentation to bridge what was taught in the readily available training program with what you want to do in your business. This will be far less time consuming when compared to the actual time commitment that would be required for you to create all of the training from scratch.

Train Outside Your Expertise

One of the reasons that you might want to outsource is because you don’t actually possess the expertise yourself to do something. Let’s assume that you have been working with a virtual staff member for some time. They mostly take care of your scheduling, research and social networking. They are eager learners and are very capable of learning new skills. One day you decide that you want to have them install a new instance of WordPress for a new product or site that you are launching.

Does it really make sense for you to learn how to complete this and then teach your VA how to do it? Do you want to troubleshoot their troubleshooting? On top of all of that, you get an added benefit of buying a digital product to train your staff. They now have a solid set of documentation that they can refer to whenever they have problems.

Have you ever purchased a digital training product to train your virtual staff? Leave a comment below and let all of the VBLer’s know how it turned out.

Matt Hooper is the creator The WordPress Course, which helps you learn how to use WordPress in a single weekend. He is also the author of the free report, “A Beginner’s Guide To Building An Internet Presence”. Be sure to follow him on Twitter.

This post by Michelle Dale, is part of ‘VBL Guest Post Season 2′.

Many of you would have heard about the “4 Hour Work Week,” and for many it’s pretty much impossible to keep on top of personal email and general business in 4 hours a week, let alone making that the extent of the working week! So, I’m going to put forth an alternative suggestion for those of you looking to live a virtual business lifestyle, something I’ve been engaging in for the last 4 years.

The 4 Year Vacation!

I am going to reveal a personal true story, happening now in fact, about how I’ve been on holiday with my family for the last 4 years, non-stop, and why we live this way.

First of all, it’s not strictly all holiday, it’s more like a working holiday, because I’m the CEO of an Internet-based virtual assistant company, which originally was started when I was out travelling in Egypt. Back when I was single it was much easier to live a nomadic lifestyle. What I did when my husband and then children came along is adapt that lifestyle, and we now basically follow these simple rules to moving house:

1. Pick a country.
2. Work out roughly how we will get there and the area or areas we want to live.
3. Search for holiday rentals around that area or areas.
4. Contact the owner and negotiate a long term rental – this works best for up to 12 months.
5. Pay the deposit and move.

If you would like a more detailed, in-depth version of this process, it can be found on my blog.

Because it’s a holiday rental you will need to submit a lot of contact forms, or even better — ask your Virtual Assistant to do it for you! To be able to hit the jackpot, usually we end up with about 3 final options to choose from.

You may be wondering how much extra you need to pay to be able to live the holiday lifestyle. We have always found that we end up paying around 300 Euros a month more than we would normally to have everything all inclusive, plus we get many other perks which make up for the additional few hundred quid.

So why do we live in holiday accommodation? Plenty of reasons! Here are my top 7.

1. No Bills, No Hassle.

Have you ever tried dealing with gas, electric, water, Internet etc… In a foreign language? It’s a huge hassle, with holiday accommodation, all bills are included in the price, and you don’t have to worry about them.

2. You Don’t Need Any ‘Stuff’.

You can travel super-light, we’re a family of 4 and all our worldly possessions fit neatly in the car, we don’t need anything, because holiday lets are generally always fully equipped, furniture, kitchen equipment, bedding and towels.

3. Housekeeping!

One of the many perks you can negotiate is a housekeeper, in our next villa we have secured in Greece, we get a housekeeper included to come in once a week, clean, change the towels and the beds… All year, Bliss!

4. Not Your Average Home.

Holiday accommodation is generally very nice indeed, after all who wants to go on holiday to somewhere no different from their own home. Expect panoramic views, swimming pools, local beaches or places of interest and other random ‘holidayish’ things.

5. Important Assistance.

Most folk who own holiday accommodation either live close by or they know someone who does. We generally find that these people are willing to help us with anything we need, and provide assistance settling in and getting to know the area. This is very much appreciated as we are busy folk with a family and virtual business to run. Especially with a language barrier, this help comes in handy. Because utilities are included, if anything happens, say for example to your Internet connection goes down, the owner will usually tend to it fairly promptly.

6. It’s A Vacation!

When you live in temporary holiday accommodation, you get the feeling of living in a home away from home (not that we actually have a home base, apart from our car which is the only consistent part of our moves!) because they tend to be very comfortable, but you also get that brilliant feeling when you switch your computer/work off, that your holiday is starting!

7. Easy To Arrange.

Generally holiday accommodation is very easy to arrange, you can do it entirely online, you don’t need to view the property, because usually plenty of photos are provided, there are detailed descriptions of the accommodation and surrounding areas, what facilities are at the property, and usually, there is a place previous holiday makers leave reviews, so you can see what other people thought of their holiday there.

We are soon going to be entering our 5th year of moving through holiday rentals and it’s a really brilliant way to travel, see the world, and live the virtual business lifestyle with very little hassle which can otherwise often come when travelling in foreign countries with languages you aren’t well versed in.

So if the 4HWW and mini-retirements aren’t for you, then try a 4 year vacation instead!

I’m curious, VBLer’s, if you were to take a 4 year vacation, where would you go? What would you bring with you? Lets share a few ideas below in the comment section!

Find out more about Michelle at her excellent blog, and be sure to follow her on Twitter, too, to stay up-to-date with what she’s up to online.

Welcome to the second monthly update for the Niche Site Project. Last month I published my first update in a series of six planned monthly reports to show you exactly how my niche site was doing, and the things that I had been doing myself, along with my team of VA’s, to help promote, build out and monetize the site.

Why Only 6 Monthly Reports?

Simple. Within the first six months is when I want to do all the ‘real’ work on this site. After all, the plan is to create passive income here, not to have yet another ‘requirement’ of my time on a regular basis. By the time the size months is up, I want to have created all the content required (around 300 original articles), tested and retested the Adsense placing on the site (I am currently in the process of adding a little more), as well as obviously hitting the top spot in Google for my primary keyword.

After this 6-month period everything will be basically handed over, full-time, to one VA, who will handle the SEO and simple site changes and updates. They will report to me on a weekly basis, so I can continue to be up-to-date with how the site is performing.

Earning Goal: a minimum of $1,000 a month. 

Google Search Position for Primary Keyword

This month was strange for our primary keyword. It was up and down like a yo-yo. 

Just a week ago I was ranked 24th, but today, whilst doing our checks for this post, my VA discovered it had dropped again, and was at position 34. Okay, still an improvement from last months 39th position, but I had anticipated a little more.

In the next month we will focus a little more link building on our primary keyword, in the hope that it’ll shoot up nicely. I’ll keep you up-to-date on it as the month goes by at the VBL Facebook page.

Number of Site Visitors

Last month we racked up 1,112 visits to the site. This month we clocked in 1,682. This is a GREAT improvement of 51%. Some of the other important factors this last month were that we clocked over 500 more page views (or 23% increase) and that we had around the same amount of new visitors, plus an increased amount of returning visitors, too.

Interesting trends that changed for the apparent negative were that people were spending less time on the site – in fact 50% less time, averaging out at 1.5 minutes per visit, instead of last months 3mins.

Overall, traffic improved a lot – I mean, 51% is a LOT, regardless of how we started out. The one thing I was excited and happy to see was that the apparent issues we had with our ranking in the first month, based on all our duplicated content issues (more on that later!), Google was now our number one reffering site (except all the nosey VBLer’s out there! ), instead of Yahoo. I mean, if Yahoo is beating out Google, you KNOW somethings wrong, right!!? Here’s a quick list of the main traffic generators:

Keyword ranking got a lot better this last month, with 40 keywords moving up in the ranking, with an average of around the 30th position in SERPS’s at Google.com. Saying that, I also saw some great movement on long-tail keywords, which we’ve been focusing on more this past month, with 27 long-tail keywords on the first page of Google! Awesome!

Google Adsense Earnings

We’re doing all of this to experiment, learn from each other, HELP each other, but most of all to see if we can make a little moola from this whole thing. I’ve decided to focus on generating my site’s income through Adsense. However, that might change and shift, as we go on, month after month – who knows.

For the meantime, Adsense is the ONLY form of income we’re looking at, and this month we did okay. I was able to generate $95.88 of passive income through the click throughs enjoyed on the site.

But, there were also some strange going-on’s here, too. If you look at last months numbers, we did basically the same amount of clicks, but this month we had doubled our impressions. This means that although ad’s were shown 100% more… we didnt have a 100% click through increase. That’s a MASSIVE shame!!!

Anyone got any theories behind this one….??? Ad placement, perhaps? What do you think?

Alexa Rank

Along with all that additional traffic has to come an increase in your Alexa rank, right? Absolutely. This month our Alexa rank has gone from 412,782 last month to a brilliant 215,833. I’m stoked about that.

We’re still holding onto that Google Page Rank of 2 right now. Not that this is all that important right now. Still, nice to see it’s not dropped.

If you’re not looking closely at your Alexa rank as a blogger, online marketer, virtual entrepreneur, you should start doing so. I’m lucky to see my rank for THIS blog growing all the time, which I’m very proud of!

Number of Content Pages

My overall goal on my niche site is to have around 300 pages of original content written within the first 6 months, as I stated above. We started out very strong on this, with a whopping 71 pages of content created within the first month.

This month, we slowed down a little, focusing on producing REALLY high quality ‘how to’ articles, with lots and lots of value and information included in them. An additional 26 articles were created, increasing the final count by 36%. This isn’t to say the first batch of articles weren’t high in quality, they were. We just up’d our game a little further this month. I hope that we’ll see the fruits of these particular parts of our labor next month.

Content Copying Update 

In the last monthly report I mentioned that I had been plagued by people copying my content, and in particularly one person above and beyond anyone else that was causing all sorts of problems in this regard.

The update is that I worked with my developer, and he was able to completely remove our RSS feed from my niche site, which enabled this person to no longer get any fresh content from us, as he was literally just stealing it via our feed, rather than coming to the site and copying/pasting it all – lazy so-and-so!

The work behind this was relatively simple, and my developer guy just used a cool little plugin called Disable RSS, which you can download for free by clicking on the link. Quite a few people have asked for this, and I’ve given it to them via Twitter, or email in the last few weeks. Protect your content and install this great plugin NOW!

Other Bits and Pieces

Aweber produced a massive 4 additional sign-up’s, for a total of 15 email subscribers. That ‘massive’ in there was sarcasm, of course..!!! I have to say, I am not really all that bothered by this. But, perhaps giving away a quick report might help – so, I’ve asked my VA to put together a “Top 10 Tips” eBook to use as an incentive. This will go live this week, so we’ll see how it affects numbers.

I had a massive response to the Niche Site Giveaway Contest I ran a couple of weeks ago – congrats to Charlie, again for winning, and you can all expect an update from her soon, too.

I also had an equally large response to the special promo I put together, where I offered to build a niche site from scratch, utilizing my own personal team of developers and SEO people here in the Philippines. We had a whopping 17 orders in just 72 hours. So, yes, you can work out at $199 each, I earned a respectable $3,383 – or an average of $47 dollars an hour throughout the promo period. Not a bad few days!

I’ve been sincerely flabbergasted with how many people have started to follow the Niche Site Project in the last month, too. If you’re one of those new additions to the VBL Tribe, that has only just started reading the VBL recently, thank you for joining us! And for all of you who have started to follow me on Twitter – thank you, too. Nice increases there, too!

Over to YOU!

So, this is where I turn over the reporting to YOU. To those of you who jumped on board to the Niche Site Project, and have been listed on the official project page, and to those of you who might be building their niche sites, and didn’t get involved, but still have plenty of gems of knowledge to share – go ahead. Do it all below.

This is your time, peeps. Thanks again, and I’ll see you in 4 more weeks, with another update!

As some of you may already know, a few weeks ago I announced my niche and domain for the VBL Community Niche Site Project, which went into full swing on July 11th, with the creation of the Niche Site Project page – available in the sub-menu here on the blog, or via any browser at nichesiteproject.com.

The plan is to produce a monthly update on the 11th (or there abouts) of every month, with the results from the last four weeks worth of work, based around the following criteria:

• Google Search Positon for Primary Keyword
• Number of Site Visitors
• Google Adsense Earnings
• Alexa Rank
• Number of Content Pages on the site.
• Summary of Activities Throughout the Month

This is basically what I will be producing in my reports.

Then, everyone that is involved in the Niche Site Project will comment on the monthly report post giving their numbers for the same criteria, as well as discussing any problems they’ve faced and strategies that they have put together that have worked, etc. – hence creating the platform for the VBL Community to engage each other and help one another out (like you all did to the tune of 200+ comments on that launch post!).

My Article / Content Strategy

However, I will also be producing these ‘odd’ posts here and there, where I will go into the things I am doing to help promote, market and grow the popularity of my own niche site. Today, I’m gonna let you in on my article strategy.

Please note this is NOT my strategy for article marketing, but rather the creation of original articles for the niche site itself – as I want my site to be very content heavy, so that it becomes a major resource online.

It’s actually a pretty simple, five step process that I’m working with, as follows…

1. Long Tail Keyword Research

For me, long tail keywords is where the party is at, for long-term traffic and earnings. I have research done on every possible keyword you could imagine, related to my niche.

2. Research for the Articles

Here’s the deal – anyone can write a half-decent article. What I’m trying to do with my content for the niche site I have started, is create solid content that is not only 100% original, but is also based around giving away quality information for people to act upon. Google likes original, we know this. But, they also like informative, too.

3. Creating the Articles

We’re following a very standard way of producing SEO content for the niche site. It’s a simple formula that seems to work very well, as follows:

• Keyword in Title.
• Keyword in First Paragraph.
• Keyword splattered around other paragraphs, based on length of article.
• Keyword in Final Paragraph.

4. Editing the Articles

This is another solid step that we have ‘down’ pretty well now. Again, referring back to the fact that we want to create INFORMATIVE content. At this point in the article creation process we will go back through the content and make sure that there is at least three separate bits of content that could be classed as ‘information’, and not just ‘content. This can be as simple as a website to visit, telephone numbers, additional high-quality articles (particularly on highly respected websites, ie. .gov), etc.

5. Posting the Articles

After the final edit of the articles, they are posted slowly, but surely.

I am not simply putting them all live at the same time. I want to show a ‘natural’ update flow to Google, kind of like drip-feeding them through… and so we’re looking at posting around two a day, on average – some even scheduled in wordpress to go live on the weekend!

Time to Outsource

To date we have create 45 pages of content for the site – at an average of 500 words per article thats over 22,000 words created so far!

Now that we’ve almost hit our target of 50 in-house articles created, I am looking at outsourcing the other 300-odd articles that we are ready to produce.

Some of you might say “Hang on, Chris – YOU’RE gonna outsource this…..!???”, based on the fact that I have over 250+ outsourced workers on staff already! Well, fair comment to you. However, firstly – they are all busy! Secondly, this is a project-based job. Not a full-time position. So, its simply easier, faster and more financially viable to just outsource it.

I’ve actually already contacted a virtual assistant that I know quite well, and she has already thrown a few samples my way. Grammar and construction-wise, her articles were well crafted. However, they did lack a little SEO ‘solidness’.

So, I worked with her a bit, gave her some solid pointers, based on my own experience and the tips and tactics given by my personal SEO Manager, and she re-submitted the same articles, which looked much better.

She now has the first 20 articles to produce by the end of this week.

Once they have been sent through to me and checked for originality, as well as those ‘informative’ parts that I have requested on each article they will go live, keeping my mind my drip-feeding strategy.

How are YOU Doing All This…?

I’d love to hear back on what you think of my content creation strategy for the niche site I’ve chosen. Along with any ideas and strategies you’re using yourself…

The thing here is that nobody is the ‘king’. We are all in this together.

Please do share your ideas and thoughts on this important part of the niche site building process in the comment section below. Thanks for the support towards everyone… er… everyone! 

When I was in the UK a few weeks ago, I published a post in regards to a new ‘How to Outsource…’ series I was going to be starting. I received so many great comments and emails when this went live – so, if you sent any suggestions in to me – thank you!

This basically came about because I get a lot of emails every week on the subject, and because replying to them all (which I always, always do!) was starting to suck a little more time out of my day as I was comfortable with. So, I decided to produce this new series of posts to enable me to build up a bit of an encyclopedia, so to speak, on the subject of outsourcing – this way, not only could I continue to answer everyones questions (especially in an in-depth way!), but also create some great content for the rest of the VBL readers and subscribers, too.

Today we kick-off with a video post on the subject of understanding cultural differences between westerners and filipinos, especially focusing on how to work with VA’s with these differences in mind. To make this a little more authentic (if thats the right word!), I asked my Virtual Staff Finder project manager, Stephanie, to join me in the video for two reasons.

Firstly, she’s a filipina (we use the term filipina when describing a female from the Philippines, not filipino), and secondly, because she knows an absolute ton about working with VA’s based here in the Philippines!

Inside the video you’ll see us discussing:

• How important salary and paying filipino VA’s on time is.
• Why keeping your tasks relevant to their job description is so important.
• Appreciating the fact that filipinos are quite shy in nature and don’t like confrontation.
• Keeping in mind the difference of working hours and being flexible with home-based filipino staff.
• Understanding the importance of awarding your VA, and why its such a massive motivator.
• Much more!

As you can see, Stephanie is a prime example of the type of professional talent that there is out here. She speaks great english, is naturally motivated and organized and even agrees to be in my blog videos! Can’t ask for more than that, can you..??!

As I mentioned, this is the beginning of a brand new series at the blog. If you would like to be informed when the next post in the series will go live, just complete the sign-up form below and you’ll be added to the VBL Blog Update list. You’ll also get a copy of my FREE eBook & AudioBook companion “Saving the Day, the Virtual Way!”, which goes into much deeper detail on the subject of virtual assistants and filipino VA’s particularly.

If any of you have any stories, feedback or insights you’d like to add to todays content, that would be awesome. Also – feel free, as always, to ask as many questions as you like. I love answering them all…

Just a couple of short weeks ago I published a VBL Discussion Post on the subject of niche sites, where I mentioned that I was challenging myself to start my first ‘true’ niche site online (which I’ll tell you all about in a bit), as a way to see if I could emulate the brilliance brought forward by other fantastic bloggers and online entrepreneurs over the last year or so, where the subject of niche sites has really exploded.

The response to that post was awesome – some 65 comments were posted and I had a truck-load of emails on the subject, too. It was also a hot topic when I met with a bunch of VBL Community Members back in London, on June 16th, too! Thank you to all that participated, in whatever way you did.

You Spoke, I Listened

One thing that was very clear by all of the comments and emails I received was that you guys simply ‘wanted in’! You wanted to be involved, and really liked the idea of taking part in the challenge of building, promoting and marketing a niche site for passive, financial gain.

The thing is, I run a few companies, am currently working on a few different projects (this new niche site included) and although I would have liked to make this a lot more in-depth, I haven’t really been able to come up with a way to do it, without spreading myself too thin across my other business interests. So, I’m gonna keep it super simple and easy for everyone to be involved.

The one thing that I want to point out here, over and beyond everything else is that this is NOT a competition. It is not about finding a ‘winner’ of any kind. It’s about COMMUNITY. And, its all about us coming together with one very common goal, and helping each other achieve greatness in his/her chosen niche.

‘VBL Niche Site Project’ Guidelines (not rules!)

With that considered, we still have to have a few guidelines, so that we are all on the same page as to what we want to achieve, and how we’re going to keep everyone up-to-date on things. So, here they are, should you want to join in the fun over the next few months (and beyond):

1. Everyone must come to the blog once a month and post a comment in my ‘Monthly Niche Site Project Update’, with three very important pieces of information. Firstly, the current ranking in Google for their primary keyword. Secondly, the number of visits they have had in the last month, via Google Analytics, and thirdly – their Adsense earnings.

2. You must also tell us a little (we don’t need all your dirty secrets!) on what you did in the past month to gain more traffic, growing your ranking and make the money you make.

3. You must promise not to take a stab at, be horrible to, curse at, take the piss out of, or generally become an ass towards anyone else that is participating in the challenge. If anything – HELP THEM. That’s what this is all about. If you don’t adhere to this particular guideline, then you’ll be ‘out’!

Pretty simple, right..?

Get Listed on the ‘VBL Niche Site Project’ Center

I will be creating a special page, where everyone that wants to be included in the challenge will have their name, and a link to their niche site listed. I will also list any articles, or blog posts that you’ve written (on your personal blog, for example) covering this challenge and your niche site. However, the articles MUST focus on the challenge and your spefific niche site (this is to make everything relevant for everyone involved) if you want them included.

I’ll also be adding links on this page to other related posts on this blog, as well as others that I feel should be included.

This whole thing will be put together so that we can all check out each others niche sites, and see what we are all doing together to build our sites up, and to earn that passive income we’re shooting for. To be included all you have to do is send me an email with your name, and the URL of your niche site. Then I’ll have my virtual assistant set-up the page in the next week, or so.

My Selected Niche

As this is my first real niche site (I’ve flirted, and done okay, but nothing crazy from a couple of sites), like most things when it comes to business, I put a lot of time and energy into researching everything I could when it comes to creating niche sites. My main influence on this whole thing came in the guise of my good buddy, Pat Flynn. He has done very well with a niche site he started 8-9 months ago, and continues to work on it to better himself every month.

I’ve followed a lot of what Pat put into place, but I have also spent a certain amount of time working with my internal online marketing team to produce what I feel is a solid plan of attack in a pretty competitive online space.

The Nuts and Bolts

How did I get to this choice of niche? Well, first up – I didn’t use Market Samurai, which is by far the most popular piece of keyword research software out there – I mean, everyone talks about this thing! Instead, I followed my own ‘beginners’ advice strategy (if you can call it that!), which I blogged about a while ago - instead using Google’s Keyword Tool to do the research on the keyword and its search volume / competitiveness.

On top of this, this niche is centered around an industry that is hot for job searchers, and requires only a high school education level, vastly broadening our search opportunities.

As you can see from the image below, my chosen niche has a solid monthly search volume for its primary keyword, and is in a pretty competitive position, which I mentioned before. I have chosen to go with it anyway, based on the fact that the competition show’s that there is a good amount of PPC advertisers out there, and as we are looking to gain Adsense earnings as our source of income, it makes sense.

I appreciate that this might mean that I have to work a little harder and for slightly longer to gain the top slot in Google, however, in the long-term I think it’ll be worth the wait and additional work!!! I certainly hope so.

Beyond the primary keyword, there are also plenty of secondary and additional long-tail keywords (some with some pretty impressive search numbers on their own!) that are available and worth working on, as you can see from the image below.

I have sat with my team (which I’ll go into detail on below a little more), and we have targeted 10 secondary keywords and approximately 280 long-tail keywords that we are going to be going after! And, we believe that there are at least another 50 or so worth pursuing after that, too. So, plenty of work to get on with!

The Beginning of the Content Mission!

We have gone live today with 14 articles, and will be adding more on a drip-feed schedule regularly, going forward. All of these articles were written by one of my full-time marketing team members, and were tweaked by me, to make sure that they were as high quality as possible, in regards to grammar, etc.

Obviously, to gain all the traffic we want to get, and to truly OWN the niche, a hell of a lot of content is going to have to be produced. And here’s the thing, with Google ‘Panda’ in full effect, we are going to have to make sure that the content is not only just 100% original, we need to make it genuinely helpful. Not a major feat if you only need to produce 20 or so articles, but with the number we’re going after, it’ll be tough work. However, as with most things concerning my team – I am confident.

Speaking of My Team…

I appreciate that some of you will be doing all the work on this thing yourself (just as Pat did we he started his niche site, although he is now outsourcing it like mad!). However, I simply don’t have the time, nor the patience if I was to be brutally honest, to do so!

So, I have three members of my team helping me.

1. Internet Marketing Manager - He is the guy that I did most of my research with, and he’ll be breaking down the numbers, month by month to make sure that we’re doing well, and that we are on course, on our mission to the Top of Google! He’s also already set-up the sitemap and Google Analytics settings, as well as submitted the site to Google Web Masters Central and Bing and Yahoo, too. He will also be the guy executing our link building strategy, too.

2. Web Developer - He designed the niche site using a theme, and tweaked it a little to look as sharp as possible. It went live about 4 days ago. Because of the type of niche, we went for a clean / clinical looking theme. He’ll be managing the updating of the site and making sure that all pages are optimized properly, based on my IM Manager’s guidelines.

3. Content Writer - He has produced all of the content so far and will continue to do so for, at least, the foreseeable future. The thing is, that this creative dude also does a lot of other writing for me, and even some of our clients, so if he gets too bogged down, I might look to get someone else internally to work on it, or perhaps even outsource it. The reason why I would outsource it, instead of hiring a full-time VA to do it, is because it really will be a one-off ‘job lot’ of writing, rather than a continuous stream of content required, I feel. But, we’ll see how this goes.

And so, It Begins…

So, today is kick-off day – we have had just ONE visitor to the website so far (probably one of my team!), as you can see by the Google Analytics screenshot below, and currently have a Google Ranking of 255.

I must admit to being incredibly excited by all of this, as I haven’t set myself a real hard-core challenge / goal like this for quite some time. The thing that really excites me, however, is the fact that our growing, WICKEDLY AWESOME VBL COMMUNITY will be taking part in the challenge, too!

That just inspires the crap out of me!!!

So, get commenting below, let us know of your niche sites so we can all go check ‘em out, and good luck to us all… I’ll see you next month for the first report, or before, if need be!

Quick post today, as I am preparing to leave the UK and return back home, to the Philippines…

As you probably know, I’ve been involved in the Outsourcing industry for 10-years. I have over 250 full-time employees working for me at my facility in the Philippines (pictured above), and I’ve worked on all types of outsourced projects, some with several hundred workers, and some right at the other end of the spectrum, with small, boot-strapping, entrepreneurial set-up’s. Every week I receive a ton of email on the subject of ‘how to outsource’ a number of tasks or roles.

Most of them involve questions on how to outsource everything from social media; web work; telemarketing, right the way down to online marketing, design concepts and customer service. You name it, you can outsource it!

I always reply to my email – if you’ve ever sent a message to me, you’ll know this. However, as my businesses continue to grow, and my plans for future projects become more time-consuming (in a good way, of course!), I’m finding myself cutting my replies and answers short, just to save time. I’m still helping these people on how to outsource the things they need/want to, but not as in-depth as I have in the past, and not as much as I would really like for the long-term.

Enter the ‘How to Outsource…’ Mini-Guide Series!

So, I’ve decided to create a mini-guide series of posts on outsourcing. There will not be any timeline on this, nor will there be any ‘real’ posting schedule per se. What I will be doing is creating these specific posts in mind for long-term use, whilst also achieving a few things, such as:

• Continue to produce quality content here on the VBL Blog.
• Produce in-depth answers and guides on how to outsource specific strategies.
• Create more time for myself, by simply being able to refer people to the mini-guide that answers their questions.

Cool, huh…?!

Now I Need Your Help…

I have a whole list of subjects for this ‘How to Outsource…’ series that I know for sure I am going to be producing. However, I also know for a FACT that there are different strokes for different folks, and everyone has needs that are very different sometimes.

So, I’m inviting you to list down all the things that you need help on, when it comes to outsourcing. Anything you can imagine that you might be thinking of outsourcing. eBook design; logo creation; audio transcriptions; website development, podcast intro’s, lead generation, social media promotion – anything at all.

Simply drop your ‘need’ or question below in the comment section and I’ll get to work producing content to help, inspire and educate you on how to outsource your chosen tasks – I look forward to all your submissions!

Over the last couple of Monday’s, myself and Dan Andrews have been talking about different aspects of the Virtual Business Lifestyle concepts, or the VBL CORE4 as I call them. In week 1 we covered Virtual Entrepreneurship, last week it was Passive Income and so, here we are for the third Monday in a row (and you’re still coming back – amazing!!! LOL) to talk about a subject that we are both super passionate about – Outsourcing, specifically entrepreneurial outsourcing.

As some of you will no doubt already know, I am the owner of an outsourcing services provider company, based in the Philippines, with almost 250 people working for me (and their respective clients worldwide) full-time. I’ve been in the business close to ten years and I’ve trained thousands and thousands of virtual workers. I love this industry and everything regarding working with virtual staff.

Dan attests the use of entrepreneurial outsourcing, and working with virtual assistants in his business to the ultimate growth of his company and everything else that happens to him as an entrepreneur. In this video, amongst other things we discuss:

• The importance of working with VAs to grow your business.
• How to train VAs to maximize their productivity.
• Brainstorming on new business ideas together.
• My Virtual Staff Finder service and some of the top internet marketers and pro-bloggers that have used the service to find their virtual assistants.
• How I removed myself from the service and WHY I thought it as important to do so.
• Why entrepreneurial outsourcing should not be overlooked, regardless of company size.
• Lots more stuff!

Outsourcing to many people that visit the VBL Blog is not a new subject. Whether you heard about it through the pages of the 4-Hour Work Week, or on this blog (or anywhere else for that matter!), the most important thing is that you know about it, and what it can do for you as a business owner.

If you have absolutely any questions at all on the subject of entrepreneurial outsourcing, please jot them down in the comments section below. I’m more than happy to help. Next Monday will see the final part of this video series, where we’ll be talking about Super Mobility!

After reading that title, I can hear a certain number of you saying… “Chris, have you been drinking again…?!!”.

Quite the contrary, my dear subscribers, followers, readers and surprisingly sexy people! I have simply had some time over the last few weeks to sit back (most of it at 35,000 feet as I’ve spent some much time on planes recently!) and do a little thinking and re-jigging in my head on how I want to continue to roll this blog out in the coming months / years.

Here’s the deal… I’ve experimented a lot on this blog. Written posts, audio / podcast posts, video posts, and just about everything else in between. Some have been more ‘personal‘ than others and some have focused on my dreams and aspirations. I’ve even shot videos in swimming pools, in the middle of busy cities, on beaches, in my home office and in my company’s facilities, amongst other places!

I’ve also produced a lot of content on various aspects of living a virtual business lifestyle, and the types of things you can experience whilst enjoying the type of lifestyle that I am an advocate of.

I’ve had a blast doing it all. And I’m not going to stop anytime soon, I assure you.

Myself & Corbett at Dinner with our Wives - Really!

However, I am going to be making one pretty serious tweak! And I think you’re gonna like it. It was actually inspired by plenty of time spent chatting with fellow blogger and online entrepreneur, Corbett Barr, when I was in San Francisco earlier this month. Myself and Corbett spoke on LOTS of topics, with blogging and making money online the center point, obviously.

The fact is that I don’t have the time to sit around reading blogs all day and Corbett is one of just a handful of people online that I truly ‘follow’ myself. Especially his Think Traffic blog, which I believe is probably one of the best blogs online, hands down. He is smart, has lots of business experience and knows some great restaurants in San Francisco – so I tend to pay attention to the guy..! All our conversations got me thinking.

My New Approach for the Virtual Business Lifestyle Blog

All this leads me to the realization of what I want my focus to be for this blog, going forward. And that focus, my friends, is to simply produce the absolute best HOW TO advice on creating, launching, promoting, marketing and sustaining a virtual business – whether its with the focus to quit your day job, or to get more serious about your current entrepreneurial activities.

Plus, all of it with a big, heavy slice of ‘virtual assistant‘ thrown in. More specifically how to utilize virtual assistants to help you achieve all these things, plus much, much more.

Subject points such as:

• How to create an kick-ass online brand.
• How to start your first ever virtual business.
• How to rock the crap out of your competitors online.
• How to work with virtual assistants to gain more traffic to your blog / site.
• How to become the absolute most successful entrepreneur possible.
• How to come up with passive income products ideas and make them happen.
• How to really blog for business and make it count.
• How to balance work / life to the point where you do more than just ‘manage’.
• How to mind-map ideas that actually allow you to turn them into reality.
• How to… Well, you get the idea, right…!?

It’s STILL My Party, and I’ll Do What I Want To!

Now, all of this doesn’t mean that I’m not going to throw the odd ‘entrepreneurial inspiration’ post into the fray every now and then. It also doesn’t mean that if I want a good old fashioned rant ‘n rave, I’m going to stop myself – because I won’t, nor will I stop myself from posting a video of me half naked in a swimming pool, cocktail in hand, again, if I am compelled to do so… (Yikes!).

It simply means that this place is about to get seriously FOCUSED on helping you do what I know you are all really wanting to do. And thats to create an Entrepreneurial Lifestyle that You’ll Love to Live – just as this blogs’ tagline suggests!

And all of this starts this coming Wednesday – yes, just 48 hours away – when I interview dot com mogul and top affiliate marketer, John Chow on the subject of “HOW TO Become a Dot Com Superstar!” for episode number 30 of the VBL Podcast.

In the meantime, this is it – your chance to tell me EXACTLY what ‘how to’ advice you want. Tell me NOW, in the comment section below, what types of posts you want to see with this new focus in mind, and I will get to work creating them for you!

Chris: Here is the first post from our new Regular Contributor, Michelle Dale. Michelle is an extremely successful virtual entrepreneur in her own right, and is on board the VBL Team to add additional insights in the world of outsourcing and entrepreneurship in general.

Most entrepreneurs, especially those pursuing an online business venture, will at some point consider investigating how hiring a Virtual Assistant – or even many Virtual Assistants, could benefit them and their business.

For those of you who are new to this concept and still trying to learn what a “virtual assistant” actually is, you will undoubtedly find a lot of different options available for you to choose from, and not every virtual assistant option maybe right for you, so here is a quick “VA 101” which I have put together for you which is based on the wide variety of Virtual Assistants I have come across in my own career.

If you find a VA online, they could be one or many of the types of VA listed below, for example, you may find a solo-VA working offshore, or an online business manager who is also a consultant and has a multi-VA team. The absolute best combination I have found is to work with a variety of different VA’s and use a combination of the possibilities out there for different areas of your business, especially if you are looking to utilise outsourcing for all of your staffing requirements. Once you have worked out what you need, you can then choose your Virtual Assistant or combination of Virtual Assistants wisely, based on how you would like them to fit into your business. Once you have the combination right, that’s when your business can really reap the benefits of this awesome industry.

In a nutshell, independent virtual assistants are generally business owners just like you, and they assist all kinds of individuals online with their businesses. I have listed the most common ‘types’ of virtual assistant below, but each one is essentially a virtual assistant in some way, shape or form.

Solo VA’s

This I believe is where the industry began many years ago, traditional PA’s and administrative assistants found a way of working from home and servicing a client base over the Internet, thus allowing them to step out of their role in the workplace and into a virtual role. Solo VA’s have since come a long way, and they have branched out from the more general services such as diary management, call answering, customer support, transcription etc… into offering online marketing services, and in some cases creative and technical support. They generally work alone, servicing a small client base, which allows for a more intimate one-on-one service with their client. Solo VA’s can be excellent multi-taskers. The downside of a solo VA is that if they truly are solo, then the times when they are away from their work, you may need to seek an alternative until they return. In some cases the VA may have a plan in place for handling work while they are away and you will need to ask them about this directly.

Multi-VA Teams

These are usually teams of VA’s who collaborate online for a single VA company. They will either be groups of VA’s with similar skills, or different skills depending on the company hiring them. Almost always the multi-VA team is made of up freelance independent business owners and they can either work full-time, part-time or on an adhoc basis for the main VA who developed the team. Most multi-VA teams will have a primary VA, the one who developed the team, and more often than not, they will be the primary point of contact for clients at all times, and may still also provide services themselves. The good thing about multi-VA companies is that they often have resources available to “step in” during holidays, so there is no disruption to any ongoing services.

Offshore VA’s

Offshore VA’s have come to be known as the VA’s who work in countries with a lower cost of living, generally “offshore” from the western world. Two very popular countries where offshore VA’s can be found are the Philippines and India. Whilst of course many of them do not speak native English, you can find offshore VA’s who speak excellent English, and they are able to communicate with you very well. Particularly, VA’s who have come from call centre environments are often able to speak conversational English surprisingly well.

The benefits of offshore VA’s mean that entrepreneurs and start-ups can cost-effectively get the support they need within their businesses, and for anyone on a shoestring budget, this is an ideal solution, because rates tend to be lower to match the economic climate where the VA lives.

Online Business Managers

Online business managers have likely taken on the role solely as a manager, and generally won’t be the ones performing the VA services anymore. In many cases, they have a multi-VA team themselves who they will utilise in order to provide a wide range of services for a larger number of clients. Online business managers often started out as virtual assistants and they moved into hiring a multi VA team - they should be very experienced in working online, and have excellent project management skills for those looking to carry out larger scale projects and business expansion, which they need more of a right hand kind of support for. This solution is ideal if you have a variety of tasks you need doing and don’t want to spend time on training and quality control. A skilled online business manager can do this for you, perfectly.

Virtual Consultants

Virtual consultants will likely have had a great deal of experience as a virtual assistant, and over time, they developed more of an “expert” status after handling a multitude of tasks and clients. Some online consultants will remain solo, while others may have multi-VA teams with them. The consultant will want to work with you more as a partner and advisor, and they will often charge clients based on their experience and ability, rather than on a skill or service set. You will need to talk with the individual, sometimes in great depth, to find out how they are able to assist you with your business.

Virtual Intermediaries

Virtual intermediaries are companies which are set up to introduce you, the client, to a suitable virtual assistant. They will generally have a significant database of independent professionals, for which they will take down information from you on exactly what you’re looking for, and then they will carefully consider your requirements and find a suitable match. The great thing about these introducers is that it cuts out all the leg work for you; they’ll generally screen the VA’s beforehand to meet a minimum standard, and keep profile and rates information on file. If they don’t have someone suitable within their database, they will set to work in finding a match for you using their resources.

Example: Chris is the founder of the brilliant service “Virtual Staff Finder,” which can help you find pre-qualified offshore solo-VA’s, for almost any requirements.

Whatever it is you’re searching for, there is a virtual assistant out there for you. Questions? Comments…? You know the deal – go for it, below..!

Here we are with the final installment to this 3-part series on how to be able to create an eBook to give away for free to help build your brand, promote your blog, market a product or service, or simply just to get the word ‘out there’ about what you’re doing online.

In part one we went over the eBook itself. The concept, the importance of quality and the way to lay your eBook out and design ideas. In part two we discussed the importance of building your list through partnering with someone like AWeber, for your list management purposes, and utilizing a great WP plugin tool called PopUp Domination, to be able to super-charge the growth of your subscriber list. We also discussed the importance of utilizing the PDF format of an eBook, by including relevant links and the ability to make a little money (never a bad thing) through using affiliate links relevant to your topic, too.

Nothing comes to those who sit on their ass waiting for the riches they dream about to just land in their laps. Building a solid, profitable email marketing list is no different. With this in mind, today I present to you my Top 10 List of additional things you can do to help promote and market your eBook to make sure that as many people as possible sign-up, by opting into your list and downloading your eBook to devour all its creative splender!

So, lets not waste any time at all, and get going!

1. Share it with Other Cool People!

You’ve worked hard on your eBook, now get it out there. Email a copy of it to other bloggers, particularly those within your niche, and ask for their feedback and if they would like to let their audience know about it. Any good blogger will be happy to point their subscribers in the direction of additional helpful content. You should be that insecure, people. Really.

2. Becoming ‘Social’ on the Subject!

Not using social media to get the word out about your free eBook is like literally going to an awesome water park in the middle of the summer and not jumping into one of the pools! Tweet and Facebook the hell out of it for a few days, and then stop being irritating and calm down, sending the odd-tweet out here and there throughout the course of the week (note to self, Chris – tweet about your free eBook… NOW!)

Tweet sent!

3. Create a Press Release for Online Distribution!

Online press releases are awesome. Why? Because they rank – FAST – in the SERPs. Create a press release, and be sure to stick in the title of your eBook, plus a couple of other related keywords (note: your eBook title does not have to be keyword heavy. Thinking branding FIRST, ranking second!) and you’ll see that it gets listed on Google very quickly. The reason behind this is that the search engines love new, relevant content, PR submission sites are great for that stuff. Better yet – have your virtual assistant do it for you – it can be a little timely, theres a lot of PR sites online!

4. Get Vocal!

If you have a podcast, or get the opportunity to be interviewed, or become a guest on other peoples podcasts, be sure to mention your free eBook. I do this regularly, and it always brings in a spike of sign-up’s. In fact, I went one step further and purchased an additional domain name, VirtualAssistanteBook.com, specifically for mentioning it in podcasts and videos – its a lot easier than saying “Download my eBook by going to my blog and finding the sign-up form to the top of the site and then entering your name and email to get it!”. Instead, its simply… “Click over to VirtualAssistanteBook.com to get my free eBook!”. Much easier.

5. Get Visual!

Shooting a quick promo video for your eBook is a great idea. You can start by showing a front cover image and then cutting to you talking about the contents and why people should download it. Putting yourself ‘out there’ on video is also a massive branding exercise, too (perhaps I should do a post on that – what you think?!)

6. Use Your Other Websites!

If you have other websites, or blogs, produce a quick post on the launch of the eBook, and link to the site you are wanting to promote/market with the free eBook, so that people can sign-up and download the eBook. You’ll be surprised how many people might check out your sites regularly, but dont actually subscribe to any of them. I find this happening more and more, as the Virtual Business Lifestyle blog gets more and more popular.

7. Create Some Additional Awesome Content!

Creating some additional awesome content, related to the content in your eBook and then posting it on other peoples blogs as a guest post, or on article submission sites, such as eZineArticles.com is another great way to drive traffic to your landing page. Just be sure to write well, and dont just do it for the link. People will see ‘link bait’ a mile away nowadays!

8. Blog Commenting (The RIGHT Way!)

Commenting on other, likeminded blogs to your own is another great way to help build traffic to your landing page. Again, just make sure the comment is a good one, with a genuine ‘let me help you’ approach – otherwise it will either a) probably get deleted by the blogger, or b) not get any clicks. I used to do this a LOT when I first started blogging, but nowadays I dont have as much time. I can tell you, however, it does work!

9. Start a Facebook Page for your eBook!

Not a lot of people think of this. They might prefer to just create a Facebook Page for their blog in general, which is okay, and something you should certainly do, but having two pages that you can cross-promote and mention whilst surfing around Facebook is better than one. Disclaimer: I have not done this with ‘Saving the Day’, but I have with other projects and although you have to do a little legwork in getting people to ‘Like’ the page, etc., it can really help to spread the word quickly. Try it, and let me know how you go with it. Again, this is something a virtual assistant is perfect for!

10. Mention your Free eBook in Your Email Signature!

Such a simply thing to do, along with a direct link to your landing page – yet, so, so many people forget to do this one very easy thing. Go for it!

11. Over to You!

I sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed this series, and that its perhaps answered a few questions and solved a few problems for you, in case you’ve been thinking of putting together a free eBook, or perhaps have been stuck in the middle of finishing one up! Let me know of any other ideas and ingenius ways that you have seen free eBooks marketed and promoted online. I’m sure that there are tons I haven’t mentioned here… And we can all help each other with something like this. Just comment below!

In Closing… I will be getting this 3-part series put together in – you got it – a downloadable free eBook format next week. I will drop you guys an email when it is available. So, be sure to sign-up for my free eBook now (Below!), to get it via email, as soon as its available!

On Monday last week I announced this series of three posts that begins today. I was blown away by all the awesome comments and emails I received. Seriously – you lot are a seriously smart, demanding bunch! Just joking… After digesting everything and going back to my original mindmap for this series, then adding in your suggestions to hopefully fulfill your ‘needs’, here we go…

So, today we start the series on how to create a kick-ass free eBook which you can use to help build your brand, as well as help promote and market your blog, product, service, with taking a look at Creating the Concept of your eBook, the time-honored question of ‘Quality, or Quantity’ and how important the Design and Layout of your eBook is.

Initial Housekeeping Notes

Although I have tried to make this series of posts as informative and as easy-to-follow as possible, you might still see the odd crack in the ‘process’ being presented here. This is because, quite frankly, I wanted this to be a simple to follow series, with practical advice and tips, and not go into too much detail on any one subject matter – saying that, there is still plenty of meat on the bones, and if you have any particular questions, feel free to let me know.

Kindly note, this series is about creating a FREE eBook. One that you will give away for absolutely no profit. If you want a more in-depth guide to creating an eBook that you can sell, I strongly suggest you check out Pat Flynn’s eBookstheSmartWay.com (free), and Dave and Naomi’s HowtoSellYoureBook.com (paid) – I’ve read and used BOTH in my eBook marketing, and they’re great.

Most Importantly: Create something that you feel is good enough to sell, but then give it away for free! This will ensure that the quality of your eBook is high, that its incredibly informative and will genuinely make a difference to the reader once they have finished reading it. I did this with ‘Saving the Day, the Virtual Way’, and have had so many awesome emails from people, that it was certainly worth all the effort.

Creating the Concept

First and foremost, don’t write about anything that you know nothing about. It’ll be so obvious that you’re bluffing and simply not worth your time! Secondly, here’s probably the biggest, most important tip you will get from this entire series – write your eBook for your audience, not for yourself. Look into solving problems for other people. If this comes about by taking care of a problem YOU have to start off with, thats fine. Solving problems for people is the oldest and most powerful ‘sales’ strategy out there.

You might have a very clear picture of what you want to write about. If so, and you know it’ll benefit your audience, then go for it! One thing that you should also consider is doing a survey with your current readership first. I did this a while ago when we re-designed the VBL Blog, and I can tell you, the feedback I got was priceless – worth more than any amount of sales, as it allowed me to tweak the design of the site to help people navigate it properly and enjoy their experience on the blog more. I also did something similar when trying to find my ‘core’ readership, and when when asking for feedback on an upcoming product I’m putting together.

Among the most successful digital products out there, almost all of them are ‘How To’ types of products. Your giveaway eBook should be no different. Not only are ‘How To’ guides really simple to put together, but they are easy to read and generally get downloaded more than the other types of freebie eBooks out there.

Every good story has a beginning, middle and an end. Your eBook should be no different. So, break your contents down into three main sections. It’s a good idea to sit down and plan this part of your eBook out very clearly. I’m a big fan of mindmaps. I use them, literally, every day. Now I use my iPad to do most of them, but, back in the beginning of 2010 when I produced ‘Saving the Day’, I mapped things out on a small whiteboard I have in my home office.

Here’s a quick snapshot of the original mindmap… You’ll see I already intended to add additional content to it, and make an audio version, even back in those earlier days. Although I did it nearer 3000 downloads, not the 1000 noted here!

Firstly, I presented the problem. I talked about how busy entrepreneurs are, and that if only they had solid, dependable help they could get so much more done on a daily basis. Then, I went into the solution side of things. Again, by way of example, in my free eBook I talk about virtual assistants, what they do, how they do it, etc. Then finally, I wrapped everything up with the ending – what the solution can mean to the person reading. In my case the solution is finding, hiring and working with a VA to enable the busy business owner to gain more time in his/her day-to-day life, create more business ideas, strategize for growth, spend more time with family and ultimately become more successful, all by utilizing a VA.

Quality, or Quantity?

This is a highly debated topic when it comes to giving away a freebie eBook. Fact is, if the eBook has lots of pages, then it looks as if people are getting a lot more for their ‘download’ buck. However, what if all the content on those pages is a load of old rubbish..!?!!

A while ago, when I was discussing how often I was going to be updating this blog, and the struggles I was having in keeping up with the schedule I had put in place, the most commented-on topic was over the fact that quality matters more than anything else. Visitors were very clear that they would rather come to the blog twice a week, or three times a week for QUALITY posts, than five times a week, for soft or ‘weak’ quality posts.

So, bottom line here – quality – every time. The fact is that I’ve downloaded some eBooks that are just a handful of pages long (personally, I wouldn’t call these ‘eBooks’, but rather ‘Special Reports’, or something similar), and they have been great. However, I’ve downloaded 100+ page eBooks for free and they’ve been mediocre at the best of times.

There are a few exceptions to this rule. Namely, Jonathan Mead and Colin Wright – their free eBooks are nothing short of spectacular, and both great in length and content. I’m sure there are more, but these gentlemen really stand out for me, personally. Note: You’ll see interviews with both these guys on the VBL Podcast soon. They are in being edited, as we speak!

Things Not to Forget

There’s a few things that you certainly do not want to forget to include in your eBook. Firstly, make sure you have some kind of disclaimer / copyright page set-up. In my eBook’s I dont go too heavy on this, but I do make sure to tell everyone that they should feel free to distribute the eBook further afield, however, not to remove or edit anything in anyway, shape or form – that just aint cool, baby!

You should also be sure to include some links to other valuable sources, either on your own blog, and other peoples, too. You can also link to relevant products and services that might help people further, too (we’ll go into this a little more on Wednesday) – just be sure not to link-stuff, too much!

And lastly, be sure to hype yourself a little, at least. A simply ‘About the Author’ page is certainly needed, with a nice image.

Design & Layout

Most people I have spoken to on this subject believe that you can have the most amazing design in the world, but if the content is crappy then you won’t get very far, in the overall scope of things. I agree. However, the importance of standing out, and making sure that the design of your eBook is nice, clean, professional and helps to build your brand is, as far as I’m concerned, just as important as the content.

Although I have a flare for creativeness (my father was an architect, my mother an interior designer), I do not know how to use Photoshop, and quite frankly, when I have such phenomenal support around me, there is no real reason for me to learn how to, either. I come up with the concept, sit with my designer and then he will put it all together. We’ll work as a team, finalize the layout template and then he’ll simply dump the rest of the content into the approved layout. Viola! Your eBook will be finished in no time.

Firstly, having a rockin’ cover will certainly help gain attention. Be sure to spend time on the title. Be original here, guys! Innovative, don’t follow… And the internal pages should be on a white background and a dark covered text, just in case the person that downloads your labor of love wants to print it out. I like to keep images to a minimum in my eBooks, this gets the reader to focus on my content, rather than pretty pictures and colors. See some examples from ‘Saving the Day’, below:

Front Cover, Internal Content Page and the 'About the Author' Page in "Saving the Day!"

You’ll see with this eBook, I came up with a superhero theme. Hence the title and the colors, and front cover Superman-style logo. I loved this when my designer finished it up – but, I will say, the ‘concept’ was ALL ME!!!

You’ll also see that we continued to brand the eBook with the logo internally, too (my designers idea, not mine!) and it worked out great! I highly recommend going with a landscape style layout, as its easier to read on a computer screen – the way eBooks should be read – on a monitor. When you’re done with the layout and the design aspects of the eBook get to focusing on the editing of your content.

Go back through what you’ve written. Focus on just the MEAT of the content itself. Any ‘prettying’ of sentences, etc., lose them. As I always say, sometimes less is more. Remember that. This will enable you to create content that is easy to read, keeps people turning (or clicking) the page and ultimately means that the reader experience is top quality all the way to the end of the eBook.

So, that just about wraps up this first installment of this weeks 3-part series. Let me know what you think in the comments below, and in case you have any additional questions on anything that you feel I might have left out on this part part.

If you’d like to see my entire eBook, including the additional content and the AudioBook version, you can download it here.

See you on Wednesday with Part 2 of the series where I go into how you can now use your eBook to start gaining more subscribers, building your email list, and the tools you can use to make this important activity easier and more successful than you can possibly imagine and… how you can STILL make money with your eBook, even though you’re giving it away for free!

If you liked this first installment – Please share on Twitter, or Facebook!

Replace yourself, Chris!!! What? Again?! Fair comment, but, over the last six weeks I have seen an incredible boost to the sales numbers over at Virtual Staff Finder. Since we launched the service back in September this year, we’ve done good, steady business – but, since the beginning of the year we’ve experienced roughly a 30% increase in sign-up’s.

This has done two things. One – made me happy, obviously, as we’ve been able to help tons of great entrepreneurs find solid virtual employees. And, two – made me VERY busy. Let me explain why…

Virtual Staff Finder helps business owners and entrepreneurs, both online and off, to find good quality, reliable virtual staff. Simple enough for us to do – we’re here in the Philippines, I own and operate an outsourcing company and have years of experience in the field, I have great support staff and a clear marketing vision locally – so we attract GREAT home-based VA’s that want to be involved in what we’re doing and get work with awesome overseas employers, that have ‘Replace yourself, Mike!’ written all over their thought process!

However, part of the process of the VSF service includes a 30min consultation with yours truly. Do you see where I’m going with this now..? You got it – the busier we get, the more people that sign-up to utilize the service, the more consultation calls I have to do.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I absolutely LOVE doing these calls. It allows me to connect with great entrepreneurs and likeminded people, and I’ve actually become good buddies with a few of the VSF clients. But, and for me as a Virtual CEO, its a BIG but… It’s taking massive chunks of my time away from me. My entrepreneurial clock was being slowed done because of the step – regardless of how much I was enjoying interacting with the clients.

So, last week the decision was made to fundamentally take me out of the process. In fact it was my VSF project manager that actually came right out and said, “Boss, you need to replace yourself to be able to focus on other things, too”. She’s awesome! Thinking about it, if I didn’t, I wasn’t going to be able to continue to grow my core business, the Live2Sell Group, as well as the Virtual Staff Finder service – plus, launch all the other projects I am working on for this year, such as the first ever VBL Product - more news on this next week!

The Problem

With this decision, however, came a problem. I had noticed that on pretty much all of these calls I was coaching and helping the clients through vital decision making steps in working with VA’s. How to train them. How to pay them. How MUCH to pay their VA. How to keep them motivated, and so on.

Surely the success of the people that signed-up for the service, in regards to working with the VA’s, must have something to do with all those tips, tools and tactics I was giving them on the call. But, if the call wasn’t part of the VSF equation any more, how would I be able to help the clients?

The Solution

After much deliberation, and several trips to Starbucks, myself and a select few staff at the Live2Sell Group decided that I was going to shoot a series of exclusive videos that would help coach the clients through the entire process, just as if they were on the phone with me. The content of the videos would be pretty much identical to the calls I had been making for the last almost-six-months, but, it was a one-time deal. Once they were shot, edited and uploaded, I would never have to do it again. “Talk about literally, replace yourself!”, I thought to myself… The tick-tock of my entrepreneurial clock was sounding again!

So, Monday last week, I worked on Powerpoint presentations – just simple white screen, black typeface, to be able to follow when I was filming, so that the information was concise and to the point and so I wouldn’t just waffle on… Then, the next day, we shot the videos in one sitting, back to back – surprisingly fast, with no do-overs, thanks to the Powerpoint slides. Then, on Wednesday, they were edited and finalized.

At the beginning of this week we made several very fine adjustments to the VSF Website, that changed certain wording in regards to the consultation call, and everything is now set. For me – this service now becomes a brand new 100% passive income product. As my good friend, Pat Flynn would say “Awesome..!” (in only the way that Pat could say it..!!). Well… Almost.

What Do You Mean ‘Almost’…?!!

As some of you may know, I also offer consultation services on this website – in case you’ve never checked out that section, you can do so for information on personal branding coaching, VA support services and general entrepreneurial brainstorming, amongst other things. So, I still DO a certain amount of consulting – why? Because I enjoy it, plain and simple.

So, what I decided to do, right at the last moment, was to include the ability for people to still have that VSF consultation call with me, however, for a slightly increased price point. Instead of the $350 usual fee, we’re pricing it up at $500.

Ultimately, I don’t expect a lot of people to sign-up using this option. At the end of the day they are using the service to find a qualified, experienced virtual assistant, not to talk to me. However, giving them the opportunity to do so, I believe shows that although I am not part of the ‘normal’ process any more, it doesn’t mean that I don’t care about my clients. And they ARE my clients. It’s my company, after all.

So, that is the tale of how I went about the mission to replace myself from a day-to-day business model, for the second time in 3 months! – Getting good at it, aren’t I..?!!

Why I Wrote This Post

Simple. I wanted to illustrate that although sometimes you start a business in one way, it doesn’t mean that the business has to remain that way. Stagnant. Unmovable. Unchangeable. Especially when the success of that business stops you from doing other things that you want to!

This type of move is commonly called an ‘entrepreneurial pivot’. Much like the pivot in basketball, where you plant one of your feet in one particular position, and although you cant then move that foot (its superglued to the floor!), you can still rotate and reposition it to give you more options of a pass, or shot. The entrepreneurial pivot is a powerful weapon, and one that I have used countless times to great success.  And, I’m also planning one for this blog to happen soon, too!

What Says The Crowd…?!

I’m curious to know what you guys think of this plan, and whether you think it will affect the service in general and – ultimately, its sales. Personally, I think I’ve covered pretty much all the bases in those videos and my support staff on the service are all AWESOME, and take great care of all our clients.

The concept to replace yourself as a business owner might not always be your first choice. However, like I said… Hearing from you guys (as you’re such a smart bunch!), would be great… So, please let me know what you think.

This is a Guest Post by Robb Bailey, as part of Guest Post Friday!

Hiring your first VA can be somewhat of a nightmare.

For those of you who have done it, you know what I’m talking about. Your VA isn’t responding to your emails. The work they’re doing is less than desirable. And you just can’t figure out why it’s so hard for them to understand how to get things done for your business.

For those who haven’t tried outsourcing yet, maybe you’re still constructing a master list of crap-tastic tasks that you just don’t want on your desk anymore. Like organizing last year’s tax receipts, clearing out your email folders, or managing your cat’s Facebook page.

Well, here’s a wake-up call, folks:

You have absolutely no business hiring or keeping a VA unless you have a simple, repeatable process mapped out in your own business BEFORE you employ a virtual assistant of any kind, period. I apologize for the strict tone here, but if you are thinking that having your VA do a myriad of random tasks, with no structure at all behind it, you are in for an uphill battle my friend. You do not have the luxury of coming to the table without a plan if you want to become successful outsourcing your work. “Winging it” is a recipe for disaster. Your days will be longer, your pocketbook will be thinner, and your stress level will fly through the roof. If you’ve read Tim Ferriss’ 4 Hour Work Week, you surely get what I mean here.

Here’s what happens if you do not have a plan in place before outsourcing:

• You quickly find that cheap outsourcing sounded great at the beginning, but now it’s a pain in the butt because your remote VA requires hand-holding in order for you to get the results you’re looking for.
• Your business isn’t making any more money than previous, mostly because your time is being sucked away from money-making activities. Your VA is asking for training on which junk email files you need removed, and which picture of your cat you want on the blog.
• Instead of heading to happy hour with your friends on Friday afternoon, you are stuck at the office drafting a 10-page email to your VA with instructions on how to fix everything they did wrong this week. And what they can do better next week.
• Your 10-page novel (email) to your VA falls on deaf ears since your VA is a visual and experiential learner, not an English comprehension learner. Back to square one.

And this, friends, is what the nightmare is all about

Your day to day will not vary greatly from what I just described unless you create a system for your VA’s to follow. The good news is, if this is you, we’re here to help. And I’m going to show you how prevent most of this.

First, let me share with you an email exchange with a colleague of mine last year. Jeff and I met at a real estate investing mastermind, and he subscribed to my blog after we met. He was curious how I was outsourcing some of the tasks within my real estate investing business, and we began to email in reference to an interview I did with Chris Ducker on one of my posts.  Chris has just announced the opening of Virtual Staff Finder, and I was one of the first to use the service.

Here is some email exchange with a colleague

Jeff’s initial email to me was innocent with intent, but plagued with false hopes from the beginning. Let’s see if you can spot them here:“Hey, it’s Jeff from Phoenix. I’m getting all my ducks in a row to hire a VA after watching your presentation with Chris Ducker.  I wondered if you had a job description, or list of tasks for your first VA that you’d be willing to share.  I’m rackin’ my brain trying to figure out everything I can use them for.  Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. –Jeff”

Jeff was building a list of tasks. He didn’t mention a single thing about the process or plan he had, which worried me. So I replied:“Yeah,  Jeff. No problem. I can give you some suggestions, can you help me narrow it down a bit though? Is it for your RE business? Keeping your website current? Making sales calls?”

I was secretly hoping he would have one goal in mind, but Jeff’s next email confirmed my initial belief.“Thanks for the quick reply.  I’m hiring a VA for my Real Estate business.  On my list so far: Handling direct mail campaigns & updating/modifying mailers with MS Word and/or MS Publisher; updating property checklists utility turn on/off, insurance, etc;  web based data collection;  miscellaneous work with Excel; bi-weekly email updates to private lenders;  social networking; blogging;  possibly handling incoming calls and data entry;  updating website with current properties, etc.”

To which I replied:

“Jeff, bro that’s a TON of stuff for a VA to master…..

Think about how long it would take to train someone in your office to do that in PERSON! What I would do is prioritize and group what you have so far, and try to take the highest priority tasks, like the top 4 or 5. Then drill down on how those tasks are to be done… Exactly. So “updating website with current props”, “blogging”, “social networking”, and “web-based data collecting” would all be separate processes. Choose one to start with. Create a step-by-step outline of how you want each of the tasks within that project done, then create a position for it. Like “Website Content VA”. Focus on those tasks for that one position, and spend time training your new person first before you move onto the next. Trust me, it will be plenty of work for one VA to master one process if you have it mapped out in detail. Once the VA and you have systematized your first process, ask them if they would like to take on some more responsibility. But not until you’re jiving with them on the initial one. Then repeat the above process. You might need to have your VA find another person just like them if all’s going well, lol! Here is an example of a training I got from another outsourcer, you might want to use it to create your first one: …”

You see how that went?

Jeff needed steering away from the nightmare, so I pointed him in the direction of the dream. I never heard back from Jeff about how it all went, but my guess is that he stopped there. I probably saved Jeff dozens of hours and hundreds of dollars by waking him up to the reality of how outsourcing actually works.

The truth is, Jeff did not have a money-making process lined up. Had he continued on, I believe he would have probably failed miserably, and quit outsourcing shortly after. The reason is two-fold.

• 1. Jeff was preparing to have his VA work on several non-income producing tasks, and
• 2. He did not have a process set up for any of the money-making projects he wanted to implement.

In addition, Jeff was looking for someone to run his entire business for him. There were just too many tasks to tackle for one person to handle. Jeff was trying to give a drink of water to some poor VA through a fire hose, when he should have planned to give the drink through a straw instead. J

What’s the take-away from all this?

The solution is simple:

• Create a process for one of your money-making activities,
• Document it,
• Then outsource it to someone who is capable of following instructions.
• Repeat.

That’s it.

No Facebook page for cats. No email folders. No task list that could choke a hippo. The simpler you make this, the easier it will be to outsource effectively.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” –Leonardo Davinci

All you have to do is streamline a money-making process that anybody can follow. Think of making it so simple, a child can do it. Then, plug someone in that can follow instructions. Then you can go to happy hour with your friends on Friday with no worries. And let’s be honest, there’s nothing more important in life than happy hour.

Chris asked me to write a guest blog post for the VBL site, but I wanted to create a more complete tutorial that acts a guide for implementing HOW to create your first plan, make a process for one new VA, and ultimately outsource your first project successfully. The only thing is, I’m not quite ready to release that content. It’s already written, but what I’d like to do is spur a little bit of interaction on the VBL blog. I’ve seen Chris get over 100 comments on one blog post, so I know that he has a pretty active audience.

I’d like to trouble you for your opinion and know the following before releasing the new content to the VBL community:

• 1. What format you’d like to see the tutorial in: Video screencasts, screenshot images, written words like this post is written. (or all 3)
• 2. Whether you’d like to see it all at once in one post, or split up into 5 posts so that I can elaborate more on each mistake. (and how to avoid it)
• 3. If you would benefit from being able to download sample checklists, documents, or examples I’ve used and had success with.

Please leave a comment below and give us your opinion. I’ll then be able to finalize this little tutorial for everyone.

Robb’s been helping small businesses grow since 2005, he’s also a San Diego native & real estate investor. Check him out at RobbBailey.com and on Facebook, too!

Last week this blog turned 365 days old, celebrating its first birthday... Candles were not blown out – but, nonetheless I still celebrated a little. Considering that most blogs created never last past a few months of consistent blogging, any blog getting to its first birthday is a remarkable achievement, lets face it.

Prior to starting the VBL Blog I had blogged on-and-off at ChrisDucker.com (now just a landing page for my online entities), and I knew when I launched the VBL Blog that I would have to work hard to create a space online that entrepreneurs would visit regularly, as well as help spread the word to their friends, family and network of contacts, both online and off. I think I’ve done a half decent job.

I thought it might be kinda cool to put together a few stats from last year, so we can all see how the blog and its brand has grown over the time that its been about. So, here we go.

• 145 published posts (average of 12 per month, or 3 a week) – Plus, this one!
• 3,421 comments (average of 285 per month, or almost 24 per post)
• 1,876 Facebook Fans (average of 156 per month)
• Almost 11,000 monthly visitors to the blog (as of end of 2010)
• 2,231 RSS subscribers
• 3,692 Email (eBook Sign-up) Subscribers
• Over 1,000 emails received from visitors!

Its All About The Community

Its been a great first year and I am supremely happy with what we’ve all achieved together. I say ‘together’, because I never really set-up and launched the blog to be just ‘another blog’. For me the ultimate goal was for it to always develop into something other than just a place for its author to rant or ramble about things. It was about creating a community for people with like-minded interests, such as entrepreneurship, lifestyle design, making money online, travel and a whole bunch of other things, to be able to come together and help and support each other. Personally, I think we’ve achieved a certain amount of that already.

Hoever, there is still a little more needed.

I appreciate that a lot of people that have signed-up to become a subscriber of the VBL Blog, did so to simply receive my free eBook. I’ve had over 500 people that did so, and then unsubscribe immediately – some even wrote me afterwards saying thanks, but that they didn’t want to subscribe full-time. That’s cool, as long as they got something from the eBook, my ‘mission’ behind writing it has been accomplished.

But, I also ask myself… How many of those people that have downloaded the eBook have actually read it, all 52-pages of it, and genuinely taken on board everything I discuss. Have they made notes going through it? Have they put together an action list of things they will change in regards to their relationship with their VA(s)? Have they made steps towards hiring their first VA? Have they started utilizing their VA more effectively, and with more productivity in mind..?

This year, it has to be a little different…

I want to hear and see from you all that you WANT to create an entrepreneurial lifestyle you’ll love to live, as our blog’s tagline suggests! We all need to come together to help each other a lot more. We need to create an even BIGGER COMMUNITY, that far stretches beyond the borders of this blog. If you are serious about wanting to create passive income, utilize outsourcing and becoming a super-mobile, highly successful entrepreneur then now is the time.

It starts right here.

I Want to Help Get You Started

I’ve always said that having great support around me has attributed to my success as an entrepreneur more than anything else. You simply must surround yourself with the best ‘help’ you can get. For some people this means hundreds of employees and several partners, for others its just one or two people. It doesn’t matter – as long as what YOU need is taken care of, you can achieve what you want to, in my mind.

For someone to truly embrace the Virtual Business Lifestyle, doesn’t take a lot. Just the right mindset, the right plan, the right attitude and… the right support. In our ‘virtual world’ of doing business, this means the right General VA. Not a developer, or graphics person, not even an SEO expert (although some can handle simple SEO tasks). Just someone that can help you get shit done every single day!

I have two of them. And they are both awesome. Now its time for YOU to get one.

Your Chance to Win One of my VA’s!

At the Live2Sell Group I employ almost 250 full-time members of staff (a number that continues to grow steadily, thank God). About 30% of those are full-time, professionally provided Virtual Assistants. They work with and support entrepreneurs and business owners all around the world.

You have a chance to win one for an entire month, saving you massive $1,250…!!!!!!

All you need to do to be in the running to win your virtual assistant, completely free of charge, is the following:

• Become a Subscriber to the VBL Blog by completing the opt-in box below.
• Follow me on Twitter!
• Become part of the VBL Facebook Community.
• Share this important post on Twitter and Facebook (just click the buttons below).
• And lastly email me personally with your plan of action for the month, should you win the VA. Let me know how you plan to utilize them to start creating that lifestyle you’ll love to live! Make it as detailed as possible.

I will read through every plan I get, have one of my VAs check that you’ve completed the rest of the qualifying steps, and then select the winning subscriber on February 1st. I will then announce the winner on the VBL Facebook page.

If You Don’t Win, You Can Always Unsubscribe! Yes, You Heard Me Right!

I can appreciate that some of you might be saying to yourself “Chris is just doing this to increase his subscriber numbers, Twitter followers and Facebook Fans..!”. Not true.

I am running this little contest, along with the requirements to be able to win it, to be able to continue to build the VBL Community. But, not any type of community, as I have said. The right kind of community. I’d rather have 1000 subscribers that are 100% committed to doing what we all talk about here, rather than 10,000 subscribers that wanted a free eBook!!!

If you do not want to live life on your own terms – unsubscribe.

If you do not have the desire to be your own boss and ‘stick it to the man’ – unsubscribe.

If you do not want to be location independent, travel the world and work from any place, anywhere, any time, whenever you like – unsubscribe.

If you do not have the passion to create products and services to build a passive income lifestyle – unsubscribe.

If you do not……….. Well – you get the idea, right…..?!!!

See you guys on Wednesday with a smokin’ hot VBL Podcast session with Leo Babauta from Zen Habits, where we discuss how to get started in blogging, and some of the pitfalls to avoid.

I’ve been running my outsourcing business, the Live2Sell Group, for just over 5 years now. We started out as a telemarketing provider, then branched into customer service and support and then, in the early part of 2008 we launched our virtual assistant services (even though we had been providing them to existing clients since 2006, literally, in some way shape or form).

Then, last year I launched my Virtual Staff Finder service, where we help entrepreneurs, online marketers, niche and affiliate marketers, business owners and basically anyone that wants to hire virtual staff, but doesn’t want to go through all the searching, interviewing, background checks, etc., to get the little diamonds in the rough they need to help promote and build their business.

I have written tons of posts on the subject of virtual assistants, recorded a full series of free video tips on the subject for my YouTube Channel, and been interviewed time and time again on the topic. Yet, the subject of VA’s and how to find them, train them, work with them, etc., is probably still one of the most requested topics of conversation from me, than anything else.

This month, so far, has been no different, with a surge in sign-up’s for Virtual Staff Finder and a ton of emails on the subject. It seems that people just can’t get enough tips and tactics on working with virtual assistants. So, in this edition of ‘Ask Chris’ I answer the following questions, which have been collated from a whole bunch of you smart, savvy VBL Followers!

• What is the best way to train my virtual assistant?
• How do I keep my virtual assistant motivated and happy to work for me?
• How much do I pay my virtual assistant?

I figured this would also be a good opportunity to dip into the VBL Archives a little, and produce a little link-juice for you all – so check out these popular past posts on the same subject, too!

• VBL Discussion: What’s Your Number One Virtual Assistant Tip?
• Top 3 Surefire Ways To Effectively Delegate To Your Virtual Team
• How Much Do I Pay My Overseas, Home-Based Virtual Assistant…?
• How to Utilize Virtual Assistants to Help Create, Market and Sell Your ’4HWW’ Style Muse!

Hope you enjoy the answers, and be sure to comment below with your questions for the next edition!

Some of my Outsourcing Staff Displaying Recent Certificates of Achievement!

Part of the ‘VBL Core4′, as I have recently started to refer to them as, is Outsourcing. When it comes to lifestyle design, we look more towards personal outsourcing, rather then the huge call center outsourcing that takes place so much nowadays. And, when we think personal outsourcing, we think of virtual assistants (on which there is 33 archived articles on this blog alone – click the link to see ‘em!).

I’ve been involved with outsourcing for so long now that it is part of my daily life, more than most people can comprehend. Sure, I run an outsourcing company – but, I also provide content on the subject for many magazines, associations, business groups and other media sources, too, based on my 10 years of experience in the industry. However, personal outsourcing and working with virtual assistants has become such a huge topic that I now get more emails on this subject alone, when it comes to outsourcing, than any other aspect on the topic! I’ve even recorded a ‘short and sharp’ series of 10 related videos, which you can check out, too, if you like!

So, following on from yesterdays VBL Podcast episode, where we met Vik Tantry and spoke about how he works with over 20 virtual assistants to help build his online empire, today’s VBL discussion point is on the subject of VAs and most importantly – top tips on working with them.

My Number One VA Tip

My number one tip, above and beyond everything else on working with a virtual assistant, is to make sure that you provide solid training when you start working with them. So many people think that outsourcing to a VA is a magic pill that you can pop and everything will work perfectly from the outset – doesn’t happen that way. This is one of the things I discuss in my free eBook on the subject.

Spend some time showing them how you want things presented, the type of layouts you like for reports in Excel, etc. Time spent on this stuff right at the beginning of your relationship is more valuable than you can possibly imagine. Trust me!

If you guys would be interested in a more in-depth post on the ‘training’ side of things, let me know, I’d be happy to elaborate on a few things!

Okay – so, over to you guys!

While at BlogWorld in October, I got the chance to meet with many highly talented people, and successful online entrepreneurs. I jumped at the opportunity to interview as many of these awesome people as possible, whilst I was with them (including todays guest) – almost everyone said yes, on the spot (the rest, I’ll grab hold of online via Skype in the coming months. The VBL Podcast has grown from strength to strength over the last few months, and it is all down to the great guests I have on, and the fantastic viewers / listeners that subscribe and download them (thanks, if you;re one of either!).

And my guest for this session, Vik Tantry, although a ‘new kid on the block’ is already making waves and proving he can play with the big boys - by showing that the ‘bigger picture’ is always the right picture to chase after. What makes Vik awesome is that he is currently utilizing the skills of over 20 (yes, you read correctly!) virtual assistants to help grow his online empire!

In todays chat with Vik, we discuss amongst other things:

• How Vik got started in online marketing!
• Why he works with most of his VAs on a part-time basis, for scalability reasons.
• Vik’s biggest challenges in working with virtual staff, at a distance.
• How VAs can help you create awesome original content for online marketing.
• Why virtual assistants are the perfect outsourcing solution to manage WordPress sites.
• Much, much more!

Play or Download the audio of this podcast to listen to it on your iPod, iPhone or iPad below, and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, too!

As you can see / hear, although a relative newcomer, Vik is certainly a smart cookie, with some serious business sense under his hat.

To find out more about how he creates his online income, and his strategies on internet marketing in general, visit his blog TheresMoneyEverywhere.com. You can also follow Vik on Twitter, too.

We’ll see you tomorrow where we kick off another VBL Discussion, as we ask the question ‘Whats your Number One Virtual Assistant Tip’.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Everybody wants the 4-Hour Workweek dream of being able to make money whilst they sleep or travel around the world. Myself included, if the truth be told. But, lets face it – its pretty hard to do. The fact is, however, it used to be a hell of a lot harder than it is today, and I believe that as time continues to go by, it will actually become a lot easier than it is today, even. Here’s why…

The newage entrepreneur is a totally different breed of entrepreneur than we had 10, or 20 years ago. We are now a lot more tech savvy in general. We are also hungrier, I believe, than ever before to make money. And… We have this remarkable business partner just ready and waiting to get into bed with us and help us to start making money – perhaps not overnight, but nonetheless. That partner is called ‘The Internet’.

If you have an idea for a product or a service that you feel can genuinely help solve a problem for someone, get them to the next level in their career, or just make their life easier, then you can, utilizing the internet and all that goes with it (such as social media, etc.), start making money whilst you sleep.

How I am Now Making Money While I Sleep

A couple of months ago I set up a new consultancy service, Virtual Staff Finder (this is NOT going to turn into a plug for the service, I promise – you can read that here, if you like!). Since then, I have done very little SEO on the website, and absolutely no traditional marketing at all for the service. All I’ve done is focus on the community that I have been lucky enough to build online, and to utilize the power of incoming leads from the website of my outsourcing company, the Live2Sell Group.

I set up the Virtual Staff Finder service because every day we get a lot of inquiries from entrepreneurs all around the world wanting to hire virtual assistants, and other types of virtual staff (telemarketers, book-keepers, etc.) – but, want them to be based at home, for the cost saving benefits, obviously.

Although as a company, this is something that we didn’t used to do, the businessman inside of me finally came around to thinking that it was a real waste to a) not be able to help these entrepreneurs and b) make some money from doing so!

The Process of Building my Online Consultancy Business

I did my research and found out that there was nobody else out there, with the experience and reputation in the outsourcing industry that I have, that was doing anything similar. So, I got going with it.

Here’s what I did to get this ‘idea’ to market in less than 4 weeks:

• Brainstormed and eventually registered virtualstafffinder.com domain name.
• Plotted out how the process of the service would work, fine-tuning it to death to make it as simple as possible for both the entrepreneurs using the service, and us, too!
• Sat with my web developer (who works for me full-time, in-house) to come up with a concept for the website, and a minimum of 3 different designs. I also decided that I didn’t want the site to be a blog style, but rather a static website which didn’t very little attention, to save my time.
• Put together the written content, and shot the ‘welcome’ video clip.
• Set-up several different avenues, locally, within the Philippines to be able to find the talent needed from the virtual staff side of things (which is actually still on-going all the time, although is now done by my VSF Project Manager).
• Got going with an e-Junkie account, and linked it up via Paypal to be able to accept online payments.
• Tweaked and tweaked the website, until we were happy with it (we will, however, be making some changes soon).
• Went Live!

And that is it. Not a lot required, and to be very honest, if my web development guy wasn’t working on several projects at once, the chances are we could have got this entire thing up and running in perhaps half the time.

Since the launch we’ve had 25 people sign-up for the service (average of 3 per week) at a rate of $350 a pop. That’s $8,750 in around 8 weeks, or $4,375 a month – almost $220 per business day. And here’s clincher here, above and beyond everything else. I’ve made the majority of those sales while I was sleeping. Seriously.

Because I live here in the Philippines, when you guys are up and about in the US, I’m hitting the sack – usually by your lunch time. So, when I wake up in the morning (around midnight EST most days), I check my email and start the day with a smile.

Here’s a couple of instances where sales have come in at ‘odd’ times just recently… I’ve had 2 sales come through whilst at my Son’s playgroup (on separate occasions). I had 2 come in within the space of a 3 hour meeting with a client when I was in the US last month, one at BlogWorld and just yesterday I had 3 sales come through whilst working out and then having lunch with my wife.

Is This Truly Passive Income?

Simply answer, to a simple question – no. Not really. The ‘getting the order’ is passive. However, because its a consultancy service, once the order comes in, the work begins. First with a consultation call with the client, then with my project manager and her team sourcing, interviewing, testing the candidates, communicating with the client, etc. But, you don’t hear me complaining, do you..? That fact is that we service our clients well, and my company makes extra money. Money, that if I hadn’t of started the service, we wouldn’t be making.

Looking back into the archives of this blog a little, you’ll see I did a video post where I discuss 6 Different Passive Income Ideas, and lets face it, by definition, passive income should be earning whilst totally hands off, I appreciate that – and I am due to be launching my first ‘true’ passive income product soon. This is just a spin-off of the ‘passive’ idea of things.

Why I Wrote This Post

I wrote this post because I get so many emails every month from people that are interested in starting some kind of ‘make money’ venture online, but are either a) not sure how to get started, b) don’t have a solid idea, or c) can’t believe that its really possible and therefore never really go for it.

The whole thing here more than anything else is that I had an idea, I realized that there was a hole in the market and that the idea was going to be solving a problem for people (in this case, saving people valuable time more than everything else) and used the resources and people around me to make it happen – quickly. Can you do the same – YES!

FACT: Everyone has the chance to make money while they sleep, or get beaten up by toddlers at their Son’s playgroup (!). You just have to simply plan and execute. Stop procrastinating and get going with it. Start it up. Promote it. SELL it. And make money from it.

Had success with starting an online service or business? Need help, or got questions on how to do it..? If so, tell us all about it below. I’d love to hear what you all think on this topic. Cheers!

Number of Days in the Office: 7, Total Number of Employees: 212

Ah… It’s good to be back! October was a whirlwind of a month, I must say. Above you’ll find a little (4mins) montage of my trip to the USA. I actually have a TON of footage I shot over there this time around, hours and hours to be frank! However, I decided to keep this video short for digestion purposes! But – get excited, there is plenty of awesome video and podcast content coming in the next few months, thanks to my adventures at BlogWorld. So, onto the Monthly Report – strap yourself in – its a biggie!

First up, let me begin by saying a massive ‘thank you’ to those who submitted Guest Posts for the month of October. The idea to run a full month of guest posts came out of nothing but sheer laziness on my part, to be frank! I was traveling for almost three weeks of the month, and knew I was going to also be very engrossed in business, so wanted to not have to worry about the blog all that much. This laziness actually had some great advantages. First and foremost, it enabled me to highlight some of the awesome talent we have floating around in the growing VBL Community. You guys simply ROCK! Secondly, it did wonders for blog traffic, with our site’s Alexa rank growing from 109,000 to 89,000 at the time of writing this. So, again, thank you.

NEW: Guest Post Friday

In fact, I enjoyed getting you guys so much more involved in the blog in general (other than just tweeting, sharing and commenting) that I’ve decided to make guest posting a part of the regular VBL Diet of content. So, from now on, every Friday will be Guest Post Friday (as long as I have submissions, obviously!). So, if you didn’t get the chance to be included in October’s festivities, please feel free to submit your guest posts at anytime, going forward.

Old Style Networking – Still the BEST!

On the last day or BlogWorld I was asked to give a comment via video for a report that they were doing for their own blog (you can see the full video with everyone’s comments here). I was asked what was the one thing I took away from the expo, more than anything else. My answer, as you’ll see in the video, was the fact that even though I had met the majority of the people I hung out with at the expo, online, there was nothing better than forging those relationships by actually meeting up in person, shaking hands, talking, eating and laughing together. October was indeed a month of hand-shaking for me. Whilst in the US, along with the treasure-trove of bloggers and online marketers that I hung out with, I also met with three clients as well as two prospective clients.

Content, Content, Content

So, back to those upcoming videos and podcasts. I was supremely lucky to meet with a whole bunch of great people at BlogWorld, including (completely by surprise!) a new client that I had just helped find a Virtual Assistant via my Virtual Staff Finder service. From all the conversations, parties (thanks to Darren Rowse for invites to BOTH of the VIP Problogger Suite Parties, too!) and getting-to-know-you sessions, I collected a huge amount of great content for you. Coming up in the next few weeks and months you will be seeing interviews with, amongst others, the following people:

• Leo Babauta – Zen Habits
• Pat Flynn – Smart Passive Income (3-Part Video Series)
• David Risley – DavidRisley.com
• Maren Kate – Escaping the 9 to 5
• Jordan Cooper – Not a Pro Blog
• Vik Tantry – There’s Money Everywhere
• Eric & Seth – Frugal Theme
• Kevin Bates – We’ve Created a Monster
• Karol – Ridiculously Extraodinary
• Matt Gartland – Healthy Lifestyle Design

Zappos – Here I Come! (Exclusive Video Report SOON!)

Whilst in Vegas, I also got myself onto the Zappos Tour (along with social media guru, Mike Stenger, great guy!). They came and picked us up from the hotel and drove us right out to their HQ (about 20-30mins from the Vegas strip), and greeted us with open arms when we arrived. What followed was possibly one of the most eye-opening 2 hours of my life. Seriously. From a business standpoint, this 120 minutes has changed the way I look at things on a number of topics. You’ll find out how in November, when my full Zappos Tour Report goes live. Including a butt-load of exclusive video that I shot when on the tour itself..!

My First Full-Blown Passive Income Product – DONE!

Whilst traveling, I got down and dirty and worked my ass off finishing up a passive income product that I’ve been working on for the last year, literally, on and off. My first full-blown online product will be launched in early December (currently being finished up by my design team), and is a mix of an eBook, Videos, Audio and Webinar content. It’s totally unrelated to the VBL Blog, and is a true niche that I know a lot about, so I’m hoping that it’ll fly when launched. This is the first real step into the passive income world for me, so I am excited to see how it goes. I want to say a quick thank you to VBL Community member, Ben Lumley for motivating me to finish this thing up. Appreciate the confidence, Ben!

In Closing…

My monthly report wouldn’t be complete without an update on my ‘brick n mortar’ business, the Live2Sell Group, the 200+ employee business that I am attempting to unshackle myself from (on a day-to-day basis, that is!) and become that Virtual CEO. This month was a mixed one of losing a couple of small clients, but gaining two awesome medium-sized ones. It’s always tough when clients go, but its a fact of business life – it certainly helps to deal with it when you actually end up gaining ‘more’ out of it in the long run though.

Also, our new Operations Manager, Ben, who has now been with us for a couple of full months on the job, is doing a remarkable job rallying the troops together to finish off the year as strongly as possible. Lots of processes have been put in place, plenty of systems updated and I’m liking what I’m seeing from our growing management team. Im going to be giving you a sneak-peek pass into one of our upcoming MGMM’s (Monthly General Management Meeting) soon, so you can see exactly how I work with my team in growing and developing our team of outsourcing staff, as well as the company culture that we are putting in place, too.

All in all a very memorable, worthwhile, enjoyable and creative month…

I hope you enjoyed the update (if you liked it, please RT and Share!) and look forward, as always, to your comments, suggestions and feedback below.