• The cost of identity and information theft far exceeds any cost and effort involved in installing a secure shopping cart. Identity theft affects nearly ten million people a year, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Providing for customer security and lessening the business owner’s liability will pay for itself in peace of mind, reduced loss, and increased sales.

• Shoppers are well informed about the risks and precautions associated with online shopping. They are more likely to complete a transaction when the site is secure.

• Studies of online buying habits have shown that sales increase as much as 15 percent when a site is protected by technology such as McAfee’s Hacker Safe. Shoppers also look for the lock icon, and know the url in the address bar will change from http:// to https:// or shttp:// when they have entered a secure page. If a site does not display these assurances, the transaction will often not be completed.

• Similarly, buyers look for SSL certification when proceeding to checkout. This certification assures consumers that proper encryption technology is in place to protect their personal data during transfer.

• Surveys of consumers identified lack of confidence in a website’s security as one of the top reasons they abandon a shopping cart before completing the transaction.

• Using a self-hosted, unsecured shopping cart puts all data at risk should spyware find its way onto the business owner’s server.

Cost, time, and technical difficulties are sometimes prohibitive issues for new business owners. There are alternatives for start-up businesses with these concerns. PayPal by far is the most popular and affordable payment processor, as well as a ready-made, secure shopping cart. WAHMcart is a very affordable shopping cart system and I especially love it for delivery of digital products.

So what are the advantages of installing a secure shopping cart? The business owner earns credibility with consumers, a prerequisite for online success as well as an invaluable commodity. As shoppers’ confidence increases, so does their willingness to purchase and the likelihood they will do so. Satisfied customers provide a broad base from which to draw repeat business. They also make recommendations to friends and associates, who will be assured by the positive regard and therefore will be predisposed to visit the website. The bottom line is higher conversion rates and higher sales volume.

1. Digital delivery – This is sending out ebooks, reports or ecourses. If you are sticking to digital products then you want a program that will give out a cloaked link for delivery. Like WAHMcart or E-Junkie.

2. Physical products and shipping – This is sending out products to a person’s address. Cd’s, paper books, candles and other products to shop. This will require a shopping cart to calculate shipping, local sales taxes if necessary, and a good program will give you a clickable shipping label link! Zen cart is a good source for this and free. It does take some learning curve though, but if you have multiple physical products, I highly encourage you to look into it. WAHMcart does also do physical products, but I haven’t used it so I can’t give a review of it.

3. Affiliate program – As I’m in the affiliate manager marketing department, I have a few more of these to list. WAHMcart, E-Junkie, aMember, and Wishlist.

These are just three of the major things you need to look at before choosing a shopping cart for your products. Your price point per month or per sale and other aspects also come into affect, but get a list of those that hit the above areas first and then go by price.

One of the things I always hear from people is that they were unhappy with what they outsourced, and I’d say about 90 percent of the time that thing was some form of content creation, writing an article, posting on a blog, making a video, etc. Then I look at what they received and I say, “But, this is really good. Why are you unhappy with it?” And of course, they have no idea, they’re just not happy with it, something is missing.

Do you know what that something is? It’s their passion. They’re so used to creating content and writing in their own voice that they expected the passion to come through in the ghost writer’s work. That’s not going to happen unless your ghost writer is just as passionate as you about the topic, but that doesn’t make the content any less valuable to you. Sometimes you have to let go of that attachment just a little tiny bit.

Don’t worry, there’s good news. I’m not all gloom and doom here, after all I love outsourcing! The good news is that when you find someone to do the content creation that you’re comfortable working with and that can work for you on a regular basis you’re going to develop a relationship with them and they are going to pick up your tone and your passion!

Ask them to read some of your previous writing or watch some of your previous videos so that they can get an idea of your perspective, the words you use, the overall tone you convey. These tiny little details will make a huge difference in what you get back. Of course, don’t expect them to read your life’s work in one sitting, but just two or three pieces of content so that they can match up their writing to your writing.

Communication is what this is really all about. Having an open line of communication with your virtual assistant, ghost writer, content creator, and anyone else who is doing work for you is the best thing you can do during your outsourcing efforts. Talk about the project, let them know your expectations, and include any special requests right at the very beginning of the project together.

I hope that makes sense. I’d love to hear some of your outsourcing stories and questions.

Kind Regards,

P.S. If you need some outsourcing help to make sense of things I highly recommend Nicole Dean’s Outsourcing Weekly – There’s a free mini course that will get you started in the right direction with outsourcing and tell you how to avoid those costly outsourcing mistakes we all fear. After that, the full Outsourcing Weekly course will get you up and outsourcing at full steam with resources, suggestions, and recommendations.

Have you had time to research the top blogs in your niche? Maybe you have started commenting on a few of them, but have lost track of the last time you visited. It’s not easy when you are trying to keep your own blog updated with fresh content and possibly creating digital products to sell or giveaway. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

Outsourcing your blog promotion can lead to huge traffic increases. Your VA can take sites that you are already a regular on and keep up with their posts with relevant comments, research new blogs to comment on and so much more.

If you have your favorite blogs to comment on in your feedreader already, then commenting may be just a matter of a few hours a month. Blog promotion hours will be a matter of communication between you and your VA to find out what your needs are and make the most of them. It’s amazing what can be accomplished in just a couple of hours a month.

In the case of my VA services, you can set the amount of blogs you want comments on and we can set a monthly retainer fee. I will comment on relevant posts weekly or more often as specified in our contract. But a retainer will guarantee that the high SEO blogs in your keywords are hit regularly to bring you the most traffic possible in your target market.

While you are busy creating new, think about how you are growing your readership. It’s frustrating to post incredible, informative posts and have no comments back from readers or very little traffic. Contact me to find out how we can push that forward.

I have set hours now for my email response time. Monday-Friday 8am-3pm PST and I reserve the right to not be able to respond to new clients in that time as well. I’m sure you will understand that those times are also first booked with my clients needs and projects.

I started out VA’ing and thinking I needed to contact all my clients and perspective clients immediately. I have always worked hard at contacting everyone asap. This has and is biting me in the butt. Now, I have people that expect a response in just a few minutes and honestly, they aren’t even paying for it. Yep, story of my life, I set myself up to be taken for granted. My time is valuable and emails take up that time.

Do you value your time? Do you have a set value for your time? If you are a coach then yes you do. Do you expect that same value of others time? It is a different way to think and I realize it. Goodness, I had to change my way of thinking around it as well. I still am. I’ve been online for many years and emails were just a part of life. But now emails from clients, prospective clients and people that should be paying for my time are overwhelming. Previously, I could easily get through emails in less than an hour for the entire day. There are days now where it can be two hours or more to get through emails and research responses. See the predicament?

Setting boundaries is difficult when you are talking about people that are customers. I guess it comes down to defining your business terms, your business outline and everything in-between. For me it means I need to set some contact rules in writing and update my VA client agreement. You should expect the same value from your VA for their time that you deserve and ask for. If you can’t ask for that same value then you may not be contracting with the right VA for you.

Blog management will keep those blogs you started, current and the money flowing in from the traffic you worked hard to build. Stagnant blogs will hurt your traffic as return visitors stop returning. Remember that new content is king in the google search engines and unless you have been under a rock, no matter what anyone tells you, google is still the top search engine. Go ahead and check where your stat searches come from and then get back to me lol

You have a blog or website that is bringing in good or decent money, but it’s not truly your passion anymore? What to do? Sell it? Sure, but from where and will you get the amount of money you can make from a year or two’s affiliate clicks? Blog management is here to help. Blog management will bring you regular content and keep your target traffic happy. I’ll write articles in the same topics that are bringing you traffic and also answer blog comments weekly.

Your blog will no longer look sadly neglected and will keep up with the search engines. Keeping you at your current, hard-earned status in the search engine battle for your keywords and possibly moving you ahead if you never used keywords to build your content.

Blog management can take on many different roles depending on your blog so make sure and ask for ways to fit my services to your needs. Standard blog management rates can be found at the bottom of my services page and custom packages can be created. Possibly you just need a couple of posts a month to fill between your postings.

These prices are low and won’t to stay this price forever. I only have so many hours a week and my services are well received. I can’t make more hours in the day even though I have tried very hard to do so. lol Let me know what your blog theme is and how I can help you stay at the same level of greatness or even move up to the next level with your blog.

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It’s also a great place to find great folks to outsource to, and the escrow payment system reduces your risk. Get started outsourcing and simplify your business today!

Happy Freelancing and Outsourcing!

“Outsourcing” is a hot topic, but what is it and can you use it in your business? Outsourcing is the process by which you pay someone else to do tasks that take you away from making money with your direct sales business. Can you use it for direct sales businesses? You sure can! Here are five things you can outsource to make your direct sales business more efficient, and possibly even more profitable.

1. Newsletters

As a direct sales business owner, you have to communicate with your downline and your customers. A newsletter is a great way to do this. However, if you’re not comfortable writing a newsletter each month, you can outsource this task to someone who is more suited to it.

Find a ghostwriter, someone who will write the content in the newsletter for you. You can still pass it off as your own work. No one on your team needs to be the wiser. You do need to make sure you’ve read the content, though, just in case someone asks a question about it.

2. New target markets

Hire someone to call your current customer list and ask them some pointed questions. Ask them how old they are, which products they are using, their income bracket, whether they rent or own their home, and how many people are in their family. You may find, after compiling the information, that you have more people in one age and income bracket using your products than any other market. Now you know which new market group to target with your advertising dollar.

3. Autoresponders

Autoresponders, an automatic system of sending pre-written emails to your contact list, are great for saving time and money. You may not understand the concept, but there are people that would be willing to set up your autoresponder system for you. They will be able to create emails for nearly any reason you would send an email, all without having to personally attend to an email system. Autoresponders are set up and then when someone joins your list the emails go out in the order scheduled.

4. Drop shipping

If you’re in direct sales, you may have one outsourced task already taken care of for you. Many direct sales companies have a process in place where you never have to maintain inventory of the products you sell. This process is called “drop shipping”. You place the order, tell the system where the order needs to go, and the company sends it to your customer for you. If your sales are brisk and it is keeping you from other work, you may consider outsourcing this task further by hiring someone to input these orders for you.

5. Direct mailing

After you’ve built up a client list, you’ll want to keep in contact with them on a regular basis. You may have created a postcard with coupons and need to mail it out right before a major event or holiday. Paying someone to label and stamp each postcard could be money well spent.

Outsourcing is an excellent way to get more done in your direct sales business. There’s no reason that you, as the business owner, must attend to each and every task. Your time and effort would best be spent completing tasks that will help generate a higher income. Even though you may be putting out money by outsourcing these five tasks, it might be some of the best money you’ve ever spent.

Contact Val to discuss your outsourcing needs and where you can better spend your time and money. These are just 5 of the many tasks that can be done for you by a virtual assistant.

I’m Nicole Dean and I’m a friend of Loretta’s – as you can see in the picture to the left. That’s us! She’s in the chair and I’m next to her in the pinkish shirt with the shiny head.

I’m here this week as a Guest Expert helping you to make blogging more fun and profitable by outsourcing the pieces that you don’t enjoy. Today’s my last day already. Can you believe it?

So far we’ve talked about:

• How to Outsource Your Blog Installation and Plugin Installation.
• How to Outsource Your Blog Content without Tears.
• How to Outsource your List Building.
• How to Outsource Blog Comments.

Today, we’ll wrap it all up by talking about outsourcing your blog marketing.

All of the issues that we’ve discussed up until now are all well and good, but they won’t make you any money until you have traffic (actual people — with wallets) who are reading your blog, right?

Here is where the rubber meets the road. You’ve gotta, gotta, gotta market your online business if you wish to profit. Well, I take that back. Someone has to market your business if you want to make money from it — but it doesn’t have to be you.

One of the best ways to get web traffic is by sharing content in some format. Choose whichever you’re most comfortable with – writing, talking, or recording video and start producing your content. Then, hire someone to get it as far away from your OWN computer as possible — onto other websites all over the web.

• If you’re writing articles, hire someone to submit them to the article directories and to interested publishers.
• If you’re recording audios, get a podcast on BlogTalkRadio, or offer the audios as part of PLR packages or giveaways.
• If you’re recording videos, make sure they’re posted on every video site that wants them.

Spread it all over the net.

Of course, you can also have a helper who schedules interviews for you on other people’s podcasts or telesminars. My wonderful Executive Assistant (I think that’s her title of the week…) filters interview requests and schedules the ones that are a good fit for me into my Google Calendar during my available times. That ensures that I don’t miss any great opportunities and that I always know what’s up as far as promoting my stuff. She knows that I’ll only schedule one thing per day, so I don’t run out of steam and she’s a lifesaver. You can have someone help with your calendar and exposure as well.

Now, I could get into any number of other ideas here – hiring SEO talent, getting press releases written, having your business cards designed and printed — of course other people can be hired to do all of that and more. But, I’ve only got one little blog post to wrap this up in.

So, let’s talk about my favorite topic – Repurposing.

Have your Virtual Assistant take your hottest blog posts and turn them into pdfs that you can distribute all over the web, to your lists, and to joint venture partners. You can also get those pdfs into giveaway events, offer them as bonuses for other people’s products and a million other things. (Yes, I do all of these and more.)

Your blog is just one part of the big picture and potential online. If you’re having so much fun blogging that you’re not doing any marketing, then find a Virtual Assistant to give you a hand. It’ll certainly boost your exposure and therefore, your profits.

I hope I’ve given you some ideas this week. If you like what I have to say here, I teach a course called Outsource Weekly that teaches you how to outsource effectively. Check it out by clicking on the banner below.

That’s it for me, guys. Thanks for reading and for commenting.

Warmly,
Nicole Dean

Check out my blog: Nicole Dean’s Online Success Blog & Podcast

Follow me on Twitter: Nicole Dean &  Loretta, too!

I’m here this week as a Guest Expert helping you to make blogging more fun and profitable by outsourcing anything that you don’t like, aren’t good at, or keep putting off.

So far we’ve talked about:

• How to Outsource Your Blog Installation and Plugin Installation.
• How to Outsource Your Blog Content without Tears.
• How to Outsource your List Building.

Today, we’ll move ahead into blog comments.

First of all, I always encourage using automation before delegation, so be sure that you have a plugin installed that can handle your blog’s comment spam. I have switched over to Akismet now as it seems to recognize my spam better (less bad ones getting through and less good ones getting sucked into oblivion).

So, outsource the installation of the Akismet plugin if you don’t like to do that type of thing.

Once you have the plugin installed and set to your liking, you can have a helper still manage the ongoing task of keeping an eye on your comments, weeding out the spammy ones, and pulling your friends out of the spam vortex! I have a few helpers keep an eye on several of my blogs to manage the spam comments that come through.

Then, if you want, you can have your helpers also interact on your blog –

1. Post comments to keep your blog discussions active. Oftentimes, a blog post that has no comments will sit that way. However, if you have a helper on hand to initiate discussion on a blog post, you will find more people who will pitch in with their two cents, too.

2. Respond to comments if you’re out of town or busy. Everyone likes to have their comments read and responded to, but sometimes it’s impossible to stay on top of it yourself. This is where having some helpers can come in really handy, so that you don’t appear rude — just because you’re sick or traveling or working on other projects.

Of course, there’s the other side of things, which is commenting on other blogs with a link to your blog in the URL field. I’m not a big fan of outsourcing that, simply because I don’t like it when others do it to my blogs. However, it is an option. Just do it carefully. And, if you allow your helper to use YOUR name, then make sure you’ve got a really good handle on your relationship with that person first, and you know they aren’t going to post something inappropriate, controversial, or just plain icky that you then have to do damage control.

I’ll be back tomorrow with my wrap-up. But, first, I’d like to share this article from my mentor Jimmy D. Brown that is all about being more effective at home:

The Real Secret To Building A High-Profit Internet Business
By Jimmy D. Brown

My wife laughs every time she sees me doing it.

At least once or twice every week, I’ll be at my desk (or at the dining room table) with my Franklin Covey planner open and a stack of laminated checklists in hand.

“What are you doing, honey?” she calls, already knowing the answer.

“I’m planning”, I reply with a smile.

She laughs and I get back to work.

She laughs because she swears I spend half of my time “planning”. But, if you ask me how I’m able to get as much work done as I do in only 3 hours a day, I’ll point to a black Franklin Covey planner with about a dozen laminated checklists inside.

Building an Internet business is easy. Seriously. I’m not saying that it’s not complicated, because it is. I’m just saying that it’s easy to accomplish if you just have a system in place.

There’s very little in this world that can’t be accomplished with the right set of action steps in front of you.

Today, I’m going to give you such a system for building your Internet business. There are only 4 steps…

1. Decide What You Want To Do. Do you want to run an eBay(R) business? Be an affiliate marketer? Buy and sell reprint rights? Get involved in niche marketing? While all of those things will likely find their way into your plan in time, you gotta begin with one thing at a time.

My recommendation: Choose a “broad” topic you are interested in and begin building a list of folks interested in that topic.

2. Determine A Weekly Action Plan. After you decide what you want to do, it’s time to determine how to get it done. What I do is this: I create a weekly set of action steps. That is, I have a set of things I do on Monday, on Tuesday, and so forth. Decide how many hours (as little as ONE) you want to work each day and schedule yourself a reasonable amount of things to get done in that time frame. Repeat this process week after week.

My recommendation: Begin writing ezine articles to promote your list … and affiliate programs. It’s the easiest way to get free traffic and build your list at the same time.

3. Devote Yourself To Staying On Schedule. The important thing here is to stick to it. The easiest way that I know of to make certain you develop discipline in your schedule is to NOT set unrealistic expectations. Give yourself ample time to do each day’s action step – don’t overschedule. Look for progress along the way to celebrate. Reward yourself when you’ve reached a milestone. And, remember, you’re GROWING a business. Just like physical growth, it takes time … it WILL happen if you remain committed.

My recommendation: Weave in simple activities related to the following categories – List building (ezine articles), product creation(conduct interviews or hire ghostwriters), site development (making your site convert more visitors into buyers),and education (continuing to learn new ways to grow your business).

4. Develop Additional Shortcuts. As you get better and better at working with your lists, creating products and tweaking your site, you’ll want to continue to improve your business with new ideas, strategies, tools, and resources. The key is simple: never stop learning!

My recommendation: Visit forums. Read articles. Download reports. Identify sites and resources that CONTRIBUTE to your success in educating you. You want faster results, bigger increases, automated processes, and other ways to get more accomplished and more profit, with less work involved.

Everything depends on your developing a plan and sticking to it.

And that is the REAL secret to building a high-profit Internet business!

Believe it or not, there is a tremendous “operations manual” that you can download right here at SR Zone to help you create a plan that works for YOU. Check out “Homepreneur Habits: How To Run A Successful Home Business ” by clicking here. You’ll learn all the tools you need, how to setup your work space and how to create a day-by-day schedule of recommended activities to start and grow your business.

Warmly,
Nicole Dean

PS. If you like what I have to say here, I teach a course called Outsource Weekly that teaches you how to outsource effectively. Check it out by clicking on the banner below.