Making a [)ifference by Adding \/alue + Just gone GREEEEEN

Hi Guys

Having an online business which makes 6 figures is the dream of everyone. Many of self made online millionaires have worked hard for years, many times coping with a day job and putting enormous number of hours to achieve their dream. This is the path they chose, but some didn’t do so much effort, they were more clever. Take Tim Ferris as an example, he managed to make over $ 40, 000 a month by working less than 10 hours a week. There is no secret to that, he just had a Virtual Team. Let me elaborate.

There are tons of ways of making money online, but let’s come back to the basics. You need a website ( with a killing copy or tremendously good content) or a blog, a product or service to sell and some sort of customer support.

Now you may be thinking that all this is going to cost you a killing to start with, well yes……but no, not if you OUTSOURCE.

There are tons of places where you can outsource your web design, copywriting, article writing, keyword research, programming, customer support etc at VERY REASonable prices. Some people like elance.com, others hire local VAs, some get outsourcing partners in philipines. You can do it your way….

At the end of the day its a matter of building a team, your winning team. It will take you some time to learn how to manage outsourcing companies, especially if they are on a different timezone, from a different culture and NOT face to face. You will learn by your mistakes, but if you are cautious and organised, you will get there quickly.

I have tried and tested many of outsourcing companies and Virtual Assistants, if you have any questions, please shoot.

Thanks

Rajeev

ps: You can also Hire the same VA’s that I use, they are the best in this world.

Hi Guys

Thanks for having a peep on my blog.

If you are new to outsourcing and using Virtual Assistance, there are some basics you should know so that you do not throw money out of the window and also get the best out of your resources.

Your VA is a Human Being, build a rapport.

It is true that you pay good money to hire VA services but if you want your job to be done efficiently, you should be able to build a rapport. Most of the time VAs are hardworking people who will do all sort of tasks that you don’t want to handle as long as they get paid for it and also spend most of their time in front of a computer. That said, they do not have face to face contact with people and that can be monotonous sometimes and the quality of work highly depend on the appreciation that you show when a job is done well.
If give you a task and it is wrongly done, do not just pack up and try to find another VA. You will waste time and money doing this and it is a matter of how you give your instructions to the VA and everyone needs training. Bear in mind that a VA might have worked for many clients before but your task can always be unique and the result you want from the same task might be different.

For e.g If you have a need to find a company that sells leads for people want to buy cars, don’t tell your VA ” Find me a company that sells leads of people wanting to buy cars” . Be more specific and think like your VA. Which country, which region, what type of cars you want to sell, what is your budget range, do you want her/him to just to google search, do you want calls to be made, do want emails to be sent, do you want the information sent to you by a specific date and time, do you want them to spent 4 hours do or more doing this ?

There are so many variables which can help the VA get better results, it will take you a few more minutes jotting down the bullet points, but it will save your VA a lot of guessing and you will obviously pay less for the job. It is always very important to give examples of good results and also bad results so that the VA understand what exactly you are looking for and it is far easier than writing 200 words explaining what you need done.

Timekeeping

If you are not careful from the very begining with timekeeping, you will regret it very quickly. As soon as you get a deal closed with a VA service or even during the trial period, you should ask them how they do time tracking and how is it reported to you. What happens if you do no agree with the amount of time spent or the what happens if instructions were not followed and time was wrongly spent. These are the basic questions you should ask yourself and the VA.

It is highly recommended to assign timescales to eash task you assign. If you know a project will take more than 20/30 hours then make sure you get an update every 5 hours and see how it is progressing. It is advisable to extend a heavy task on a 4 hour daily basis, research has proven that VAs perform better on a single task if they work shorter hours a day on that particular project. There is no point expecting a project that needs 30 hours done in 2 days, you cannot expect quality work like this.

Training Your VA

Using outsourcing or VA service has been very beneficial to me and I learned by mistakes. I am just giving some tips so that you can make good use of your money and be a happy outsourcer. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me on rajeevkistoo@gmail.com or if you do not want to waste your time on elance.com looking for a VA company, get in touch with me on rajeev.kistoo for a free consultation.

All the best and be Happy

ps: You can get in touch with me through http://www.rajeevkistoo.com

Hi

I hope you all had a nice Christmas and heading for a prosperous new Year 2009.

In this credit crisis at everydoor step, everyone is thinking about ways to cut down costs, may it be in big or small business. And why not?? Anyway!!!…

You might be drafting your new year resolution and marketing plan for the year to come and I am quite sure you are re-thinking your expenses and budgeting.

Outsourcing might already be in your list but if it is not, then this is the time or never to start. If you are big business, get an outsourcing partner which can help you grow your business without causing any disruptions and at the same time saving you some money. Outsourcing might sometime be a way to grow and save even more if a good virtual team is built.

If you are small business or solo entrepreneur, find yourself a VA or a VA team. ( Like ours )

Id you have used places outsourcing services on elance, you might already know what it takes. But if you are all new to it and want to know more on how it works and how to make it work for you then don’t hesitate to ask me any questions.

Let me just draw a quick list to tell you give you an idea on what you can outsource:

- Blog posting
- Keyword research
- Web Maintenance/ Web Design
- Price comparison
- Product upload on e commerce platforms
- email customer service
- data mining and data cleaning
- uploading of videos
- copywriting and content research
- bookmarking and article posting

and the list goes on…

You will find services providers all across the web and a lot on elance, you will get prices that vary from $ 5 to $25 for VA service. You better get the good ones at first try otherwise you will spend your time doing hit and miss, be cautious of the too cheap ones as they seem to take twice the time it would sensibly take for a particular job. ( those who charge $2, I have tried them I know) . Otherwise if you want to use my team, you are always welcome to try my VA service for free.

Wishing you all the best for New Year 2009.

Rajeev

ps: You might want to check that Christmas offer that everyone is grabbing: http://www.rajeevkistoo.com/christmas-package-from-rajeev/

Could you do SEO for your own site yourself? Is it rocket science?

Yes, You Could, if you had the time for it. No it is not Rocket Science.

SEO is a lot of legwork and it is a lot of hours.

The basics of SEO consist of getting your Site Title, meta tags, keywords, sitemap, robot.txt right. Then you should do directory submission, link building, social bookmarking and the list goes on.

You can find some very nice information on http://www.seobook.com

All this is a lengthy process and is an ongoing process, this is why most of the time you would outsource this process. You can find many companies on the web providing SEO services, most of the time they charge a killing and sometimes guarantee first page positions.

But if you have the knowledge and not the time for it, you can hire a virtual assistant to do everything your direction. You can hire some hours a week from me.
If you want a free consultation or just a chat about how it all works, just get in touch, I will be happy to help.

Rajeev

Are you thinking of how to be more productive? Is that the resolution for the new Year?

If you own an online business or even a small offline business, you must be spending loads of time doing non productive work. I mean that you might be doing tasks that you should not be doing, but due to lack of resources, you end up wasting your time on them.( and most of the time you don’t master these things)

I am referring to essential things like keyword research, price comparisons, book keeping, diary management , calendaring , blog posting , article research, site bookmarking, updating your website and the list goes on and on…

You should have guessed where I am coming from by now.

If you want to be more productive, you should be able FOCUS and DO WHAT YOU DO BEST , the rest, you should be able to delegate.( which implies costs, but if you value your time, you will see the benefits)

Say you are a businessman and you think you can easily make $ 100 an hour if you were doing what you do best, but you end up doing secretarial work for 2-3 hours a day.( a secretary could be costing you $ 20 an hour)… most of the time we try to do everything ourselves and think that we are saving money. But at the end of the day, this precious time can be used to create more wealth by on doing what we do best.

We could be concentrating on our core business,  do strategic research or develop business ideas or even better : spend time with the ones you love …

Think about it!!! Think about all the things that you don’t want to be doing? You could DELEGATE….you could OUTSOURCE… Yes outsource to a Virtual Assistant maybe…

A virtual assistant can be doing virtually anything for you and they could be costing very little….less than you could imagine if you source the right people…

This is food for thought. I could go on and on about building virtual teams, using virtual assistants, training VA’s etc….but it is probably time to take some action now…

GEt in Touch…… I could advise on these….

Speak soon

Rajeev

What is virtual assistance all about?

Those who have read about the Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris know it all, often referred as a VA Service.

A Virtual assistant is someone whom you can hire to work for you at a very low cost, usually based in a different country and does not necessarily work for you on a full time basis.

What can Virtual Assistants do?

Virtual assistants can virtually do any type of tasks that does not require physical presence in your office , e.g:

- Internet based research
- Article posting, spinning and bookmarking.
- Web Maintenance
- Customer Service via email or phone
- Document processing
- Audio Transcription
- Ghost Writing
- Recruitment
- Booking Appointments, flights, hotels
- Taking orders, processing orders
- Book keeping and accounts

These are just a few of the list which goes on…

What are the benefits of using Virtual Assistants?

The main reasons of using a Virtual Assistant is because it allows you to optimise your time doing what you do best and outsource the rest. You can leverage world class talents for 10 hours a week at half or a third of local costs and this at no contractual risks. You certainly do not want to waste your valuable time on repetitive boring tasks, you would rather outsource it.

If you employ a full time secretary in your office to basic tasks, you need to provide with a computer, internet connection, phone, pay for her tax benefits, cater for leaves etc.

A virtual assistant is someone that you hire on hourly rates and you pay only for the amount of hours they work. In a way you can have a whole Virtual Team working for you and helping you grow your business, this means less risks at the end of the month. You don’t have to worry about paying someone a fixed salary. So you can have a team member doing different things in different parts of the world, all bringing tremendous value to your business thus giving you time to grow and work on your core competenticies.

All that said, hiring virtual assistants will bring value to your business, minimize staff costs, expand your workforce and give you more time for yourself.  Time waste is life waste and you want to spend most of your valuable time doing what you love doing, not boring, repetitive administrative tasks.

I personally started working as a virtual assistant doing web maintenance and now I work with a virtual assistance team based in Mauritius. We would be happy to help if you have any questions or just let me know if you want to try a couple hours of our services.

Wish you the best.

Rajeev

” Do what you do Best and Outsource the Rest “

Hi Guys

Thanks again for checking out my post today.

I have been thinking over this subject for a quite a while and am dying to get the right answer.

Most of you have certainly heard about the Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. I actually made my online based 6 figure income business after reading this book, but now I am still thinking if I would ever reach or would ever want to work four hours a week. For those who don’t know ; The Four Hour Work week talks about using the principles of outsourcing and virtual assistance to work less and produce more.

In my opinion this would never happen, it might be an aspiration, it might be possible that some of you have actually been able to realise this number of hours coupled with a decent income.( if this is the case I would love to hear from you ) I know I am might sound a bit pedantic as Tim might not really have meant to work STRICTLY FOUR HOURS a week and skying, dancing or enjoying life the rest of his time. No doubt about everything else in the book about, he definitely gives great tips and would inspire and ambitious business owner.

I currently use virtual assistance services to do my accounts, bookings, social bookmarking, social networking, online marketing and stuff. It is true that there is tremendous amount of output and I could never have done all this alone and the price that I am paying for it is so insignificant in front of the returns I am generating. But for me to be able to run a safe business, I need to keep an eye on things all the time and averaging 3-4 hours a day.

I would love to have comments on this from you guys.

Thanks so much

“Accessibility” is used to describe how easy something is for everybody to use, regardless of impairment or disability.

It is crucial for web designers to understand what makes site difficult for some people to access, and what we can do to make this easier.

There is a lot of good documentation on the web about accessibility. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the body that draws up standards to guide the development of the web, and has published a very thorough set of resources on the subject through its Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). The WAI documentation is the best place to get a complete and thorough understanding of the problems we face, and guidelines on what to do. However, the documentation is very lengthy and pitched for a pretty technical audience.

In this section, I intend to boil down the mass of advice available on this subject into a few manageable techniques that all web designers need to know and employ.
The argument for accessibility in web design

There are 3 main reasons we should all strive to make our web sites accessible:

1. Because there is a significant proportion of people using the web who have one kind of disability or another. This includes people with impaired vision. Making a site accessible to everyone is not just the right thing to do - it’s good business too.
2. Because going through the process of making a web site accessible makes a better site. A lot of the things you have to consider, and techniques you’ll apply, will make your site easier for everyone to use.
3. Because there are legal requirements to do so. Government sites in many countries are already obliged to make all web sites accessible, and this legislation may soon extend to the private sector.

You are tired of the rushes of your hectic life? You want to relax and to enjoy without any tension? You are seeking for a perfect place for a perfect holiday? Well, Mauritius is the perfect spot for it! Mauritius has got everything to satisfy the needs of each and everyone.

Starting from the most famous white sand, blue sea, beautiful beaches and the greenery around, Mauritius is a little paradise for holidaymakers. The sea, sand and sun are just perfect for those who seek to relax.

For those who are seeking for some more thrills, Mauritius also offers a wide range of exciting sports such as water-skiing, Para-sailing, diving, big fishing game, surfing, mountaineering, trekking, quad-biking and many more…

When we talk of Mauritius, we now talk about green-tourism also. If you are among the nature-lovers, then Mauritius will definitely seduce you! Mauritius has various nature spots which have been attracting people. The most famous places are: the Gorge viewpoints and valleys, Nature Park, Alexandre Fall, 7 Cascades Waterfalls, Chamarel, Ferney valley, Domaine du Chasseur, Ilot Gabriel, Ile aux Aigrettes and not to forget, a good diving to see the tropical marine fauna and flora!

The hostelry industry of Mauritius is one of the best in the world. Whether you are holidaymakers, honeymooners or on a business trip; the hotels have an appropriate package to offer to everyone. The prices differ from the standards of the hotels as well as from hotels to hotels. Whether you are looking for luxurious 5 star hotels or some much more economical hotels, all is there to suit your budget!

If you want to make your holiday, a successful one; then coming to Mauritius is all that you must do and Mauritius will do the rest for you!

If we assume that Facebook is growing rapidly then the relatively similar marketshare numbers year over year indicate it’s actually the entire sector that’s growing. Though trailing in the distance of the big two, market share percentages have held steady or grown for the next services in line as well: Bebo, BlackPlanet, ClubPenguin, GaiaOnline, MyYearbook and Hi5 have unchanged or increased marketshare numbers according to the same metric.

Chart from Hitwise

These figures might be of interest to each one of your reading this post, let us see how this changes over time. For us, internet marketeers and social networkers, these platforms are definitely of great help. The big question is where do we put our energy?

Please comment.

Thanks

Rajeev