How Do You Make Those Pop-Ups That Look Like Notes?

Q: How do you make the  note pop-ups like you have on http://www.articleannouncerboost.com?

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August 27, 2005

This is Frightening!

Well, I didn’t write in my blog this week (I went to Vegas last weekend and spent a few days at the beach this week, so I have a VERY good excuse), so I thought I’d leave you with this. “Profit Moffat” is at it again and this time it’s very frightening:

http://www.jasonmoffatt.com/dir/42

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How Do I Create More Passive Income?

Q: How do I create more passive income?

A: If you aren’t familiar with the term “passive income”, it simply means income that you receive without having to do repeated work. The Internet provides plenty of opportunities for passive income where you do the work once and can get paid for it over and over again.Here’s some ideas on increasing your passive income:

1. Outsourcing: This one has been key to me. Technically, this isn’t “doing the work once”, but it’s having someone else do the
every day and more tedious tasks in your business. When you put those tasks aside, you have more time to concentrate on actually making money with your business.

Here are a few resources to help you get started with outsourcing:

- How to Outsource on a Budget
- How to Work on with an Assistant

2. Affiliate Programs: Affiliate programs simplify your online business by having someone else do the product development, take and fulfill orders. All you do is make recommendations for products and make money when potential customers take action.

To cut your learning curve with affiliate programs, be sure to sign up for my weekly Affiliate Marketing Tips and you’ll get simple and easy-to-implement strategies to improve your affiliate marketing.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Search engines are a great way to receive continuing traffic to your website with little ongoing effort. Of course, if you want to get very technical about SEO, you can spend a long time on it…but if you keep it simple and create plenty of search engine-friendly content, you’ll do awesome.

Check out my free 10 Minute Lazy SEO Tutorial for help with search engines.

4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Search Engines: It takes time to set up a PPC campaign, but once it’s going it just takes a bit of maintenance. You can try a campaign with Google AdWords or Overture which can bring plenty of targeted traffic.

Be sure to sign up for Perry Marshall’s free Adwords course to make things a bit easier.

5. Autoresponders: Automate your follow-up process with prospects and customers. You can set up your newsletter or free ecourses in an automated fashion by using autoresponders. Don’t make the mistake of thinking autoresponders are impersonal…it’s all in the way you connect with your readers…and it will save you plenty of time to have everything ready ahead of time.

The Autoresponders I use:
- Email Aces - very affordable and functional autoresponder.
- QuickSales - this is a complete ecommerce solution with shopping cart, affiliate program, tracking, etc. and comes at a higher price than Email Aces.

6.  Sell Products? Start Your Own Affiliate Program: Get others to sell your products by offering a quality affiliate program. Offer a competitive commission, work to have a high converting offer and provide plenty of affiliate materials. I use QuickSales to manage my affiliate program.

7. Back End Sales & Upsells: Make the most of all your marketing. When someone buys a product from you, they are likely to purchase from you again. Make sure you have a follow up process to keep them buying from you (back end sales). Offer extra items, special deals, etc. when people are making an order. You’ll find people will often buy extra items if they are related to the item they are already purchasing.

Those are just a few ideas to get you started. Start incorporating more passive income opportunities into your business and slowly, but surely…you’ll find yourself needing to work less and less. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Further Resources

Affiliate Marketing Sweetie: Make the most of your affiliate marketing efforts.

Outsourcing Tips: Grab your weekly tips to become an Outsourcing whiz!

Filed Under FAQ, Passive Income Questions · Leave a Comment    

August 15, 2005

The Semi-Retirement Plan

2005 has definitely been an a great year - personally and professionally. My business has grown by leaps and bounds and I’ve also rediscovered a lot of things about myself that got lost in the past 3 years slaving over my computer. If you’re slaving now…and slaving smartly…there is light at the end of the tunnel. I promise!

Anyway, business is going good. I’m not filthy rich and couldn’t live off my life savings, but I’m already working on my semi-retirement plan. Over the past few weeks, I finally realized that I was spending more time on the computer than I actually needed to (could you be guilty of this as well?). I have devised a new schedule for myself that will have me working about 10-12 hours per week (or less, if I feel like it) and still GROW my business.

That’s the beauty of it…I’m going to cut back how much I work, but I am not limiting my income potential. On the contrary, I’m increasing it. I’ve shared in the past that when I work less, I’m more focussed and I tend to get more done. I know others experience the same thing and I bet you would find the same.

Accomplishing this has been a combination of building passive income and having other people do the hard work for me, while I just oversee everything. I’ve been outsourcing a lot of work for over 3 years now…but now I’m increasing the amount of help I’m getting and really getting things systematized. This is going to be a major overhaul for my business and my life.

I’ve put together some useful tips for you in the FAQ and if you haven’t checked them out, I encourage you to now:

How to Outsource on a Budget
http://aliceseba.com/faq/content/view/59/1/

How to Work on with an Assistant
http://aliceseba.com/faq/content/view/61/1/

and I’ll add more tips and suggestions as I go along.

I’ve told a few people of my plans and they asked me if I will continue with my blog and projects like InternetBasedMoms.com. Absolutely! This is what I love most about my business - sharing ideas and things that have worked fro me - and in that 10-12 hour schedule, I’ve included plenty of time to work on my newsletters and add to the FAQ. So you can expect to hear a LOT more from me. ;-)

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Do You Have Any Copywriting Resources?

Q: Hi Alice. You wanted to know about me. Here’s my answer: I’m 26 year old male, ex-student who dropped out of maths university in Prague. I’m refocussing myself to my creative side. Want to go to a 1-year study for Art director here in Prague but not certain yet because I will have very little time for my pregnant wife (just got married). Beside that I’m working on an miniproject which will support my 2nd interview at Marcus Evans for the function of Conference Producer. Because of that for now I’m just interested in Copy Writing. Do you have such a section on your site? Thanks and best regards, Paul.

A: Hey Paul…congratulations on your marriage and coming baby. It’s tough trying to get things going and have all these other family and personal obligations. But if you are smart, find the right resources and apply what you learn…you will save yourself tons of time and hopefully have more time for your growing family.

By the way…my family is Czech and from Prague. I was born in Canada, but most of my family still lives there. Prague is an absolutely beautiful place!

On to your question about copywriting resources. I used to be a copywriter for pay, but turned to working on my own projects. I took my copywriting site and turned it into a resource site and you can view it here: WAHMcopywriter.com.

If you really want to roll up your sleeves and get a little dirty, there are my top 3 copywriting resources that you’ll want to check out:

Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero’s Red Hot Copy: Lorrie’s always got a ton of different resources and course offerings. This lady’s got style and is an amazing teacher.
Michel Fortin’s Copy Doctor Membership Site: Monthly membership sites with tons of resources and videos for direct marketing copy (online & offline)
Joe Robson & Ken Evoy’s Make Your Words Sell: A very comprehensive copywriting ebook for online copywriting.

Also, here’s an inexpensive copywriting guide you might find helpful.

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How Do I Get Web Design Clients

Q: My name is Jennifer Martin, and I am founder of a home based business located in Jasper Indiana. My company is “New Jasper”, and serves my community (and further) with web hosting, web design and virtual assistant services.

My local area is very old fashioned and it is very hard to get many “Old-Timers” to take that step towards establishing an internet presence for their business. If you have any advice as to how best approach this situation, I am all ears. My Website is located at: http://www.newjasper.com. Also - I am running this from a home office so any tips on keeping this on a professional level would also be appreciated. [Read more]

Filed Under Beginner & Biz Idea Questions, FAQ · Leave a Comment    

August 12, 2005

Remember This?

Remember, when my kitchen counter looked like this?

Well, just about an hour and a half’s work (on my part) and I have finally caught up 7 months of bookkeeping and paperwork. Now, my kitchen counter looks like this:

Phew! This is a load off my mind and has given me more focus on the things I need to do. You know when you have this daunting task hanging over your head, you tend to procrastinate about everything? I know when I was in university and needed to study, I’d have sense this overwhelming need clean and I’d get nothing done. Well, with the paperwork hanging over my head, I wasted a lot of time doing things I didn’t need to be doing and creating “busy work” for myself. Well, it’s done and now I have a bookkeeping “secret weapon”.

And that secret weapon is Raquel Morphy of Raquel Morphy Business Solutions. It only took me an hour and half to sort the papers and ship them off to my virtual bookkeeper is handling all the details…because as you may already know, I hate math and should not be trusted with numbers. ;-)

I think we all need to find the things we’re good at and leave the other things to more qualified people. In my last entry about my “bookkeeping shame”, a couple people asked if my bookkeeper was taking more clients. Raquel gave me the green light to send a few referrals her way, so feel free to tell her I sent you. Her website is located at http://www.rmbizsolutions.com.

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How Do I Delegate Tasks to An Assistant?

This really is a 2-part question and these are the things I’m asked over and over again when it comes to working with assistants. And they mainly have to do with the ability to delegate and creating a sense of trust with your helper. Here’s the questions:
1. Doesn’t it take more time to delegate tasks and give instructions than to do the job myself?
2. How can I be sure that my assistant completes her tasks and can I trust him/her with my passwords?
How to Delegate Efficiently
Let me ask you a question. In the “real corporate world” (in contrast to the Internet entrepreneur world), who makes more money? The person who attends to all the administrative tasks and little details…or the manager who delegates tasks to these people ? I think the answer is obvious, isn’t it?
In most cases, the person who delegates makes more money because corporations value this skill in their managers and executives. If you want to move up your own equivalent to the “corporate ladder”, don’t get stuck working as your own assistant. You need to learn to delegate! If you’re not sure WHAT to delegate, read this article first.
As far as how to delegate efficiently and how to work with an assistant here’s some tips:
1. Realize there’s a learning curve. Don’t jump from assistant to assistant if you can help it…once someone is familiar with your business it’s easier to give tasks.
2. Give them repeat tasks…but definitely use them for those little things you just can’t seem to get to and keep you from being efficient in your business.

3. Create an FAQ. For example, if your assistant asks you a question because she doesn’t know how to handle a certain situation, paste her question and your answer into an FAQ that you and all your assistants can access in the future.

4. Create a “Business Manual” that summarizes everything about your business and operating procedures. This allows you to give prewritten instructions to your assistant, but also serves a bigger and more important purpose. If something should happen to you, you need to make sure your family can step in and keep your business going in your absences.

5. Consider a service like WorkAHolics4Hire where they can delegate various tasks to the appropriate skilled people. That way you only have to communicate with one person to ensure everything gets done properly.

A few tools I recommend in working with your assistants:
ScreenCam Generator: This is screen capture software that allows you to efficiently teach someone how to do something on your website, how to use your autoresponder account or anything on the computer. Once you’ve created your screen capture video, you have a permanent record that your future assistants can also refer to when they need instruction on the same topic.
TasksPro: This is a project management system that I recently started using and I can’t believe I didn’t do it earlier. Communicating and delegating tasks through email can become a confusing process. Emails get lost, information is all over the place and it can become a nightmare.
TasksPro allows me to create tasks, assign priority and completion dates for my assistants. My assistants can add their own notes, track their time and mark tasks as completed. I can also add permanent notes that include instructions that all my assistants can refer to when needed. TasksPro is becoming my “business manual” as I recommended above.
So, now you have some ideas on how to give instruction and work with your assistants, but can you really trust them?
Creating a Sense of Trust
The fact of the matter is, hiring someone to help with your business is a risk, but in my humble opinion, it’s way riskier to continue to try to attend to every detail in your business. Some assistants may do a bad job, some may disappear after doing a bit of work for you or you may get lucky and find some great people to help you in your business. In my experience over the years, I usually have found those great people who have been invaluable to my business.
If you’re not sure whom to trust, take a recommendation from a friend or fellow business owner. Personally, I recommend WorkAHolics4Hire as I mentioned earlier in this article. You’ll also find as you work more online, you’ll get to know other people who also want to earn money from home…but are happy earning an hourly wage and can be great helpers in your business.
You can give small tasks first and see how timely they are and if they do a good job. Slowly, give them more and more work as you feel comfortable…just make sure you do give more work! Just remember to be patient. There is a learning curve and you need to take that into account. Once they know what they’re doing, you’ll wonder how you lived without them.
You should also have a system to ensure that tasks are being completed. I already mentioned TasksPro and there are certainly other similar programs.
Everyone worries about giving out passwords, but you can’t dwell on it. If you want to keep doing the work yourself, go ahead and hoard your passwords (but I’ll tell you that you’re crazy!). Passwords can be changed and you can limit access. If you’re worried about your web server, make sure you do frequent backups. If you need to give someone access to your PayPal account for bookkeeping purposes, limit the things they can do while logged into your account.
The main thing is get started! You won’t know if you can trust people until you give them a chance. If they don’t work out, just move on. If you’ve created a “business manual” or instruction system, you can easily hire and train a new assistant.

Recommended Resources:

Outsourcing Sweetie: Get all the tools you need to start outsourcing the right way.

ScreenCam Generator: screen capture software
TasksPro: project manager software

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