5 Tips On How To Outsource Your Blogging
Tyrone Shum has participated in both my Blog Mastermind and Membership Site Mastermind programs. He’s special because not only did he study the materials (which is rare enough!), he went on and has built himself a successful blog and last year launched a membership site too, so he’s a real action taker.
Part of the reason he’s one of the unusual people who actually gets stuff done is because Tyrone knows how to outsource, in fact that is his specialty. In this guest post from Tyrone he offers some advice on how to outsource your blogging effectively…
Get More Done
Recently, I saw a poll on a very popular blog asking if they outsourced any of their blogging. I thought it would be a great opportunity to share with you some tips from my experience of outsourcing blogging tasks to virtual staff in the Philippines.
Undeniably I love my work but that doesn’t mean I can manage all the things effectively from advertising to marketing, from article creation to posting, from directory submissions to email marketing, and so forth all by myself. Additionally, not all bloggers plan ahead of time, and get things completed as early as possible without missing deadlines. So we have to replicate ourselves to meet different demands. I’m not talking about cloning but it’s how we distribute tasks to virtual staff to finish more tasks at the same time.
I’ve summarized the most important points to outsource as part of your blogging below, here we go…
Tip 1: Outsource your blog design
How John Jonas Outsources To Full Time Staff For As Little As $200 Month
Press play to begin streaming the audio or right click the text link and choose save as or save link.
Download the MP3 [ 73 Minutes - 113 MB ]
John Jonas and I spent several months trying to connect to get this interview done, but it was worth the wait.
I was referred to him via Adam Short from Niche Profit Classroom as a guy who has a unique insight into a particular type of outsourcing online – in this case, hiring people specifically from the Philippines.
Why the Philippines? Well there are many reasons, most of which John outlines in this interview, and by the end of it I’m sure you will be rushing to look into this method yourself.
This is a really, really good podcast interview. It’s one of those discussions where the person being interviewed is willing to share the exact steps used to get something done. If you have ever considered doing any outsourcing online to help grow your business, listen to this call.
Outsourcing Is Not Always Easy
I’ve been telling people to “outsource” for many years, and unfortunately a lot of people come back to me with stories about how difficult it is to find quality contractors.
Common wisdom with outsourcing is that you go to a site like elance.com, guru.com or rentacoder.com, submit a job and then attempt to find the best person to get the project done. This can work, but it’s hit and miss and in most cases you have to go through some “bad” experiences before you get to the good people.
John Jonas has a different system, one that focuses on hiring people full time at very affordable rates, and then establishing a long term relationship that’s more like an outsourced employee than a odd job contractor, who only works with you when you have a project on.
When I say a relationship with his outsourcers, John well and truly trusts his people. He’s willing to give them access to his hosting accounts and even his Paypal account. There’s a lot of trust required to be that comfortable letting other people, especially people in another country far away, have control over pretty much everything in your business.
If you’re curious how John can do this, listen to the interview and you will find out how.
Show Notes
- How John started off and was able to quit his job thanks to online marketing
- How he first found out about outsourcing to the Philippines
- Why John stopped using elance type sites and instead started hiring full time
- John explains an entire case study of how he had his outsourcers set up an entire income stream that they manage without him
- Why John is able to trust his outsourcers with every aspect of his business
- What website options are available for outsourcing to the Philippines
- John takes us through an example of how to locate a Philippino worker using the website he uses to find good people
- We discuss the ethical concerns of hiring a full time worker for as little as $200 a month
- What John teaches in his ReplaceMyself.com website
Want To Outsource To The Philippines?
If you’re interested in doing what John does, and getting access to more training materials and his system you can use to train your outsourcers once you hire them, check out John’s site, ReplaceMyself.com.
John spends much of his time helping to outsource the way he does because he enjoys it, and since so much of his business is outsourced already, he has the time to do so. If you want his help, check out -
Mp3 Download
Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 73 Minutes - 113 MB ]
How To Work Less and Earn More By Leveraging The Synergy Between People And Technology
Several years ago when I was managing BetterEdit, my proofreading company that I sold in 2007, I was knee deep learning from Rich Schefren, taking his Business Growth System course.
Rich launched that program on the back of his most successful report to date, the Internet Business Manifesto, which featured the now famous flow chart of what an Internet entrepreneur is supposed to do if he or she wants to succeed online. If you haven’t read the Manifesto, I strongly recommend you do so as soon as possible, it’s still one of the most crucial reports on Internet marketing as an entrepreneur ever written.
After reading the Manifesto it was clear I needed to make some changes, so I joined Rich’s coaching program and began going through it. The premise of what Rich teaches is the idea that no person can realistically ever get to the point where their business looks after them, rather than they look after their business, if you do everything by yourself. Rich took this idea a lot further than just outsourcing, and sees business as a machine that can be completely automated.
At that point in time BetterEdit was doing well and I did have Angela, my admin/customer service person looking after most of the day to day emailing for the business, which is the main workload to keep it going. This was great, but as a result of thinking so much about automation and studying Rich’s course, I was interested in possibly using technology to further systematize the operations and gain more leverage.
Using Software To Automate
BetterEdit has a very simple job flow process. A client submits a paper and makes payment, the admin person assigns the job and forwards the document to an editor. The editor completes the job and returns to the document to both the admin and the client. Various emails flow back and forth if there are problems, but generally that’s the basic process.
One of the key weaknesses of the system I had was no affiliate program. I saw huge potential if I could find a way to pay a commission out to websites that referred jobs to the business. Besides manually tracking things, which would be a nightmare, I just couldn’t do it.
The answer to the affiliate issue was to create some kind of software that would handle the job process, including payments, so we could automatically track affiliate referrals and credit commissions for jobs completed.
I had to be careful because between paying editors and admin, the margin on jobs wasn’t massive. This wasn’t like an information product where I could pay out 50% commissions, I’d have to be careful. This was another reason where I saw software as a help as it could reduce the amount of work admin did, meaning I could incentivize affiliates with a higher commission.
With a software system in place, including an affiliate program, I could get out there and recruit an army of websites to refer customers to my business. I liked this idea because by then I was getting pretty tired of heading out to campuses to put up posters to promote the service, although I was starting to outsource this job too (my mind was constantly thinking about how I could work less without reducing my income).
Realizing Your Concept Can Be Tough
It was clear that software could be the automation answer, so I scheduled a meeting with a local development firm and sat down with them to talk about my plan.
When Is The Right Time To Begin Outsourcing?
There was an interesting discussion in the Blog Mastermind forums that began with a question about when you should start outsourcing.
The impression this particular student had was that outsourcing is the key for success, and it is something that I emphasize over and over again inside Blog Mastermind. The problem in this case was the lack of cash flow to pay for outsourcing and whether it is worth going into debt to pay for help if it is indeed that important.
I was quick to explain that outsourcing is important and it’s worth paying a few hundred dollars to get your blog set up with a nice theme, a domain name and get a few key plug-ins installed for you if you can’t do it yourself, but beyond that you don’t really want to start using credit to pay for outsourcing.
What Do You Do When You Have No Money?
How To Find A Good Customer Support Person (Or Any Outsourced Staff)
In this final piece of a four part article series on customer service we look at one of the key components of a successful Internet business – a good customer support person.
If you have been following along this journey you will remember how Starbucks taught us the importance of good customer service as a powerful tool for reputation management, which can lead to a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
We then switched to the Internet business world and followed along the typical path of a solo entrepreneur growing an online empire. With success comes pressure to continue to deliver personalized support, despite less time available to do so. In the end one person can only do so much, and customer service suffers.
In the most recent article I went back in time and reviewed my own personal experience developing various Internet projects and how I evolved the system I use to interact with my constituents. The major conclusion of this piece was the importance of Angela, my customer service person.
Now let’s take a look how you can take the next step with your business and outsource your customer service role.
Start With A System
It’s likely you will begin by providing customer support yourself, especially if you work your way up as an independent operator. Along the way you can install a help desk or set up a customer support email account. You may go as far as replicating the ReplytoYaro.com support system I use.
The previous article looked at a several technology options available to you to implement a system for online customer support. I suggest you use my story as inspiration to build your own support system, and while you do, think about how eventually another person (or people) can run it for you.
Most help desk scripts are built for multiple users and as I explained in the prior article, a Gmail email is a great basic solution to get started and can also handle multiple users through the use of message flagging.
Once you have something set up, your next task is to find a customer support officer.
