Wednesday 23 April 2008

Outsourcing or Out Tasking

What! That was my reaction to that question.
I honestly didn't know that there was Out Tasking or if there was, that there was any difference between the two.
Well I'm here to tell you there is and quite a big difference too.
Firstly we'll start with outsourcing.
When your business starts to grow you will soon find that you will have less time to do all the mundane tasks that have to be done on a weekly bases. So in comes outsourcing. When you outsource you will be looking for a company that will do all those basic jobs for you like payroll management, customer services, article writing, SEO and so on.
It's best to start by doing these tasks yourself and when you need your time to spend on your business rather than these mundane tasks, thats the time when you start to outsource.
You have to value your time because as you know, time is money and also if you do start by doing these jobs yourself then you will know if the company that you outsource to is doing their job correctly and to your satisfaction.
The big bonus about outsourcing is that you don't have to hire people yourself, so no public liabilty, health insurance, no hiring and firing people and no wages.
Obviously as time goes on you will have to have people onboard to help you out but not with the easy stuff.
Stay tuned for out tasking!

Friday 11 April 2008

Outsource or not to Outsource

Outsourcing is a difficult dicision to make when you first start out because the money is in short supply and you think your invincable. You can do it all. No no no!
The small price you pay for someone elses help is a ripple in the ocean to what money you could save in time that you would spend on a project that your not too sure on how to execute yourself.
The question you should ask yourself is how much are you worth? What price do you set yourself at per hour. If you think your worth $100 an hour how long will it take you to do the project at hand? 2 hours, 4 hours, a day. How much would it cost to outsource your project?
Utillising your time correctly is the only way to make money. Don't waste time on jobs that take you forever to do because as I said before in a roundabout way 'time is money'
I found out the hard way. I tried to set up my membership site on my own for quite a while then thought to myself what am I doing ? I could have paid someone to do the job for me and they would have done it within a couple of days rather than many months. So I bit the bullit in the end and got someone to help and voiala. It was done in a matter of days!
I could have banged my head on a wall for not doing this sooner.

Friday 4 April 2008

Information Overload

There is so much information out there that when you first start out, you want to learn it all.
Let me tell you, that is impossible. My whole mad idea was to learn it all and do it all in a matter of weeks! Everything from mind storming to web design to advertising to ............ I get flustered even talking about it.
Yep, I must have lost the plot because by the time I scratched the surface, a year had gone by! A whole year of not actually earning anything and I was as confused as I was at the start.
This was truly a case of information overload. I wanted to have my fingers in too many pies at the start. It's true what people say. 'You can't run before you walk'.
I took a few steps back when I realised what was happening and took hold of my senses.
What was the first thing that I wanted to do? Well that was easy, I started a membership site all about newbies wanting to start an online business. Hell I was going through it and I could advise people of the do's and don'ts of starting seeming as I done it myself.
Warning others of pitfalls, advising others of useful software, info products, systems, freebies and so on, I wish I had found a site like that and I would have paid anything for membership to it.
It would have saved me a lot of time and money.
Eventually I got it online but with help from others, that's the beauty of outsourcing!

Thursday 3 April 2008

Wow it's HTML

I wasn't going to post twice in one day but today I feel like I have made a break through in my learning of all good things to do with the online world of marketing.
Today I dabbled with HTML. Yes HTML, and if you had told me that I would do this not that long ago, I would have said 'impossible'
The task that I did was something very simple to those that know how but to me it was a giant step for man kind from me. All I did was add a HTML meta tag to a website and it worked!
I still can't believe it as I type this and I know a few of my friends would laugh if they were with me now for it is such a small application but hey, I don't know anything about HTML so it's a major deal for me.
I'm one of those who believes in outsourcing. There is no point in wasting time trying to learn something for weeks on end and it will look so so. Your better off giving it to the pros to deal with in a fraction of the time you would spend on the job and it will look good.
Anyway I've got my good feeling off my chest and I will now go back to what I was talking about before my diversity.

Marketing strategies?

Marketing strategy. That was my next burning question.
It's all good and well saying that you want to have an online business but where do I start? Marketing sounds so complicated when it's online. All I wanted to do was make some money online but work from home. Well I opened the doors to a vast new world not knowing what I was going to find along the way.
One after the other, I found adverts about 'how to advertise your online business' and 'how to make money online' or 'you too could be a millionaire within 12 months'
How about that? I did want to be a millionaire in the next 12 months but so do everyone else. Are these empty promises? Is this another ploy to sell yet another marketing system with half the information left out so you again surf the net to find even more answers. I was about to find out...... the hard way.
I, like many others before me started to buy ebooks, systems, how to products and just about everything else to enlighten me in my quest to at least break even with all the spending that I was doing and still am doing.
Be warned! there is a lot of rubbish out there that ends up gathering dust on your harddrive but there are some good nuggets too. I think I'm lucky, because I found a group of folk who I subscribe to and they seem to be knowledgeable on most things that I've wanted to know in the past.
There definatly is a system to marketing. It seems that the formula comes in many steps and if you get the steps going in the right order your going to sell sell sell!