Do you do everything yourself when it comes to running your business Or are you like me and find it difficult to delegate to others, at least sometimes Do you think you dont have the money to hire help Well, Im going to show you how hiring help can help increase your bottom line dramactically.
Not delegating is one of the major hurdles my private clients seem to struggle with. They are doing everything themselves and are so busy with the little adminstrative things that they have little time to devote to their genius work - developing products and services for their niche and working directly with their clients. Once theyve hired help, either a virtual assistant or an in-office assistant, and move through the growing pains of delegating and trusting that the work will get done (and might even get done faster and better than they could do it themselves), I can always sense a feeling of freedom and excitement as the space opens up for them to work on the things that are really creative and inspiring to them, instead of dealing with invoices or fixing a glitch with their web page. And very soon after, their business really starts to move forward because they have the time and focus to dedicate to increasing their product and services line, which, of course, translates into more profits.
There are many ways that you can work with an assistant. You can hire someone on an hourly basis, or hire someone on a monthly retainer, which is often less expensive. You can hire someone for a single project only or you could hire someone fulltime to work in your office with you. Think about which of these scenarios might work best for you.
A tip: If you hire someone as an employee, remember to check with your accountant about filing the appropriate paperwork. The beauty of working with a freelancer, independent contractor or virtual assistant is that they cover their own overhead, including any insurance needs.
Here are 10 ways you can use an assistant: 1. submitting your articles to hundreds of submission sites 2. handling registrations for your teleclasses/workshops 3. proofing and formatting your written material 4. creating graphics for your products 5. maintaining your website 6. inputting any necessary updates to your products/services 7. as a sounding board for new ideas 8. responding to your customer/client inquiries 9. bookkeeping 10. packaging and shipping your products
If you cant quite see how an assistant could help you deal with all the time-suckers in your business, keep a log of your business activities for a week, including how long each task takes you to complete. Then at then end of the week, review it and circle all the tasks that an assistant can help you with (there should be quite a few!). Consider the number of hours those things have taken you to accomplish, and decide if the $25-$50 an hour for an assistant would be worth the investment. Statistics tell us that your bottom line could increase as much as 40% once you hire help - now thats a pretty good return on investment, isnt it
And if you still think you cant afford to hire someone, then start asking around in your network for someone who would be interested in an exchange of services or for an intern or apprentice.
If youre ready to start the process of hiring a VA in particular, I recommend these services: www.multiplestreamsteam.com - VAs particularly well-versed in helping entrepreneurs who use a multiple streams approach www.AssistU.com - VA training program www.ivaa.com - the International Virtual Assistants Association
Or ask your colleagues who are happy with their own VAs to see if any of their assistants are looking for additional clients.
So before you burn out and lose the passion for owning your own business that you started off with, hire someone to help you. Youll reach more people with your message and make more money at the same time. Start small and add hours as you feel comfortable and for what you find necessary. Youll never regret it and youll never go back to being a lone ranger!
Copyright 2005 Alicia Forest
Alicia M Forest, MBA, Multiple Streams Queen & Coach, & Founder of , teaches coaches, consultants, online entrepreneurs and solo professionals to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve.For FREE tips on how to create abundance in your business, visit
We have heard of such a phrase where content is king. This applies to online marketing. The reasoning is that by offering useful information to the web community, google will rank it higher. Having lots of relevant content will in essence propel your website ranking and this will drive more visitors to your site.
I agree that having plenty of relevant content is crucial to drive visitors into a web site. However, to succeed in online marketing, we need the four P and not just one P. Content is the product aspect of the four P. Lets picture this. You have added relevant contents to your site and you dont do anything else other than continually adding content.
That will work. Google spider will eventually visit you site and rank it higher if your content is relevant. But it wont work as well as having the other three Ps in your marketing campaign. For example, instead of posting the content on your website alone, you can think of submitting to various article directories available. There are about hundreds of directories of this nature. This is the place or distribution aspect of the four Ps. Instead of one source, your potential customers can then find your content through hundreds of distribution channel around the web. When you are starting up, you have low visitor counts. Using this distribution method, you can attract up to hundreds times more visitors than if you had just posted your content on your site.
The best thing is that these article directories are free. All you need is your time. You can also pay a small fee to organization that will help you submit one article to hundreds of article directories. There are also article directories that specializes on certain field, which I prefer. Your visitor counts will be lower if you submit to these niche directories. However, these are a very interested visitors, rather than just casually-browsing visitors. Furthermore, general directories are having a lot more subcategories than niche directories and visitors will have a harder time finding your content.
My suggestion is to prioritize. There are hundreds of article directories, both general and niches. Your priority should be to submit to niche categories first and then to general article submissions when time permits. This way, you will get more interested visitors to start with. Once they are on you site, you will have an easier time selling your products or services.
Distribute your finance/investing content for free at our article submission service. Meanwhile you can list your site for free at our .