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Expanding the Dropbox Space Using a Fiverr Deal

by Francis
(Feb 01, 2013)

guy-in-black-suit-holding-a-dropbox-cardMy virtual assistant asked me to increase his Dropbox space.

In fact, we are working so much together that he has so many files lying in his Dropbox that it surpassed his 5 gigabytes of free space.

I’m happy to invest those five bucks in order to increase his Dropbox space.

Most of the spaces are taken up by my screen recording videos, anyways.

An easy deal for a useful investment.

Comments for Expanding the Dropbox Space Using a Fiverr Deal

Sep 21, 2014 hoping for a longer contract with Dropbox
by: Jomvie I had the opportunity to avail this kind of deal when I asked my boss (Francis) to have it expand for future collaboration of files—and that expanded to 66gig. Cool, right?I thought it was just a joke, but as I was taking a good long look at the prompt messages and on my Dropbox account~~wow! It’s just truly amazing, it’s seriously 66gig 😀

But, it won’t last that long because it’s only good for two years. I was hoping that I could have it for a longer time—hoping!
Sep 22, 2014 I think there is hope
by: FrancisI can’t even remember when I did my DB expansion via this gig. I still have the expanded dropbox long after it.So I wouldn’t lose hope that the expansion will stay there for longer.

Even if not: just create a new account, connect it with your Dropbox folder, and re-expand it again for 5 bucks.

Easy peasy 🙂

Give Your VA A Backlog of Work When You Are Busy

by Francis
(Feb 14, 2013)

busy-virtual-assistant-with-many-post-itsSometimes life gets in your way or you get really busy with other stuff. If you already have hired a virtual assistant, don’t make him stand idle too long.

In order to prevent situation like these, record a set of instructions beforehand. Those can be projects which have not so high priorities but you’d still want to get them done anyway at some point in time.

Whenever you will be away and cannot give your virtual assistant instructions, he can fall back to this secondary project and work up all that is to do.

That’s what I do when I get really busy. Fortunately, this works out really well.

Your VA Can Work Through Complicated Legalese Documents for You

by Francis
(Feb 18, 2013)

As you know, you can easily get the help of a virtual assistant to pre-research stock photos or other illustrations for your uses. Simply tell them what you expect.

Perhaps, even illustrate what you want by simple Google image search. Then, your virtual assistant goes to work.

If you really want to be a 100% sure you don’t run into legal troubles, make sure to read the terms of service.

Ah! But the terms of service are long legalese documents, right?

Nobody has the time to read them.

The solution?

Ask your virtual assistant. That’s what I did.

Well, to be honest, my virtual assistant took the initiative and did that by himself. I was interested in what conditions needed to be fulfilled to use certain images. But my virtual assistant was thorough and inspected terms of services from each photo bank one at a time.

Then, he highlighted few sentences I needed to read and I saved easily a few hours of long boring readings.

That’s some time well outsourced. Don’t you think?

Pay Your Virtual Assistant for Training like Reading an Important E-book

by Francis
(Feb 21, 2013)

man-offering-cashIf you work with a virtual assistant for a long time, it makes sense to invest some money in to his training. Sometimes, there are skills that you need for your business that your virtual assistant does not have.

In many cases, you would be able to find an e-book teaching that specific skill. Now you have two possibilities. First, you read and understand the eBook yourself and teach everything to your virtual assistant in your own words. Second, you give the e-book to your virtual assistant and ask him to work through that content.

Of course, the latter method only works if there’s a relationship of trust with your virtual assistant. I recently did just that.

To be more specific, my virtual assistant took the initiative and started working on reading an e-book to gain a new skill. This is time and money well invested into your future.

Sep 10, 2014 Invest now for future use
by: Francis That’s actually a great idea and it’s rare that an online employer would gladly invest to a VA.But, the principle there is, they’ll be of use to your business and future projects, so, yes that’s a great investment.

You will gain out of your investment and so are the VAs.

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Try to Keep Your Virtual Assistant Happy All the Time and He Will Return the Favor

by Francis
(Jan 25, 2013)

If your VA and you understand each other, all is easier!
If your VA and you understand each other, all is easier!

There was a little episode where my Assistant and I had a little misunderstanding. One of the tasks I asked for my virtual assistant was – to be totally – honest, really boring, repetitive and not exciting at all.

Still, I wanted to have it done. And it was actually the perfect task to outsource. I should have transferred the tasks to an expert of data entry work long time ago.

Unfortunately, my virtual assistant did not voice his lesser interest on these tasks early enough in a way that I would notice it. If I would have thought more about it in advance, I should have noticed it. But people are human. My mistake.

The feedback that made me apologize to my virtual assistant

After my assistant had been doing this tedious and boring work for some weeks, I was finally coming to my senses and proposed to my assistant, if it would be good if we hired someone else¬ for this task to free up my assistant to do more difficult and important tasks. Just be sure I asked him if he was okay with me “taking away work” from him so to speak.

He very clearly said to me that the work to that specific task was not interesting at all. I took this quite seriously and immediately apologized to him.

When your Virtual Assistant apologizes for you saying sorry and why I think this is a healthy basis for a working relationship

One day later, sure enough, my assistant immediately clarified this and let me know the he only said the work was boring because I asked him to. He still was up to it and would have continued to do it.

Does these all sound too apologetic and emotional to you?

I can relate to that, me talking about how I apologize and get apologizes back. Probably not the most exciting stuff to listen to but there is an important lesson to take away from this:

Try at all times to keep your virtual assistant as happy as you can.
Especially if you find an “ideal helper”. If you have found a match that does great work, is intelligent and caring and also attentive to detail then you might have found a diamond in the rough.

Such a virtual assistant is pretty rare to find. Sure there are many freelancers out there. But high quality ones that are affordable too are either difficult to find or take a long time to train this way.

That’s why it makes sense to treat them very well.

Good work ethics should be natural anyways

For me treating a work associate in this manner comes natural.

Although as a German I have a relatively direct communication style, I try to take it down a notch when discussing things with my virtual assistant.

Even more so if my virtual assistant is from Asia.

Be sure to read more about our section of working together with an outsourcing provider in an ethical way.

Comments for Try to Keep Your Virtual Assistant Happy All the Time and He Will Return the Favor

Sep 02, 2014 Healthy relationship between work mate and the boss
by: Jomvie

Having a good relationship with your work mate/s and boss is one good thing to consider in retaining in the job.A nice environment in your workplace can make any individual to think twice before jumping on to another job.

I can see that you are doing great in dealing with your VA/s and as to what I’ve read from your recent posts, you are decent and generous when it comes to ethical values in business. Keep it up 😀
Sep 03, 2014 There is actually a “too friendly” when handling your VAs
by: Francis

I am all for being open, understanding and supportive of my VAs. However, I have made the bad experience of treating one of my VA like my close friend.

This blurs the fine line one should keep and maintain in a healthy work relationship.

And in the end, it led to me being unable to continue working with that VA.

It has to be a delicate balance.

  1. The employer carefully screens and chooses the best applicant.
  2. The applicant proves his employer the choice was right with his results.
  3. The employer rewards the well-placed trust with trust and, for extraordinary results, with bonuses (which don’t always need to be money).
  4. This, hopefully, motivates the VA to stay with the employer on a long-term basis.

And then, both win from that situation.

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Problems with Google Chrome Nanny

by Francis
(Jan 21, 2013)

Google Chrome Nanny's interface for blocking URLs

Google Chrome Nanny’s interface for blocking URLs

I really like using Google Chrome Nanny as a time saving service in order prevent myself from procrastinating too much on the web. It works really well for Google Chrome normally.

But I think I have messed up my settings at some point. All my pages which I have blocked but given access to for a few minutes every day are blocked simply all the time.

Of course, I have an easy work around and simply go spend my time on those time-wasters using Firefox. But there must be some settings which I set up wrong so that all my blocked URL’s are blocked all the time.

The solution, I’ll ask my virtual assistant to look in to this. Perhaps there’s something that can be done in order to recover the functionality that was intended from using Google Chrome Nanny.

At the moment, it blocks my time-wasters all the time so it’s not that bad.

Comments for Problems with Google Chrome Nanny

Aug 28, 2014 Google Chrome has Nanny?
by: JohnI’d probably push any buttons in your case also 😀 just looking at it gives me some headache..

But, does it work like the “rescuetime” time tracking software?
Sep 03, 2014 Similar but different
by: FrancisGoogle Chrome nanny just blocks website adresses you specify in the settings. For example social media sites like facebook or online newsletter sites.

Anything where you know that you spent too much time on procrastinating.

Rescuetime would be able to show you where exactly you procrastinate most. One of its premium features, “stay focused” is very similar as it blocks sites that you tagged as non-productive.

Setting up the Google chrome “nanny” is not that hard. In case you are stuck, just type it into google and you find many instruction videos on how to do that stuff, step by step.

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Do You Have To Choose Between Two Job Opportunities – Make Sure You Make the Right Life Decision

by Francis

Did you ever have this like situation that you have to make a hard choice between two options? I sure did and in this case, it was the choice between two job opportunities.

I stressed myself out a lot before doing this choice. I could have saved myself much pain and stress if I would have relied on some help by my virtual assistant.

How Can A Virtual Assistant Help You With Life Decisions?

There are several tasks that a VA can do to make your hard choice easier and you should get all the help you can get.

After all, it’s your life, right?

In the case of a decision about a job opportunity, a good start would be to have your virtual assistant do a thorough background check over the enterprises in question. In this case, he could use glassdoors.

After you have the right background information about your potential employers, it’s time to make a hard decision.

It would be bad if you made your decision based on emotions and not with a cool head. Fortunately, there is a tool that would help you rationally make hard life decisions.

Come up with a few questions about your future employer?

What’s important to you?

What are some must have criteria?

And, what is less important?

Then honestly answer the questions with this decision-making software. The answer you will get in the end is a rational, logical answer with the right choice.

Now it’s your turn.

Do you continue your research?

Or, do you go with a cool headed decision?

Comments for Do You Have To Choose Between Two Job Opportunities – Make Sure You Make the Right Life Decision

Sep 17, 2014 Cool your head and take a sleep 😀
by: John

It’s always good to hear some good advices from your colleagues, friends and family. And taking it from your VA is pretty new to me, but I think you have enough trust and confidence to share your deep thoughts about life decisions.

And, yes, it’s always right to cool off in taking decisions. In that way, you’ll see better the pros and cons and the odds in the path that you are going to take.

Sleep it off and decide in the morning. =)
Sep 17, 2014 VA needs to “warm up” to his employer
by: Francis

Asking my VA for his honest feedback and even asking for criticism only works well if your VA has “warmed up” to you (the employer) enough.

But if he has, then the trust that goes both ways is much better.

There is real power and success hidden in a well-oiled employer/VA-Team!

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The Value of SBI Lies in Its Simplicity

by Francis
(January 18, 2013)

Great Saying by Leonardo Da Vinci
Great Saying by Leonardo Da Vinci

It’s six in the morning and I could not sleep for two hours already. So I got up and got myself a good dose of the SBI forums.

It’s a great online place to hangout, kick back and refresh your mind some good positivity. I just read about an inspiring post of another successful SBIer.

Why Other Online Entrepreneurs Want To Make Things Difficult?

compare2-250x250When I talk with my friends, who also experiments with online entrepreneurship, the things they talk about is incredibly complicated.

Stuff like managing servers, paying for hosting, setting up WordPress sites, plug-ins, codes and designs. Stuff like that is incredibly complicated to me. I had no experience with website building whatsoever. Just imagine how much time it would take to learn all these stuff.

  • Does it matter that you know how to code that stuff, set up that complicated online presence or understand another convoluted plug-in code?
  • Or does it matter that your site draws successfully traffic without you spending a dime?
  • Or do you have website businesses make real hard cash for you?

I’d go with the latter two.

The Huge Value of Simplification

When people start getting involved into website creation with SBI, they are often so much focused on their success and on their passion that they overlooked how beautifully simple the SBI process is. Actually, the exact steps of working the process are laid out.

In the background of your online business efforts, SBI handles a huge amount of work without you ever seeing it.

In addition to that, the people working behind SBI constantly screens the online world for new stuff and implement the most effective trends at quite the right time just to make it available for the SBI user without any additional cost.

The Hidden Costs of WordPress

blog-or-build-250x250No doubt you can set up a WordPress blog or a Blogger blog just fine. I do have a Blogger blog myself. It’s like a private diary and I write in it, perhaps, every three months.

But to be really successful with a WordPress blog, you need to set up a professional one and that alone for the reason that you cannot monetize the free version of WordPress easily.

Note: SBI has written an article about setting up your online business with a website versus a blog. Of course, I’ll understand if you think it is biased. But I still think it is a good read. Check it out here: WordPress against websites.

Stop Losing Time Reading Hundreds of Forums

My first site, I actually created part time at nights or on the weekends while I had my busiest times in college. It was just easy to write down my passion about the topic at that time in a fast, easy and authentic way.

I also didn’t have a virtual assistant at the start and still got myself up to 2,000 visitors a day after half a year. Sure, I think I got a little bit lucky with my specific niche and my keywords. But I know that this success is reproducible.

Now that I actually have a virtual assistant that takes much of the tedious work off my hands, I find myself procrastinating more and more with reading online tons of stuff.

Some of that stuff is damn smart believe me. But reading damn smart stuff doesn’t put a food in your mouth.

At least not if it is not followed by massive action.

Going Back to Sleep – My Team of VA’s will Take Care of the Rest

Whew! I got some important thoughts off my mind. Thanks for being patient and reading all this.

From the first word of this article to the place you are right now, exactly 13 minutes and 26 seconds have passed. The beauty of this blogging style is that I can literally speak my mind off my chest.

My transcriptionist will take care of transforming it into text. My virtual assistant will follow up with illustration and other online stuff. And faster than I will know it, it will simply be done. Nice!

Okay, time to tuck myself in again. See you in the comments.

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Awesome Looking Automated Blog Pages with SBI

by Francis
(January 18, 2013)

I am extremely excited and thrilled about a new function that comes with the Blogit page from SBI!

If you want to start up a free blog using WordPress or Blogger, that’s no problem. I also have a free personal diary style blog on Blogger.

Since it’s personal, I won’t share the URL with you here. But what I have seen from my personal blog is that it doesn’t draw even a percent of traffic that I get with my SBI sites. And that’s because they are not blogs but sites.

Why is the Blogit page Important for SBI pages?

sbi202-250x250Each time I write a new article like this very post you are reading; I have the choice of distributing the page via RSS to everyone. It is also mentioned on my blog page and everyone who wants to see the newest content can see it there.

Up until recently, my blog page was extremely plain. It was just a blog of text after the other. Unless I manually wrote and illustrated a special blog insert.

(Actually, I asked my VA to illustrate my blog inserts for me. But you get what I mean.)

Now, SBI has brought out yet another new function and that’s thumbnail pictures from the pages that are distributed on my blog page as well as styling each individual blog entry.

It’s a difference like day and night. I think my blog page really looks much more nifty right now.

What do you think?

Even More and More Better Functions Just Keep Coming

For the last half a year, right after SiteSell finished bringing out the BlockBuilder 2 platform. Since then the team of SiteSell is bringing out new functions, goodies and additions to our sites at a crazy rate. I just love it.

I know that 2013 will be an even more productive year with more and more new stuff to play with. And the best part of all, the price of SBI never goes up. It hasn’t since the last 10 years. Crazy, isn’t it?