Francis

January 9, 2013 By Francis Leave a Comment

Clean Up Your Content 2.0 Submissions with the Help of A VA and Prevent Traffic Loss from Panda

by Francis
(January 09, 2013)

If your SBI website has been running for some time, chances are that you are at risk of getting hit by Panda or already were hit by Panda. As you know, SBI has special instructions to prevent Panda traffic loss or gain back the traffic you have lost.

How Cleaning Up Your Content 2.0 Submissions Will Help Your Traffic

In the past, Content 2.0 submissions can had the comments showing up on a separate comments page. It’s possible that these comments pages hurt your rankings. .

If you are a successful SBIer and have hundreds of Content 2.0 submissions then it makes sense to outsource the clean up to your virtual assistant.

Here Is How to Do It

SBI has recently introduced a new feature and with the help of this feature it is possible to show comments on the same page for all merged submission.

In past you had to browse to another page to see all submitted comments on merged pages.

xclick-here-to-read-or-post-comments.jpg.pagespeed.ic.H098E_0nxS

How to enable this function:

Go to Site-central>>Content 2.0 Library and select the merged post.

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Click edit
Select option “Yes” from ‘Display Comments from All Submissions on Merged Page?’

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Build merged Page

Comments for Clean Up Your Content 2.0 Submissions with the Help of A VA and Prevent Traffic Loss from Panda

Aug 13, 2014

Internet Literate Panda
by: John

By the sound of it, it’s like preparing for something big that will greatly cause trouble. But, literally, I have no idea how can a Panda create some serious trouble 🙂 enlighten me please..

Aug 14, 2014

Pandas are less cute in the IM world than in real life
by: Francis

In simple terms, Panda is the name of one Google algorithm that influenced the rankings of countless websites.For internet marketers relying on traffic from Google (and most website owners), this was quite a change in the landscape of internet search results.

If one is “victim” of the algorithm change – i.e. it changed the rankings so that you lose rankings – you can still try to work out all problems that cause Panda to trigger for your site.

That’s what my VA was helping me with and what I wanted to report in this post.

January 9, 2013 By Francis Leave a Comment

Final Results of the Job Search Project – 200 Chemistry Enterprises in the Area of Munich

by Francis
(January 09, 2013)

Outsourced Job Research Results

Here is what resulted from the research of job opportunities by Roman. After investing $40, he came up with a collection in excel sheet of over 200 companies in the area of Munich that are chemistry related.

Each search result has:

Name of the Company
Company Website
Career URL
Contact Email of the concerned HR employee
Telephone number
URL of the Contact us page (if necessary)

In other words, if you need a job related to Chemistry in the area of Munich like I did; you could simply use this excel sheet.

How It Would Come In Useful?

You could simply call up every enterprise in this excel sheet. Of course, it makes sense to read about the company first. That’s why there is the link to the company website right next to it. Inform yourself if this company needs anyone and, if the phone call works well, you can send in your CV.

Some of these companies are smaller and don’t advertise job vacancies on the big job search websites. In other words, having this information at your fingertips will give you an edge over your competition.

What If You Are Not In Munich?

I am aware that chances are very big that you are not a chemist, not living in Munich. If that’s the case, this case study can still be of interest to you.

You can simply copy my procedure and get job research done for whatever city you are living in and for whatever branch of work you are in. Just make sure that you get the same sort of information from your web researcher.

Was This A Good Investment Of Money?

Here is the deal.

This research cost me about $40. In the time I was looking for a job, I was also registered on different headhunting websites. Many of them offered premium packages so that your CV is sent around to different headhunters.

I invested once about 157 dollars in to a service that would send around my CV once. The results were zero. Here, I invested $40 and got the contact information of 200 companies.

If I were to call all of them up, I am a 100% sure that I would get more feedback than from hiring the same headhunting service again.

Side Note: I don’t want to share which headhunting service I was using because I was not successful with it. Just keep staying skeptic if someone wants your money for any headhunting service.

Here Is How You Can Get This Outsourced Research

I’m sharing my research with you. That is mainly because I don’t need it urgently anymore because I have already found a job.

By the way, if you want to know what advice I would have given myself at the start of my job search, be sure to check out my top tips about the job hunt.

You can download the excel sheet with the researched data below. All I would like you to do for that is to share the message about this outsourced job project via one of your favorite social networks. It will be done with a click of a button.

Please Leave a Comment If You Have a Question or You Learn Something

I don’t want you to only read about my outsourced job project. I want you to learn from it and implement it in your own lives.

Perhaps, you need something else researched. Many of the lessons from the whole hiring and managing process up to the results and the price range of a virtual assistant apply for many many other researched tasks as well.

So feel free to jump in to the discussion below and post us a question. Leave us a remark or if you have criticism feel free to share it too.

← Previous Diary Page First Diary Page →

Comments for Final Results of the Job Search Project – 200 Chemistry Enterprises in the Area of Munich

Aug 12, 2014

Newbie’s dedication
by: Francis

I’ve been following Roman’s online adventure and I think even if he’s not really that skilled although given the case that he’s just a newbie—the least is that he tried to finish the job and that is useful to your research project as well. He defines dedication despite the obstacles and eager to learn 😀

January 8, 2013 By Francis Leave a Comment

Increasing Monetization with Adsense Ads with the Help of My Virtual Assistant

by Francis
(January 08, 2013)

Set Up Affiliate SBI! Banners

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or

Here is an interesting money earning opportunity that you can make use of without putting even more banner advertisements on your website.

On my second website, I have some solid traffic levels. Naturally I am interested in improving the bottom line of what the advertisements are earning me.

How to Increase Your Income without Increasing the Number of Ads

In Adsense, each advertisement has a certain chance to be filled with an actual working ad. The number that defines if your ad-block is filled with an actual advertisement is called ‘coverage’ and is expressed in percentage.

For one, one of my most important ads which has the size of 300×280 pixels, has a coverage of 75%. On the other hand, the 336×280 pixels ad-block represents 80% of all my ads earning. In other words, this ad alone brings me 80% of my income. But only in 3/4 cases.

If you are not aware of this, go check out your Adsense reports right now. You will find this when you go to…

Home>> Quick Reports >> Custom Channels

There, click the required time period, for example: ‘Custom Channels Today’, then choose the time frame with a significant enough range for you to make considerations.

If you already have solid traffic and your Adsense ads get a lot of clicks, then you must take care of this issue that is losing your potential income day by day.

How to Fill Adsense Ads When They Are Not Covered?

When your ads are not covered, you don’t make any money even though people click on the ad-space. You can manually backup each ad with a customized banner advertisement that you have set up yourself.

Ideally this fall-back banner advertisement should promote something else that makes you money. It can linked to a highly monetized page or to an affiliate program.

A Highly Profitable Banner Advertisement to an Effective Affiliate Product

Since I am using this program actively myself, I know I can trust in its outstanding results. That is why I don’t hesitate to promote SBI as an affiliate. Fortunately SBI’s affiliate program gives you a lot of good looking banner ads for all sort of different audiences.

No matter what your audience is and how old they are, you will most likely be able to find one banner ad that will profit that will look interesting to your audience.

Here are two example banner ads:

Example Banner Ads from SBI!

Those Banner Pages Became the Most Popular Links on My Site

According to the statistics, I clearly saw that the banner ads, distributed across all the guest submissions and tier pages together, make up a lot of additional page views. And a few visitors click through to the affiliate program which will then, for those who are interested, convert into real money.

In other words, an additional earning opportunity where before there was nothing.

How You Can Profit from our experience and make similar additional income

I asked my virtual assistant to put together a concise user manual that you can use yourself or simply forward to your virtual assistant.
Here is what your virtual assistant will need:

Access to your site central.
(Alternative: You provide him banner ads or another affiliate program banner)
Access to your Adsense account as an administrator.
(Alternative: You provide him with the codes where your Adsense ads are set up with a backup banner page)
Access to your site central to change your ads if necessary.

All of the exact How To steps are clearly described in the eBook my virtual assistant put together for you.

I don’t want to charge you for that. But in exchange for downloading it, I will ask you to spread the word about my site. You can do this by clicking to the paywithatweet button.

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Comments for Increasing Monetization with Adsense Ads with the Help of My Virtual Assistant

Aug 12, 2014

curious newbie
by: Francis

I am curious about this subject—Adsense. I’ve tried getting an account, but they will not allow me to have one. I was just curious back then, since I know a friend who’s fond of uploading various videos online.

He told me, Google pays him just by uploading videos but first I have to create an account. I registered but I was denied.

By the way, I am from the Philippines. Does it have to do with the country I live in?

January 7, 2013 By Francis Leave a Comment

Another Advantage: You Always Have Someone to Talk to

by Francis
(Munich, Germany)

This might sound overly simple but with a virtual assistant you always have a listening ear. Often and especially when you have an online business, talking about it non stop will bore even your closest friends.

A virtual assistant is your employee. He is paid to help you out virtually, and that can mean giving helpful advice.

He could even research the net for a solution to your problem.

In fact, a good assistant will offer to do that without even being asked.

I find that the best way to know if you have an awesome, as opposed to a solid VA, is if he or she offers advice, input or other learning opportunities on their own.

Only then you can really say that you have doubled your own man power.

Aug 07, 2014

win-win situation
by: JomvieThe only person who will listen to your endless ideas is your virtual assistant and who will never get tired of it. And I think it’s not just because it’s just their job. I, for one, pretty like this job since it covers everything.If the employee does not know a single thing, the employer willingly trains and provide the necessary information. For me, it can broaden one person’s horizon while the employer can benefit for its business success—win-win situation in the end.

Feb 20, 2015

Your VA May Not Always Be 100% Straight and Honest With You
by: FrancisIt’s true that a virtual assistant will try his best to provide a valuable input if you ask him about your business and the projects you work with him. However, in the end, you want your online business to work for your customers and visitors. What may work for your virtual assistant, may not work for someone who has only seen your business for the first time.Also, a possible disadvantage or trap I can see is that a virtual assistant, if he’s hired by you, will be careful with what he tells you. Sometimes you need the truth straight and unfiltered. Sometimes you need uncomfortable answers. Your virtual assistant may not always have the guts to do that.So be sure to always get second opinion even if the opinion from your virtual assistant is already very useful to you.

January 6, 2013 By Francis Leave a Comment

Focusing on the Most Pressing Projects Together with My Virtual Assistant

by Francis
(January 06, 2013)

My job search has come to an end. Now, it’s time to re-organize myself with my Virtual Assistant. Before, I had a few hours a day to get projects organized with my VA. Now, time is more than scarce.

But that isn’t really a problem. Since one of the biggest factors of the success of a website is time, meaning that a site needs to mature to be successful, it’s good that I can’t give my VA tons of input every day.

To be honest, he has more than enough on his plate to work through the to-do list I’m leaving him every weekend.

But it has helped that he has changed from daily updates to 3 updates a week. Also, his work updates include screenshots, links and all sort of information that makes it easier for me to follow up faster.

Also check out this link about when I set up the communication with a team member.

The most important task now, for both me and my VA, is to prioritize. This way, we will get more done than if we were working on thousand projects at the same time, without finishing one for good.

Comments for Focusing on the most pressing projects together with my Virtual Assistant

Sep 11, 2014

Reap what you Sow..
by: JomvieAs your website matures—time is of the essence. And I think that’s a good feedback because it only means that it is growing and that you have to keep up with your website’s needs.And the good thing is you have a team of VAs to help you around..

We Want You to Learn From Our Experiences of Cooperating With A VA

by Francis
(January 18, 2013)

From the past, all I did with my VA was to get my work done. Now, I want to change my focus.

In order for you to learn as much as possible, I’m always asking my virtual assistant to put up a sort of mini manual from each step we have learned.

Look out for those free downloads. All we ask you for it is a short vote of confidence.

Whenever my virtual assistant learns something, he will put the things learned together in a mini manual. You can really do it yourself or you can simply send it to your virtual assistant.

After he will have reviewed the manual, he will have acquired the same skills as my virtual assistant has.

I hope this is a great deal.

With My Virtual Assistant I Finally Got the Projects Done With the Detail I Would Like To

by Francis
(January 21, 2013)

When I returned from work, my VA has already worked for 5 hours. He has completed a few projects of mine on both of my websites with a lot of attention to detail.

When I remember the times when I worked on my websites alone without a virtual assistant, I was not as thorough as my assistant.

Not even by far.

That’s the cool thing about working with my VA. He implements my ideas and instructions not only to the letter but with creative attention to detail.

Sometimes, he implements ideas I wouldn’t even have had without me asking. That’s extremely helpful.

A lot of little details that you would only discover when they were not taken care of are laid off very well on my websites.

Great stuff! That’s what I love to see when I came back after a long day of work.

Speeding Up the Communication with My Virtual Assistant by Using More Informative Work Updates

by Francis
(January 22, 2013)

man working on his laptop with mutliple complexed screenshots

I’m happy to have started my new job. As expected, it takes a lot of time from me. Luckily, my virtual assistant and I have prepared extensively for the situation.

Now, it’s time for the hardcore test.

I work much more than the classical 9 to 5. If I’m still successful in keeping two online businesses running then great!

If I give up on both websites, please come over to my house and kick me in the butt.

Just kidding!

If I cannot keep up, then as a full time employee, this would prove that we have nothing to do with a virtual assistant.

Let’s hope that it doesn’t come to that.

I have a long discussion today with my virtual assistant about how to improve the speed of his work updates. I’ve asked him to invest much more time in updating me about his work.

The more clearly he can illustrate and present his progress, the faster I can react and give him input.

Each saved minute in my end helps.

In other words, even if my virtual assistant will need more than an hour to formulate a well-presented work update; it might be worth it if I have only 10 minutes a day to spare.

Do you get this principle?

If your time is worth a lot of money it makes sense to invest that money in working time from your virtual assistant even if he’s only updating you about his progress.

I’ll keep you informed how this works for me.

Upcoming Interview with Successful Online Business Owner

by Francis
(January 27, 2013)

Ever wanted to meet someone that lives the online biz lifestyle – with great success? Even while working on a day job at the same time…?

Then now is the chance to secure yourself a seat in the front row!

A new series of Question and Answers Interviews, called “Meet an SBIer” is starting in 2013.

On January 31, 6 pm ET you’ll be able to see Carl Trent, owner of dadsguidetowdw.com, live on YouTube!

He’ll be talking from experience about:

Targeting your audience with the right “voice”
Monetization of your online business
Keyword Research for successful web pages

Become part of this interview and ask your questions beforehand on Sitesell’s Facebook page.

Stay tuned to this Facebook page to know about the exact location where the interview will be released: on the day of the event, the exclusive interview will be posted there!

In the meantime, please also enjoy Jill, who also turned her passion into a way to leave the day job rat-race:

My Virtual Assistant Helped Me Resolve Traffic Loss Problems with Penguin

by Francis
(January 29, 2013)

If you own a website and follow the actual trends with Google algorithms then you will know about the Penguin update.

In principle, the problem was that on my other site, I lost some traffic because I involved some less than optimal link-building techniques.

Fortunately, I could retrace whatever I did at that time and asked my virtual assistant to help me sort that out.

Probably many webmasters have the same problem. Some link-building techniques were more popular than others. But after Penguin, some of those techniques are punished with traffic loss.

What did my virtual assistant do?

He helped me locate where I used a certain technique too much and helped me reverse the process. Hopefully the next time a Google algorithm update comes along, my other website will regain some of its lost traffic.

January 6, 2013 By Francis Leave a Comment

Merger of oDesk and Elance decided for in 4 month – Good or bad for employers and virtual assistants?

by Francis
(January 06, 2013)

Elance and Odesk plan to merge. How will they call themselves? oLance or Edesk...? — **Elance and Odesk plan to merge. How will they call themselves? oLance or Edesk…?**

As a regular user of the outsourcing service oDesk, I was surprised to read about its merging with its biggest competitor, Elance. This is quite big news that resonated strongly with their respective communities.

The New York Times reported this decision between these two service providers on the 18th December. The merger is planned to be effective for in about 3 month (official statement: in the first quarter of 2014)

The CEOs of both companies, Gary Swart (oDesk, click for the official statement) and Fabio Rosati (Elance, click for their statement), state that this merger was not a necessity out of lack of funding, but simply to improve both services by sharing their tools and expertise.

However, I believe this will definitively come with some re-organization (read: some people might be out of a job) as well as with some unexpected changes.

Just for an example: if Thomas Layton (oDesk) will become the executive chairman of both companies, what happens with the former executive chairman from Elance?

But I can understand that in order to stay in business, globally, these companies must make business decisions.

What is good and what is bad about this merger?

If you take the time to review the comments of the user base, you will find the following worries and a few positive reactions:

First, the positive reactions:

If they combine the escrow system from Elance with the fixed price projects from oDesk, there would be more security for the VAs doing fixed price projects.
Instead of wasting resources fighting each other, both competitors can now invest more into making the services even better.

However, the negative reactions outweigh the positive by far. Here are some points of criticism from users of both services:

A very valid concern, that I also support, is that less competition (or even monopoly) is bad for the quality of the services. It will stand to be proven in the future how the services will really change.
Some VAs are afraid that their hard worked on profiles might change somehow. But for now, it is planned that both services continue to co-exist, with profiles, payment methods, platform usage and feedback rates unchanged. At least that is what can be read in the official statements.
In the opinion of some users, there seem to be more scammers on Elance. In others, people state that the users of oDesk are lowballing the prices. Other commenters claim that Elance has a better reputation than oDesk among freelancers, and that this merger will injure the reputation from Elance. Especially the fear of the market becoming “cheaper” is very visible among comments from users.These general opinions are not confirmed by me, but the general worries are that whichever service has the less honest users will pollute the other.
Some users are afraid that an apparent business principle of Elance, focussing on lowering bids and increasing fees, might be ported to the other platform.
Finally, some freelancers, especially in the comments of the oDesk statement, take the opportunity to appeal against unfair bannings and suspensions against them. Interestingly, some official answers looking into the case are given. Perhaps because the mods need to take care of appearances.Anyways, if you feel you might have been treated unfairly, it might be a good idea to appeal publicly on these posts?

Generally speaking, underpricing yourself is not something you should do, even if you feel pressured to do so. It’s a question of principles.

Is this merger good or bad business?

But will these decisions be good or bad for employers and virtual assistants alike? As an active oDesk user, my opinion is not easily impartial. But I have found a great critic from geekpreneur.com supporting the opinion that virtual assistants (the providers) should be worried about this merger.

Both services try to reassure, but only time will tell what will happen

For anyone, here are the reactions of both services to the complaints and worries voiced above (here and here). However, the statements feel a bit lukewarm to me.

The biggest worry is clearly the cost structure and the fear of fee increases due to this merger. Both outsourcing services insist that nothing will change to this regard.

But take a look at their words, stated like a politician. If you look closely, there’s a “legal” loophole:

The CEO of oDesk, Gary Swart, states that there will be

“No increase in fee based on the merger.”

In other words, whenever these two merged companies can find another reason (to cover expenses, due to the economy, because it is “unavoidable”) they might still increase fees…

A commenter observed this well, and I put a screenshot of his comment into an illustration on top of this post.

What is your opinion about this change?

What do you think about this merger?

Will it be beneficial? If yes, for whom (employers or VAs)? And if not, why?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below!