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This Tracking Tool Has Helped Me Force Myself to Leave Some Work to My Virtual Assistant

by Francis
(October 24, 2012)

this-tracking-tool-has-helped-me-force-myself-to-leave-some-work-to-my-virtual-assistant-21680463

As an employer of a team of virtual assistants, it is my job to make sure that everyone is working and that everything is going well. Luckily for me, my team is pretty effective and my main virtual assistant needs very little supervision.

That’s not always the case for all VA’s. But if you’re lucky and if you train your VA well then this can be a great outcome.

However, now that my VA is doing things for me, I need to exercise some discipline to keep myself from doing those tasks which I outsourced to my VA in the first place.

A virtual assistant works so that the employer doesn’t have to.

If my virtual assistant does everything right and I’m wasting my time supervising him every minute and giving him needless repetitive instructions every hour. Am I being productive?

No, it’s far from it.

What I decided to do, for the time being, in order to focus on more important tasks is to use RescueTime as a tool to keep me away from the work of my virtual assistant.

In other words, in the dashboard of RescueTime, I have defined all those tasks which were previously marked as productive like working on my websites, measuring the analytics and giving instructions as unproductive time.

Note that those tasks are not really unproductive. They are just inefficient. I’m really sounding like a smart-ass, aren’t I, right?

But this is an important differentiation.

If my VA runs into trouble, he will make sure that I know this and I will make sure that he can clean up the trouble.

But if I don’t rely on my virtual assistant, then we are effectively working twice as much for the same task; in other words RescueTime’s, for me, a way to temporarily force myself out of the equation.

If I really want to replace my work by the work of my virtual assistant, I need to give him give him the freedom to do so.

Using the Pro feature of RescueTime to get focused, I blocked out every activity which is marked as inefficient for a certain amount of time. This prevents me from checking on my employees every minute.

If you have trained yourself one or several virtual assistants who are self-sustainable and work well without supervision then you are already advanced with outsourcing.

But if you are not there, do not hesitate to leave some work for your virtual assistants without supervision. If they screw up, you can still rectify the problems later or get angry if you think that helps.

In my opinion and experience, I think that leaving stuff to your assistants is more productive in a long run than to screen and measure every single step of the way.

As a side note, I have been guilty of exactly that. I’ll try to get better on that account. 😉

Comments for This Tracking Tool Has Helped Me Force Myself to Leave Some Work to My Virtual Assistant

Aug 04, 2014 Outsourcing Job Opportunity
by: Jomvie

I think the sole purpose of outsourcing is that employers would want someone to complete their task in behalf of their absence since online job is not just their main job. And we are fortunate for this kind of job opportunity.

And speaking of rescuetime, I haven’t tried blocking off sites or possible distracting stuff on the internet since I am unusually tempted. I hope they have something for ‘procrastinating’ =)
Aug 04, 2014 Pro Features
by: Francis

Rescuetime actually has a pro feature to “zone in” on productive tasks only. What happens is that during a predefined time, all non-productive pages (that are defined by rescuetime and customized by you) are blocked.

There’s another alternative, which is going offline altogether. But that only works if you can work offline and get something done still (like writing an article).

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How I Am Actually Successful with Blogging and Getting Results Thanks to My Virtual Assistant

by Francis
(October 23, 2012)

Sometimes when people asked me about my websites, they refer to them as blogs. This website is not just a blog but it contains a blog as well.

Setting up a free blog on WordPress or Blogger is extremely easy and that’s also a task you could outsource to a virtual assistant.

But only because it’s easy does not mean it is effective. Using SBI! for its capability of implementing a blog, it’s much more effective in my opinion.

How do I actually get all my blogging done successfully?

Blogging for me means that I share with you in real time my progress, my news, my challenges and my questions while the news are fresh. If I had to sit down and write a thoughtful post every time something happened, I wouldn’t be able to catch up.

Actually that’s what happens to 99% of all blog owners. They just don’t find the time to follow up with their posts. And that’s why most blogs out there are inactive and just lying around.

I have two advantages for my blogging.

  1. I use the right tool. It’s called RSS-BlogIt! and it’s from SBI.
  2. I like to blog using transcription to my virtual assistant.

In other words, my blog posts literally talk to you. When you follow my regular blog postings, you are in fact listening to me.

Did you know that transcription work is one of the most affordable ways to use a virtual assistant? And one of the fastest ways to get the written work done?

Well now you know it! That’s my little secret.

Comments for How I Am Actually Successful With Blogging and Getting Results Thanks to My Virtual Assistant

Aug 06, 2014 Great Job Opportunity
by: JomvieAlthough I am not so familiar with how blogging goes—just a few of these and that. As a worker online, we are grateful for this kind of job opportunity where we can learn something in the online world.

And apart from that, we can work comfortably right in the premises of our home, away from the real world’s day to day hustle-and-bustle and at the end of the day will leave us beat and stressed.

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Recording Productive Offline Time with the RescueTime Tool

by Francis
(October 22, 2012)

recording-productive-offline-time-with-the-rescuetime-tool-21680107
Here is how you can add offline time to RescueTime

One of my favorite techniques to get productive is to disconnect myself from the internet. The problem is that RescueTime does not work and record your productivity or track your progress when you are offline.

To get the work around, one of the Pro features of RescueTime actually is the ability to record offline time. To do that you can always go in to the dashboard and click on enter offline time manually.

If you are a fresh user of RescueTime, then you’ll actually receive two weeks of PRO features for free. That’s why I know it 🙂

The ability to record offline time is also great if you are productive with any task you may want to do which does not involve the computer. This way you really can track when you are being productive and when not.

For example, my room tends to become a mess pretty often. So when I clean up my room, I think of myself being extremely productive. RescueTime is not as advanced as to record when I’m cleaning my room, of course.

But I can still easy hit the enter offline time button and enter one hour of cleaning my room. Actually now that I am writing this post, I think I should do so.

Well before I get to work, let me just wrap up real quick. You can enter offline time both for any work as for specific projects so that you can track the progress of your projects too. It’s also great if you are in a meeting or doing a phone call for business.

All of these times can be tracked if you add it manually. This of course is an additional working step. But if you are diligent in recording all your productive time, then RescueTime is extremely useful to find out where you’re productive, where you’re not and where you can make it even better.

Comments for Recording Productive Offline Time with the RescueTime Tool

Aug 06, 2014 monitoring online and/or offline
by: John

This is a helpful tool whenever there’s something inevitable event in the future esp to those VA’s required to use time-tracker software to monitor their hours or online worker paid in an hourly basis—effective for online and offline work.

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An Underestimated Disadvantage with Outsourcing

by Francis
(October 21, 2012)

You lose the experience from learning by doing and doing experiments.

One possible disadvantage you’ll have to face when you get involved with outsourcing is that when you delegate all your work to someone else, you lose the benefit of learning by doing.

Many tasks and a lot of experience you gain are gained by actually doing the tasks.

If you delegate everything that you should do to your virtual assistant, it is him and not you who will gain knowledge and skills. You’ll have to find a fine line of balance between delegating your work and learning by doing it yourself.

The best method of delegating your work to an outsourced virtual assistant, in my opinion, is to do the following:

  1. Do the task yourself. No matter how simple it is. No matter how long it takes. Do it yourself so often that you can do it easily.
  2. Record how you do all the steps either via video or audio.
  3. Give your step by step work instructions to your virtual assistants.
  4. Have your virtual assistant do a test run, duplicating your efforts.
  5. Evaluate how well your virtual assistant did. If he didn’t do well, fine tune your instructions until your virtual assistant gets it right.

Finally, enjoy your work getting done by a virtual assistant while you got to learn the skills in the process. That’s how I do it and that’s how I think everyone who hires a virtual assistant should do it.

You can read more about training your Virtual Assistant with purpose and a strategy in mind in this post.

  • If you don’t learn the process you wanted to outsource thoroughly yourself, then you have two problems.
  • You will not be able to find a replacement for your VA quickly if you need to rehire.

And you’ll need to have the newly hired VA figure out the whole process a second time, needlessly costing you time and money.

Comments for An Underestimated Disadvantage with Outsourcing

Sep 02, 2014 VA plays a major role
by: Francis I, honestly learned a lot from my new career path now as a VA—though it’s kind of slow. But, I am glad that I get to know other stuff apart from writing.

If you want to work as an online provider, other than your skills is an edge for any online worker.

For me, a VA is the essence of every outsourcing industry. I just hope this industry will continue to grow..

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I Wanted To Try Out Doing a Data Entry Job in Germany to Compare How This Sort of Work Actually Feels

by Francis
(October 19, 2012)

One press of a finger...Modern laptop isolated on white with reflections on glass table.

Yesterday I got a good opportunity, thanks to a friend of mine, to apply for a simple data entry job here in Munich to make some money with relatively easy work.

I thought it would be fun to make a study out of it and to compare how it actually is typing data in Excel all day long.

I assume that for people in India, for example, who do data entry jobs as a full-time job; this can really be tiring and annoying at times.

By the way, this part time job would have paid me 10 Euros per hour. Many students apply for jobs like this. The pay is decent but not extremely high. How does this compare to the pay of an average $1 per hour for data entry jobs in countries like India?

Do you think this difference of payment is fair or is it simply a difference due to the countries?

If you think that there was a missed opportunity to find a real cash making machine, I’ve already thought of that. Just as a joke, of course.

Just imagine if you would have a work at home data entry job which would pay as much as I just described. Couldn’t you just outsource it to a data entry person for $1-2 an hour and keep the difference? Well, theoretically, you could.

Here’s why this wasn’t possible:

  1. First of all, it wasn’t a work at home job. I would have to go there and physically work there in a computer room.
  2. Confidentiality of the data. I cannot just take the data of someone else and share it with an outsourcer overseas. That would be huge breach of trust and could get me into serious trouble.
  3. Language Barrier. Of course, this work is in German and to get an outsource assistant who speaks and writes German perfectly, you’ll have to invest a little bit more than $1 an hour. Actually, this is one of the challenges I personally have faced from time to time when I thought of outsourced projects in my native tongue and couldn’t find an affordable virtual assistant with great German skills.

Final note

Unfortunately, I wasn’t even taken for the job.

Perhaps I should have posted how hard it is to get a side job when you really want one. 😉

But perhaps that’s for another time.

Comments for I Wanted To Try Out Doing a Data Entry Job in Germany to Compare How This Sort of Work Actually Feels

Sep 07, 2014 more than decent pay
by: John

That 10 dollar an hour is more than pretty decent.. Data Entry jobs often amounts from one to two dollars here in the Philippines. But, I think due to the nature of the job, the pay is higher.

I hope I could find some of that from time to time 😀
Sep 07, 2014 In Munich, the rate was OK
by: Francis

As a student doing “simple” jobs, you could earn between 8 and 12 Euros per hour. So the pay was OK, but nothing big to be surprized about.

And it would require fluent German skills – else I would have outsourced this job instead of trying it out myself 😉

But in general, I do not see many data entry jobs that are german-based.

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Driving Traffic to a Website with Fiverr: Does it Makes Sense or Is This Useless?

by Francis
(October 12, 2012)

Famous Saying by William Blake
Famous Saying by William Blake

Today I’m trying another experiment. What it will cost me? Some time, some effort, some brain power and $5. I’m talking of course about the website Fiverr where you can order all sorts of stuff.

I set up a new page where I wanted to drive traffic to, to see if it is working. One gig promised me 5,000 human visitors for the price of $5. From the point of view of a cost per click marketing, this is a no brainer. The question is, though, are these visitors real? Can I use them?

The simple test I’m making is to send it to a website which has a sign up form. If a lot of people sign up for free offer and join my mailing lists, then I know that this traffic is genuine and I can use it.

Normally, I would never do that with a website which is important to me. But the landing site I’m talking about is free blogging website which is not that important. After you buy the gig, you are sent to your PayPal page. Pay your $5 and you are off.

Now I just follow up and sent him or her, the website link I want to drive the traffic to and then I’ll have to wait for a day or two. Depending on the gig, you have to invest some time waiting but all of this information is disclosed upfront.

As a website owner, I have to warn you to be extremely careful with search engine optimization, traffic driving or other quick solution tactics with Fiverr. You might break your website and lose traffic in the long run if you try to manipulate search results using Fiverr.

I am doing it because it is an experiment and I want to tell you how this went. You, however, should be careful. Save your $5 if you don’t know what you’re doing. But if you want to have fun with crazy or useful gigs, Fiverr is possibly the fastest outsourcing service available for outsourcing newbies.

Comments for Driving Traffic to a Website with Fiverr: Does it Makes Sense or Is This Useless?

Aug 07, 2014 Loads of Good Luck
by: Francis That’s how they are promoting and they all sound very promising—sales talk. Since your purpose is to try out or rather experimenting if driving traffic really works, I think investing five dollar sounds fine for trial and error. Hopefully you’ll get loads of traffic in the future 😀

Disappointing Results of Quick Traffic Driving With Fiverr

by Francis
(October 12, 2012)

Webpage traffic Analysis
Webpage traffic Analysis

I got my Fiverr gig completed in time. Unfortunately, the results are very disappointing to say the least. The bad thing is I can’t really give him a negative review.

When you have a look at the stats of this gig, as shown in the picture at the top of the post, you’ll see that this person claims to have delivered 12,000 clicks to my website.

The data does not really show any problems. The analytics on my site, however, did not show this sort of activity at all.

The bad thing is I did not install Google Analytics on this blog page I wanted to send traffic to. I relied on the automatic visitor counts of Aweber where I have placed an Aweber form on the blog page.

So I can’t really disprove that this person has done a good job. What I can see is that I did not get any results. No subscribers, no visitors. So to be honest, I was really disappointed with this Gig.

fail-quotation-anthony-J-D-AngeloI think those $5 were spent in vain. Perhaps not in vain, you should reconsider seriously when you think about buying quick traffic from Fiverr. You might not necessarily hurt your website. However, you might not also necessarily get the wanted response.

Let’s have a look at where the traffic comes from. Some from Facebook, some from Twitter and most of it via email clients. I assume that they are able to drive this much traffic in such a short time using some sort of automated huge email network.

It’s clear that many of the visitors will not appreciate the website I’ve shared there. Also, most visitors come from China. Without wanting to sound disrespectful, I’m not even sure if all these clicks and people are real, to be honest probably not.

How else could you explain that someone sends 10,000 visitors to a random website overnight? Those can’t be interested normal people.

So I was greedy, it was my fault. I shouldn’t have used Fiverr to drive traffic to my website. But it was an experiment as I said in my last post.

So what I will have to do is to give a positive feedback because I cannot really prove that this guy did something wrong. But still it has a bad after taste. I’m not really happy with it.

To outsource traffic generation, I believe it’s smarter to create your own hard work product and content and have it marketed by your virtual assistant specially trained for this.

Dear website owners, try to stay away from traffic driving Fiverr gigs. That is my take home message.

Comments for Disappointing Results of Quick Traffic Driving With Fiverr

Aug 06, 2014 credible gigs with VAs help 😀
by: Francis I’ve read some posts about buying off some traffic, and mostly there’s always a downfall to it since it is not credible and most probably it’s created by one or two individual. In the future, they’re not much of help if you need more. So, I think it would be best if credible and true traffic will come to your website with the use of some gigs from your own VAs help 😀

Whoops – never mind. Traffic was sent as promised by the Fiverr Gig

by Francis

OK my bad. The traffic is there.
OK my bad. The traffic is there.

Although that traffic bought by Fiverr yielded no profit or interaction whatsoever, the traffic bought by the gig I told about in the post above was delivered as promised.

So – I cannot complain. I only make the observation that traffic bought through a Fiverr gig with doubious background to say the least is probably not the smartest move for your website. 😉

Comments for Whoops – never mind. Traffic was sent as promised by the Fiverr Gig

Nov 16, 2012 No, you’re right.
by: Fiverr Traffic Don’t take it back. You were right. The traffic was junk, thus the reason you had no conversions. I’ve experienced the same phenomenon. See my similar post (though I DID have Google Analytics installed) atHow Not To Drive Traffic Using Fiverr

Matt
Marketing Ideas 101
Nov 17, 2012 We should have asked what sort of traffic they deliver
by: Francis I agree that they send out junk traffic – but it’s traffic, so they did not trick us, strictly speaking.For someone who might have had a Cost Per Impression advertisement system set up, he might even had made a profit from such an arrangement.

I’ll also check out your post in a second!