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March 5, 2013 By Francis Leave a Comment

Converting SBI BlockBuilder Pages to BlockBuilder 2

by Francis
(5 March 2013)

It’s already the second website from SBI-ers that we are going to do a thorough BlockBuilder 2 conversion on. I’m looking forward to the work and to learning new stuff as well as to the excellent business opportunity.

If you have a website in BB1 that you don’t have the time or the energy to convert to BB2, please feel free to contact us. We are likely to be able to help you with your conversion.

Continue reading more about Sitesell Virtual Assistant

Thinking About Buying Stock Photos from Fiverr? Better Think Again

by Francis
(07 March, 2013)

selecting-pictures-for-photo-slideshow It is not a good idea to buy stock photos from Fiverr or similar services.

Why?

You won’t get the copyright information with it. In other words, you will purchase pirated stock photos and paying money for it.

What’s the worst thing that can happen?

Well, a stock photo bank can catch you using those photos and then it’s going to get really expensive. Legal fees and legal battles are not known to be easy and easily paid.

So do yourself a favor and stay away from services like Fiverr if you are looking for stock photos. I’ve made the same mistake but luckily my only damage has been to pay $5.

Continue reading the complete case study about buying creative commons images from Fiverr

Beginners Guide to Outsourcing

by Francis
(08 March, 2013)

Are you a total beginner in the area of outsourcing? Don’t you even know where to start?

I was once at that point, four years ago. Since then, I have made many experiences. I’m sure you are looking out to get an easy, down-to-earth beginner’s guide to outsourcing.

How do you get that Outsourcing Guide?

You can simply sign up to download it from our free coaching sessions by just signing up to the form on the right.

What will you learn?

My virtual assistant and I will take you by the hand and lead you step by step through the process of understanding and mastering outsourcing.

Then, you can apply this knowledge to whatever you need.

Think hard about where you want to save time now.

Make it possible.

How? By getting your free beginners guide for outsourcing and free email coaching from us, from our experience.

Why is it free?

Because I don’t want you to stumble in the dark and make the same mistakes I did.

We would be very happy if you followed along and send us your comments from time to time.

We thrive on your feedback.

Prioritizing Your Work for Your Virtual Assistant If There Is Too Much To Do

by Francis
(11 March, 2013)

Sometimes, I would have so many ideas I would like to hire ten virtual assistants and get them all done. But before I do this, I need to stop myself and think.

No one can start out and have enough work to do and manpower to supervise ten virtual assistants. So, I keep the numbers of co-workers on my team low. At the moment, there’s my main virtual assistant and my transcriptionist.

For times like these where I have several projects running, I simply prioritize the tasks and let my virtual assistant know which tasks to attack right away and which tasks later when there’s more time.

How Your Virtual Assistant Can Help You with Video Search to Create Great Content

by Francis
(19 March, 2013)

man-in-computer-searching-with-binoculars Short, time-effective but effective method to build quality content fast.

Step 1: Have your virtual assistant research videos regarding your niche subject on YouTube.

Step 2: Have him compile the best videos in an Excel-sheet

Step 3: Watch one video – Take notes

Step 4: Record a voice transcript with your thoughts about this video

Step 5: Your virtual assistant creates a post out of the transcript and embed the video that inspired your blog post.

Step 6: Feel free to contact the video owner that you have made a post based on his video. He might promote this on his own social networks and you gain double.

Step 7: Enjoy great new content on steroids and great new relationships.

See an example of a page inspired by a YouTube video.

Good Tool for Video Instructions but It Is A Little Slow

by Francis
(13 March, 2013)

I swear by using Jing as a screen instruction tool almost every day. One little thing is bothering me with it, though.

It takes an awful lot of time to start up when you don’t have it run in the background. And when it does run in the background, it takes a quite considerable amount of computer resources.

Do you have the same experience than I have?

I’m always on the lookout for better programs to make managing my assistants easier. Actually, my VA has researched a big list of transcription programs for me. I’ll feature them in a future post.

For now, Jing still is the most efficient tool for a screen recording in my opinion. Just the start up time is bothering me a little bit.

How Your Virtual Assistant Can Help You with Your Twitter Profile

by Francis
(12 March, 2013)

I am just getting started in world of twitter. I like researching interesting tweets and following people who have only interesting stuff to say. I try to filter out everything else.

As you might know its important that you have a customized Twitter profile as well as a logo or a personal picture. Else you look like just everyone else.

These tasks of customizing my Twitter profile were outsourced to my virtual assistant. I think he did a very good job. Check out our Twitter profile here and follow us if you also use Twitter.

March 4, 2013 By Francis Leave a Comment

I Wish I Could Outsource My Day Job

by Francis
(March 04, 2013)

Do you sometimes have these moments where in your actual day job, you receive so much work that you wish you could give it to a virtual assistant?

Since I’m working with one on an almost day to day basis, this thought has crossed my mind more than once. How easy would it be for me to send him some data from my work, let him work on it for me and then save lots of boring time. Especially, if it involves working with huge excel files and data analysis.

Unfortunately, this is not something I would recommend or do for that matter.

Reasons why you should never outsource your day job chores to your VA:

It can get you fired. How is that for a reason?
It’s not safe. If your VA makes a mistake even without meaning bad, it’s you who are responsible for your day work results.
You will get caught! Sooner or later. Retributions can come even much in the future.

The only time when you can safely outsource your own day job is when you are a self-employed entrepreneur. Then, you are only responsible to yourself. This is more than a reason to strongly consider becoming your own boss.

How do you feel about outsourcing your real job?

Is it fair…? Is it cool? Should it be allowed?

February 1, 2013 By Francis Leave a Comment

Expanding the Dropbox Space Using a Fiverr Deal

by Francis
(Feb 01, 2013)

guy-in-black-suit-holding-a-dropbox-card My 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.

Read more about expanding your Dropbox space up to 18GB

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-its Sometimes 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?

Read more advantages of outsourcing

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

by Francis
(Feb 21, 2013)

man-offering-cash If 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.

Read about about virtual assistant training

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.

January 25, 2013 By Francis Leave a Comment

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!**

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.

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.

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

And then, both win from that situation.

January 21, 2013 By Francis Leave a Comment

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.

January 21, 2013 By Francis Leave a Comment

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. =)