Tips to start an online business

by Francis
(July 30, 2013)

If you have a website and you come from Germany and live in Germany; you absolutely need an Impressum. It doesn’t help if your website is in English, hosted elsewhere or not having a German audience at all.

This blog post is really intended as information for Germany-based readers.

What happens if you don’t have an Impressum on your website?

You can actually be fined with sums between a few hundreds to a few thousands of Euros. Although the risk is not very big especially if your site is not well known, you should clear all your basis.

Do you want a bigger risk when you make your personal information accessible to everyone?

Believe me, I do have serious doubts and fears about privacy issues. Probably more than the usual internet user nowadays has.
In the research results by my virtual assistant is my take on how to protect your privacy while putting up an effective Impressum or disclaimer on your site.

Nice to know but often overlooked fact.

Just as your website absolutely needs an Impressum so that you’re protected against getting randomly fined by some lawyer; your Facebook fan pages also need one.

Your Opinion: Do you think an Impressum is needed or not?

I would really like to invite you to submit your comment, if you think an Impressum is useful or useless for your site.
There people who prefer the approach of not putting their personal information out there. Especially, if they have a niche site with a subject that does not really relate to their personality or which you don’t want others to find about.

There’s also the whole topic of trying to harm your competitors. On the other hand, it might be that putting your real name out there really increases the trust with your readers.
What’s your opinion on this?

Don’t you care about having the real name of a person in the website?

Is it perhaps something which really increases your trust if one is open with their identity on a website?

Do you think there is a big risk with putting an Impressum out there that outweighs the protection against the fine of a few hundred Euros per incident?

Please share your opinions with us and let us know if the E-book research by my virtual assistant was useful to you.

Comments for Researched Solution for an Impressum Needed For German Websites by My Virtual Assistant

by Francis
(January 18, 2013)

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?

When 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

No 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.

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?

Each 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?

by Kirk

If you’re drowning with tasks and you don’t know how to get things done, one of the best things to do is to hire a virtual assistant.

It could help you save time and allows you to stay focus on important tasks.

When hiring a virtual assistant you need to screen them first even you acquire them on legit sites like Staff.com and Guru.com, which allows you see their potential.

Having a virtual assistant is a great benefit for your business as long as you know how to find the right person for the job.

Thanks for your story, Kirk!

I also think that selection and training of the virtual assistant is the most crucial step to take, in order to be successful.

If you hire anyone who is willing to work for you, you’ll be in for a harsh ride. Believe me, I have been there, done that and gotten the t-shirt.

A good way to pre-screen an assistant is to hire two VA’s at the same time, assessing them and keeping the person who is the better fit to your business.

Your working style is as variable as there are personalities under the VA’s.

Personally, I found it important to relate to my VA’s as a real person. That’s why I’m interested in working with “nice, human” VA’s rather than professionals.

If you’re the CEO of a big online enterprise, you might need the exact opposite…

Bottom line:

Before you drown in your work and start to despair – get a virtual assistant!

by Francis
(December 20, 2012)

A few friends of mine are entrepreneurs. They know how websites are supposed to be built and also know a lot about marketing. I’m lucky to have their feedback regarding the layout, design and look and feel of the Ideal-helper website.

Personally, I’m most proud about the contents I am writing here. The written words you can read here are based on my personal experiences of working with virtual assistants from all around the world. In my opinion, the written content is the most useful stuff you can get from this website.

On one hand, it’s impossible for me to ignore the tons of feedback my entrepreneur friends give to me.

Their main concern?

How the layout of my website might scare off new visitors.

I like to believe that someone who is really interested in the topic will read past as an optimal design.

But on the other hand, why lose potential readers and friends?

Why not go the extra mile to reach out to an even larger audience?

That’s why there’s also some intensive testing, working and fine tuning going on behind the lines – all for the optical pleasure.

Is this necessary?

I believe so.

Is it the highest priority?

I don’t believe so.

My virtual assistant and I would put an extra hours to make sure that you will receive fresh and relevant content on an ongoing basis.

The design optimizations will take place over time.

But as long as I can profit from the feedback of my friends, I’ll try to do so.

So please don’t be surprised if you see some optical changes on the next few days (or weeks…).

I promise you all the information will stay here. I won’t take down any of my information.

I‘ll also try to be as transparent as I can be about the whole process. Perhaps, there’s a lesson to be learned here.

And to be honest, I believe that what you can learn here from me is rather unique on the web.

Since I’m a totally normal guy who’s working together with virtual assistants without even having a notable income – so I haven’t found much resources about this when I started out outsourcing.

That’s why I believe the information you can read here still is useful.

But I will make ends meet so that the information is not only useful and present it into a very appetizing matter.

Stay tuned.

Comments for Working on the Design of the Ideal-helper Website

by Francis
(December 06, 2012)

I’m excited every time I log into SBI and every time I read the SBI forums. The owner of the whole system, Ken, is an extremely wise, business savvy and most of all kind man.

How much?

It so only becomes apparent if you are part of the community and see day to day his commitment and passion to his customers. The customers, of course are people who possess site builder websites.

One of Many Acts of the Heart

I’m not saying this happens every day and I’m not saying that you’re entitled to this sort of service if you sign up and create a website on SBI. However, the spirit is something which I find more and more often especially in times like now when Webmasters are depressed and de-motivated by all the changes on Google algorithms.

What happened?

A user of the forum who previously had two extremely successful websites on SBI got hit hard by the different algorithm changes and couldn’t do anything about it.

“Where is the point in building a website if something can happen overnight to destroy your online business?” He asked; a very valid question.

You should be careful when starting an online business. It does not always go well. However, for all its worth, if you do it when you’re using SBI; you’re doing it in the most safely, well-thought out way that it is possible to build an online business. That much I can guarantee.

So what’s the News?

The user got more and more depressed in his post. So much that even the business owner, Ken, got involved in to the discussion. And then when the customer could not take it anymore from all the setbacks, Ken made him a special offer. He showed him how he could get some help for free within the walls of SBI of course.

Before that many, many users already tried their level best to give him useful business advice on how to save his online businesses. Some of those users are already extremely successful themselves. All of this great advice is very useful for any reader like me who does not even have that problem.

To be part of the forum themselves, which are really full of loving and friendly people, is one the best features from the whole SBI subscriptions. It is one of the reasons why I still will chose SBI for every website I will create just to support this great community.

It’s rare to find such kind, friendly places online. Usually, you will only find people who try to make profit on your expense or customers who are only searching for what’s in it for them.

In the SBI forum, the focus is on help and get helped. Everyone looks out to each other. To be honest, I already have made some dear online friends without even having met them. I hope I will be able to go to one of those conferences, which take place from time to time, organized by SBI users to meet some of my online friends face to face.