Boosting the crawlability of your site or blog is not really rocket science, but still many webmasters see it as something that’s not in your control. You’re about to learn the right changes that will make it happen. What you really must do if you’re trying to attract website crawlers is make your site attractive to them.

Are you trying to improve your site crawlability?

Major search engines like Google are regularly looking for new pages that add value and that will be useful to their users. So if you can convince them that your site is worthy, there’s no doubt that you’ll see a higher site crawlability and better search engine rankings in the long run for all your pages.

Optimize your images

Website photos, like the written content on your website, need to be optimized for a little extra search engine love. Oddly enough, poorly optimized images on your site can lead to dismal ranking. Failing to do this can mean that your website will have a crawl rate that isn’t quite as fast as you need it to be to succeed. How do you do this? Using captions for the purpose of attracting search engine attention is a great first step to make your images more Google bot friendly then you need to move along and make sure you’ve properly resized the images and used appropriate keywords in the file names. It’s not a big deal to make these small changes but the changes they’ll make in your site’s performance is a very big deal.

Choose your hosting with care

Choose the service you turn to for website hosting well (we recommend Host Gator)so your site doesn’t have a tendency to be down during critical moments. It’s impossible to guess about any specific time your website is going to be crawled. Choosing your hosting wisely for better uptime will raise the odds that your site will be operational when they do. Ensure that you double check the server that you’re going for and if you experience any problems in the start, then just switch to another reliable one instead of waiting for these frequent problems to be resolved.

Optimize your website’s SEO

On-site SEO and in particular page titles should also be extremely relevant to the topic of your site and to the information on the page – they should also be designed to really make an impression. This will work to not only increase the rate your site is crawled by search engines but also to help you boost your ranking for certain keywords.

It may not seem all that important at first to go to the trouble of making unique titles but the rewards are well worth the effort. So ensure that you’re focusing on this area too.

Give Google what it wants and you’ll have no trouble at all attracting those famous Google bots to your site every other day. Every step that we talked about here can be applied to any website, and the results will follow. Many new webmasters hardly have any idea as to why a proper website marketing plan is important for their site. Remember, getting the search engines like Google to send you traffic takes effort on your part, and unless and until you take such small actions towards your goal, nothing will happen.

Google is most likely the most critical source of traffic available and you will find that 80% of your organic traffic comes from this search engine. Following Google SEO Advice is clearly important and the best way to do it is to focus on a few variables, which will also help increase your value in the eyes of Google.

Does Google like your site?

Your audience’s opinion is just as important as Google

It is important to remember that Google watches everything carefully to ensure they are providing the best results. Thus, you should remember that your audience’s opinion is just as important as Google. If users have searched for your targeted keyword, land on your site and leave unsatisfied, they’re probably going to come up to look for other sites. Therefore, if the reaction of your audience isn’t positive and they are unhappy with the value your site provides, you clearly need to do something about it. If this happens frequently and Google discovers the pattern, then you might find your site dropping in the SERPs. You have to make sure you populate your site with content that is designed for your audience. Google’s users are at the heart of their business and if you truly want to be noticed then impress your audience.

Be the first when it comes to bringing out the news

Be the first when it comes to bringing out the news related to your niche on your website. This is exactly why you find tech blogs like TechCrunch and Mashable hogging the limelight all the time on the front page of Google for popular keywords.

Even if your website is not a content oriented site, you can always add a blog to it where you can post about the latest industry news. Being updated will help you keep your visitors updated, which ultimately helps you grow your position in the eyes of Google and maintain it.

Don’t overlook the “Title” tag

One thing you shouldn’t overlook is the “Title” tag of your website because it does carry weight. Your primary keyword should be featured in the Title tag because that’s what Google uses to determine what you should rank for. However, don’t go overboard and turn your Title tag into a massive list of keywords. You can easily use up to two keywords in the Title, but not more than that. A smart way to deal with this is to combine your niche long tail keyword research to produce two or three different keywords in the one phrase.

Taking care of little details is one of the most important factors of your online marketing plan if you want to reach the first page of the SERPs. While limited SEO experience in terms of Google won’t squash your chances, you still can’t expect to succeed right away as it will take a little time, but don’t worry because you will get there in the end.

SEO is pretty simple to apply, especially for those sites that are produced with e-commerce in mind. There seems to be a false impression that SEO for e-commerce sites is difficult. But, the truth is, they are no different. When you get to the point of using SEO on your site and are impressed by what it does, you will never look back. In this article, we will look at ways in which you can use certain SEO techniques to bring traffic to your website for no cost at all.

An e-commerce site needs SEO too

Have an SEO-friendly shopping cart

Be certain that the shopping cart that you want to utilize is SEO friendly. This is due to the fact that as time goes on, you will have to make changes to your pages and carry out on page optimization. This is so that when you have an SEO friendly shopping cart, everything will be more simpler. There are many possible options when it comes to deciding upon a shopping cart. But, do not make a quick decision by getting one that make it hard for your to optimize your site for the search engine spiders.

Drive search engine spiders towards the pages you want them to see

If you have a lot of pages on your site, find out which one of them is essential. When you pay more attention to one particular page, you will have the capability of getting that particular page ranked higher than the rest. The pages that you do not want to get indexed should have a robot.txt added to them. Simply put, this says to the search engine spiders that they should overlook those pages. By doing this, you’ll automatically increase the overall value of the pages that you don’t have the Robots.txt on.

Fresh content again and again

Producing fresh content for your site is very essential for making sure that it gets a high rank for particular keywords. Since you have an e-commerce website, what can you do for new content? Allow your customers to post reviews! This is not that hard to do. If you ran an e-commerce site then it is apparent that it contains products. Allow your customers the opportunity to put helpful products reviews on the website. This will help you to convert more views to sales because your new prospects will see the review that other customers have left about your various products. Look at Amazon.com as good e-commerce site example. It is an e-commerce website, but the search engines will always have new material to crawl because the customers are constantly leaving reviews.

Optimizing your e-commerce website for the search engines is easy to do and is not as complex as many make it out to be. You will need to move if you want to be success. If you do not put consistent efforts into this, then quite naturally, you will not get good results. So start optimizing your e-commerce website for the search engines and take your e-marketing plan miles ahead of your competitors.

You need to spend a fair amount of time and energy working to improve conversion rates for your website or you’re going to have trouble making sales or getting leads online. When you’re taking conversions seriously, it is much easier to gain more profits from the same level of traffic. For this reason it’s important to try to increase website conversion rates.

Improving your website conversion rates could be an 'easy win'

If your website isn’t converting, then your profits aren’t living up to their potential. Here I’d like to discuss what you need to do in order to improve those important conversion rates without making unnecessary sacrifices along the way.

Be professional

First thing to remember is to be professional so that you can leave a lasting impression on your visitors and eventually turn them into sales or leads. This is why you should consider the language of your site and avoid typos and errors in spelling. Whether you agree or not, grammar does have a strong impact on the way your page converts. Typos or spelling mistakes can easily discourage your visitors, causing them to move back and leave your site. In such a scenario, it will be time consuming to convince them to go back to your site and take action. Knowing that your visitors are backing off after expressing their interest in your product or service is the last thing that you would want to happen.

Meet the demands of your customer base

Failing to meet the demands of your customer base can cause a drop off in revenue so make sure you have enough stock on hand. When you don’t have products in stock, your conversions are sure to drop. For this reason, it’s vital to let your visitors know whenever products are out of service and offer them a way to hear from you whenever new stocks have arrived.

Check your website’s checkout process

Your website’s checkout process can also be negatively impacting your conversion rate. Try to make the check out process short as the longer the process is, the lower will be the conversion rate. The size of your checkout does matter when it comes to converting prospects to customers. Focus on getting only information relevant to completing the purchase; you can always follow up with your customers for more details. Also consider offering checkout methods like Google Checkout and PayPal. They are good options because many customers like to pay through them.

In general, it becomes obvious that with the aim of increasing your website conversion rate, you should make any essential moves toward guaranteeing a smooth experience for your customers/leads. You have to bring them through the total process effortlessly in order for them to be able to take the action you would like for them to take without any dilemmas. Enhancing your website’s conversion rate should be one of your top priorities – because what’s the use of generating lots of visitors via your online marketing plan, but not converting them?

Following my post a few days ago about off-page seo factors, today I will attempt to shed some light on the fundamentals of on-site search engine optimization…

Do you have an effective on-site search engine optimization strategy?

Start with selecting the right keywords

To start with it’s important that you understand the importance of locating and using the right keywords. You will soon realize that almost everything you do in search engine optimization is built on one key factor, keywords and phrases, because this is how the average consumer will search and research.

Have you chosen the right domain name?

Get your site noticed by the search engines by including the information right in your URL such as your keywords which will get a higher value since they’re in the URL. If you are capable of obtaining a domain that includes your keyword you are one step closer to perfection. You will need fewer backlinks with a domain name like this. Keep it simple but don’t add anything to the keyword you intend to use as your domain name to keep you higher on the search engine results.

Publish great content on a regular basis

If you want to look the very best in the eyes of Google and your market, then you will create a publishing strategy whereby you keep adding great content on a timely basis. If you fail to do this, then your readers will notice it as will Google, and things could begin to slow down for you.

So it’s important to recognize the overall freshness of your website; aim at having old pages with new pages, a healthy mixture of both. Truthfully, if your site is large enough you can continue holding your rankings because it is the backlinks and trust rank that will play a large role. Let’s not forget that you can hire freelance writers to create your content, and then you will be set and save some time. Regardless of your market, you can do this and your readers will respond well.

What is your site ‘theme’?

Focus on the page theming, because search engines like websites that are tightly themed.

The easiest way to keep on track here is to build your skeleton site using the phrases from your keyword research. This is no hard science involved with this, and then you can simply follow your site outline for creating content. You can really derail your SEO efforts by optimizing a page that is not relevant to the topic of your site. Building a site around a solid and clear theme is a good on-page SEO practice.

This is by no means all there is to optimizing your pages – remember to read our internet marketing blueprint for a more comprehensive guide. You can manage to get your site, or pages, to the top of page one, but it does take time and effort.

Search engine optimization is one of the most essential pieces of your web marketing campaign, and in order to truly recognize SEO and operate it, it is imperative for you to know how off-page seo factors impact your search engine ranking.

Are you aware of your off-page SEO factors?

By just having SEO focused materials with the accurate keywords won’t get you the position you desire for your targeted keywords, but instead you need to pay attention a plethora of off-page SEO strategies to get everything you possibly can out of your blog or website when it comes to search engine traffic…

Focus on links

First and foremost, you need to focus on getting a high number of backlinks from websites that have a high page rank. The grounds for this is, search engines such as Google put a lot of stress on the starting place of the backlink and give it power in accordance to that. So it you pick up a backlink from a site that is a PR 6 – it’s perceptibly going to tell the search engines that your website is vital enough to get a backlink from a high page rank site. Even if the backlink you’re getting form is a site that has a little PR, it still has more significance than linking to a site that lacks PR.

Have a site map

Next, you should make sure you have a site map and that it’s set up properly using your keywords. Your site map performs an important function, giving the search engines an easy way to discover all of your site’s pages. A site map is easy to install, and this gives the search engines a complete picture of what your site contains. Site maps are one of the most fundamental tools of SEO, so make sure your site has one. If you’re wondering how large your site should be for SEO purposes, this is something on which even SEO experts disagree. On the one hand, with a larger site you have more pages and content to rank for, yet many site owners who know what they’re doing also manage to rank their small sites highly too.

The way to deal with this issue is to experiment and see what’s working out with you. You may find that a smaller site can’t reach the place you’re aiming for, especially in a competitive niche, so you may have to expand it. The only way you can really find out what works is to test.

Authority sites

It’s also a good idea to inquire about links from authority websites as they share such a wonderful connection with the search engines. Make sure that the authority site you get a hold of your backlink form is applicable to your niche, and ranks suitably with the search engines. For instance, if you obtain a backlink from Ezine.Articles.com (which is an authority) site, it will be a lot more ideal than getting a backlink form a variety of smaller sites.

Off-page SEO is all about precision. Getting the ranking you want and keeping it isn’t something you can accomplish instantly, but you can do it if you make it a constant part of your online marketing plan.

Selecting a web hosting plan is a critical part of your online marketing plan. This is because your site entirely relies on the web host. I’d like to explore 3 different things you should consider before selecting your website host…

We recommend Host Gator as your website host

Website chat support is very important

First, only purchase web hosting that will provide chat services for all hours of the day, on every day. When selecting a web hosting company, the chat service function is very imperative because you never know when or how you might have a technical problem with your website that will need the attention of your web hosting company immediately. These problems can simply be handled if you utilize the chat function instead of going through numerous emails.

Not only is this a time consuming labor intensive task, but it is also not very effective when you have to take care of immediate situations. Besides, this feature is very good if you are new to the industry and you do not know what you are doing yet. When handling technical issues, it will always be a smart thing to have some kind of chat support.

What is their refund policy?

Secondly, checkout that hosting company’s policy for refunds. Be certain that you do have any financial hassles in the future. You should comb through the refund policy papers of your web host in detail and be cautious. This is because sometimes there might be fine print that you did not see. This could be a bad thing for you in the future.

If you have any questions, then get in touch with customer service. As them to clarify whatever you have questions about instead of just making assumptions. If you are going to use the refund policy as a means to test a service, then you have to make sure that your money is in a safe spot. It is no fun having to sit on the internet trying to get your money back because things did not work out they way that you wanted them to.

Uptime, loading time and bandwidth

Last, you must keep a watch out on your web host. Why do this? So that you receive everything that was promised to you in the hosting company’s package. You should look into things such as the uptime, the page loading time, the bandwidth that is used and other important things that should be monitored. If you suspect that something is not working properly or living up to your expectations, then let your web host know about it.

The sooner you take care of these issues, the better things will be overall. Even though there are numerous web hosts available, picking the right one that you need is very crucial.

The one task that all businesses have in common is promotion and marketing – but have you considered integrating online AND offline marketing?

Have you tried going offline to hunt for new business?

Recently, there has been a big interest in offline marketing, and using it to promote an online business. There is so much available offline, and we believe an extremely small percentage of online marketers have not bothered with it. Since a large number of people still don’t use the Internet that avidly, there is definitely an opportunity when it comes down to leveraging offline marketing to sell your online products.

Try the simplest resources and methods

Offline marketing is always about using the simplest resources and methods to deliver extraordinary results. Believe it or not, marketing with flyers is still a viable method. Every town and city has lots of bulletin boards in public places, and all you need to do is put your flyer up on them. Always remember to talk to the public about how much they will get out of your business or service. But do not forget to put your contact information or your website domain name. Once you’re done, simply tack the flyers to all the bulletin boards in your area.

Too much email

Obviously email marketing is still going strong after all these years. But, due to the popularity of email, one unfortunate consequence is we are all bombarded with too much of it. So what we are leading up to is to think about returning to regular postal mail for some things. So while this is not for everybody, it can be made to work for you. What you do with it will depend on your business and overall goals.

How you essentially capitalize on this will depend on your business plus your business objectives and plans. Some people are still finding that postal snail mail can work quite well for particular business models.

Hiring an offline sales force

Have you ever stopped to think about hiring an offline sales team to perform marketing for you? You don’t even have to pay them anything unless they make a sale. There are so many ways to get this one going, and you will need to carefully set up the infrastructure to accomplish this. Whatever route you choose to go with, as long as you have a bit of investment ready with you, this is an excellent method to market your online business and take it to the next level with the help of offline marketing.

In conclusion, online-offline integration is really not rocket science, especially when you’re setting your e-marketing plan in motion. We believe if you find your target audience offline like where they hang out, then you will have a better time of it. The only thing that you need to keep in mind is that if you want your offline marketing efforts to give results, then take it one step at a time and don’t rush in. The key to results is slow and steady wins the race and will every time.

There are many people who have made a lot of money in the business of Internet marketing. Then why haven’t you managed to grow your internet marketing business? It could be because you aren’t taking the right road to success!

Are you following the road to success?

You must be dedicated, passionate, and committed to your cause before you even see the results coming in. However, once you begin taking consistent action, there is no reason at all that this business model won’t work for you. You’ll actually be ahead of most of your competition if you can simply take the right action.

Stop allowing fear to keep you from reaching your goals

Stop allowing fear to keep you from reaching your SMART goals – that’s the first step you have to take. Don’t think in terms of failure or success but in experimenting to find your best path. Get excited about finding out what happens instead of dreading the results. This will bring in curiosity and make you more excited about taking action, rather than taking you away from it. One way to do this is to take that free report you’ve been meaning to create for your subscribers and give it to them just to see how they’ll react; treat it like an experiment and take note of the results.

Go beyond that inner voice that stops you

Procrastination is the one element that will make you lose sight of success. You could have the greatest idea for a product, which is ideal for your specific market, but if you do nothing about it , it will remain an idea. You need to go beyond that inner voice that stops you. Make yourself believe that by making the right move, you will succeed. But what is the best way to handle procrastination? Just take that first step. It does not matter that things will not be perfect. What is more important is that you took action.

It wasn’t as bad as it looked

Once you get started, you’ll come to realize that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. We generally make up bad things in your minds and create problems more worse than they actually are. This stops us from taking any type of action. Make your Internet marketing goals more important than any other goals. Make sure that no matter what, any kind of procrastination won’t be able to stop you.

Take at least one day off a week

The occasional day off is not a luxury it’s a necessity. Yes, not working or taking action on your online marketing plan can have a negative impact on your bottom line but working too much can as well. Take at least one day off a week to relax and let go. Doing this gives you a perfect opportunity to let work go, enjoy time with friends and family, and maintain your work-life balance. Your ability to find the road to success, surprising as it sounds, may very well depend on your ability to take the occasional day off.

It might not be the easiest thing in the world, especially when you’re starting out; but when you start enjoying the benefits of taking consistent action, you won’t stop. The beauty of learning to take action is that it helps you build success upon success, which becomes a continuous process, helping you reach a goal after goal. Now is the time to kick fear to the curb and see just how much you can accomplish by putting these straightforward steps to work for you.

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Our 69th podcast episode is an interview with Chris Ducker, founder of Virtual Staff Finder which is based in the Philippines. Chris is a specialist on virtual assistant hire, and we discuss the following in our conversation:

Chris Ducker

• Why the Philippines is a hot spot for outsourcing
• The longevity of the Philippines outsourcing opportunity
• Whether hiring a virtual assistant is similar to hiring a freelancer
• If it’s reasonable to expect your virtual assistant to do a good job for you working from home in the Philippines
• How much you should pay your Philippines based virtual assistant
• How easy it is to train your Philippines based VA
• How to communicate with your VA
• What software to use
• Whether you should share bank details etc. with your VA
• The future of outsourcing
• A few final tips on how to hire a virtual assistant

You can find out more / get in touch with Chris via his Virtual Staff Finder website.

Remember to subscribe to our internet marketing podcast for more great interviews and add your comments below about this interview.

Here’s the full Chris Ducker interview transcript:

00:00 David Bain: I’m joined today by Chris Ducker, founder of Live2Sell Group, now with 250 employees based in the Philippines. In January 2010, he launched the Virtual Business Lifestyle blog with an aim to become a virtual CEO himself, which he achieved by the end of the year. Chris, may thanks for joining me.

00:19 Chris Ducker: Thanks very much, David. It’s a pleasure to be here.

00:22 DB: The Philippines had a big surge in popularity for outsourcing in the past of couple of years. But I understand you’ve been living there for about 10 years or so. Can you perhaps give me a brief overview of your background and how you came to be involved in the outsourcing industry?

00:37 CD: Yes, sure. No problem. Well, I’ve basically been in the sales and marketing industries for about 20 years now and after a couple of personal circumstances hit me back in the UK, I went out to Asia and took a little bit of time off and just kind of regroup things a little bit in the late 90′s. And I visited Thailand, I visited Hong Kong quite a bit, and also the Philippines as well. And to cut a slightly long story short, I’ve eventually ended up in the Philippines in 2000 where I was basically doing consulting work for a number of different telemarketing companies and corporations and set ups. I worked with people like Citibank and HSBC and a few other larger corporations before I ended up setting up the Live2Sell group in 2004, based on about two years or so of being involved in the outsourcing industry, usually in a consulting role over here. So that’s basically the path that… You know, I could go in a lot more detail but it would be quite boring for your listeners I think, you know, what I had for lunch on a certain day and that sort of thing. [chuckle] But the fact of the matter is I was in the country for about four years before I actually went ahead and set up my own company. And the reason why I did that is because I don’t really… I’ve pretty much always been involved in entrepreneurial set ups and partnerships and joint ventures and things like that, but one thing that I found when I was doing my consulting work was that, I was nine times out of ten, I was pretty much left alone to do what I was hired to do. And I got to the point where I actually sat down and figured out that, “You know what I’m actually not only helping set up, or correct or run these companies but I’m fundamentally doing it all on my own. And why the hell am I doing it for someone else to make them all the money, when I can just do it myself?” So I sank whatever savings I had. I think it was at that time, I think it’s about $40,000 or something I had saved and majority of that came to me as an inheritance and set it up. And the rest as they say is history.

02:48 DB: Excellent stuff. So, why do you think the Philippines has suddenly become, probably not but certainly as far as you’re concerned, but you know, is a hot spot for outsourcing?

02:57 CD: Well, you know, it’s probably a combination of a few things. I mean it’s certainly is not a new thing over here. And outsourcing as a whole is not a new concept. It’s been around for a long, long, long time; a lot longer than a lot of people think. For instance, I remember working for a publishing company back in London in the early 90′s and they were outsourcing all of their IT set up. So they didn’t want to hire a full-time IT manager, or whatever the case may be. So they had people come in and set up the networks and do all these sort of things and they also did very similar things with things like accounting and bookkeeping. It was a pretty small company but very, very profitable. And I think one of the reasons why is because, although they probably didn’t realized it at the time, they were utilizing what I call the power of outsourcing behind not only keeping costs low but also then been able to focus on using outsourcing as a way to be able to grow your business. So I mean, it’s not a new thing. The Philippines has been on the map for about a decade. It started out mostly with the HR and accounting and things like that, but it is now the hotspot for everything call centre-related. India used to be the headlining act in regards to that stuff, but I think with a little bit of bad press and definitely the quality of the manpower in India dropping over the last few years, the Philippines has really started coming to its own, and is now fundamentally regarded as the destination of choice for anything outsourcing.

04:40 DB: Is the quality of the manpower available going to be there over the long term, do you think, for companies looking to outsource?

04:47 CD: It’s a very… That’s a very, very good question. And I think it’s not… I don’t think it’s going to be the same standard as it is right now five years from now. And I think the main reason why that is going to happen is because I’ve seen a bit of a decrease on kind of recruiting line-ups and recruiting guidelines and things like that with the larger companies out here. I mean, there are some companies here that have 4,000-5,000 seats on their call centre floor which for me, will just give me a heart attack. [laughter] The idea of having 4,000 or 5,000 people working for me. Don’t get me wrong. I’d probably love the profit share at the end of every quarter, but I don’t think that I would like the day to day running of the company. But I mean, yeah… I mean, these are guys that are big corporations. They’ve been in business for a relatively long time. They know what they’re doing and everything. However, what I have seen them do over the last couple of years is lower down their requirements. You know, three or four, five years ago, they needed somebody who is a four-year college graduate from either a Mass Communication or a Hotel management or restaurant management or travel and hospitality. You know, something where not only were the people are educated to that college degree level but they were educated fundamentally in an industry or an industry sector which sort of revolved around English speaking language. Now, these exact same companies are literally saying, “We don’t care what course you are on, we just need you to have completed two of those four years.” So you’re seeing how things have dropped. And the reason why things have dropped is because the sheer demand from the outsourcing planet here in the Philippines has increased so much over the last few years that they haven’t been able to keep the talent pool at the same sort of number. That’s the issue. And for me, personally, with 250 people working for me as of now, I honestly don’t think that particular company of mine is going to get a whole lot bigger. It might hit to 300. I’ve always had the number of 300 in my head ever since I started it, and I guess I’d still like to be able to get to that number if I can. But the bottom line is that I think any more than that, it’s going to become very, very hard to get good, really good quality people come through. We hire as a company, our recruiting procedures are very, very strict and stringent. So it’s going to get tougher and tougher, I think. But ultimately, I still believe that the Philippines will remain the number one, the number one choice, particularly when it comes to anything voice-related.

07:44 DB: Right. Right. That’s also because the history of people being able to speak in a really good level of English over there.

07:50 CD: Oh, it’s huge. You know these guys are educated from kindergarten level — or as we would say in the UK, primary school level or whatever — and from that age group all the way up to and including college mostly in pure English. So it’s… That combined with the fact that it’s a very Westernised country anyway. You go to a 20-screen multiplex cinema, 18 of the movies that are showing are going to be American Hollywood blockbusters. And then you’ll have a couple of cheesy local comedy flicks you have playing on the remaining screens, which are atrocious. [laughter] I’ve only literally sat for a couple of them and they’re just seriously not worth the celluloid that they’re printed on.

[laughter]

08:45 DB: Well, tell, quite a few listeners, they’ve had experience hiring excellent workers from sites like oDesk or maybe even Elance. Would you say that this experience is quite similar to hiring a virtual assistant or is it entirely different?

09:00 CD: Well, I mean, oDesk and Elance and other places like that are good. I believe they’re good for getting people that you need on a per project basis. The sheer idea of putting a, I guess, with putting a profile online to try and get work and have all these people contact you is just too much… It’s just too much for most people to handle. They’re going to… Particularly in a developing country like the Philippines, they’re just going to get anything that they can get their hands on, literally. Which will 9 times out of 10, will mean that they will end up biting off more that they can actually chew and taking on board too many clients because “I want to make the money.” It’s very common, right? It is what it is. So, you know, I think that they’re great. They’re really, really great for finding people one-off projects. Let’s say, you need a logo designed or you need an intro to a podcast recording or voiceovers. You need some video work done or you need to find somebody to build a 100 links to a new website from good quality sources or whatever the case may be. That sort of or type of work is perfect for things like Elance but I believe and I mean, you know…

10:25 CD: At Live2Sell, we set up a service last year which was called Virtual Staff Finder. And what Virtual Staff Finder — and I’m not going into a full blown pitch because it’s just not right — but what Virtual Staff Finder does is what we call we bridge the gap between entrepreneur and the type of virtual assistants that don’t want to work on a project-based work, that they want a full-time job, they want a steady income, they want to work for one person and one person only. And that’s why the Virtual Staff Finder service was set up because we had so many inquiries from people that wanted or needed VAs but for whatever reason did not want to hire us a company in regards to our service-provided VAs which run at around $1200 or $1300 a month, all in. But you know, these are people that are sitting in our office early, with our backbone, our management, our infrastructure and all the rest of it.

11:21 CD: With a home-based VA, they really are home-based. So the cost is a lot less. You can get a good quality general or virtual assistant for and from between $400 to $500. So it’s a fraction of our cost. So, you know, that’s why we set that up. And that’s the big difference. If you’re an entrepreneur and a business owner and you’re looking to try and find someone that you can work with and really, truly own as a member of staff for you and your company, it’s better to utilize a service like Virtual Staff Finder than it is to try and look for those people on Elance, because it’s just the atmosphere, the environment on one of those types of sites is just, for me personally, it’s not the right breeding ground for those kind of people.

12:06 DB: Is it reasonable to expect someone who’s working from home to actually do a reasonable job for you in a full-time basis?

12:12 CD: Absolutely. Yeah, without a doubt. This always makes people wonder why the hell I do this, but I actually have two virtual assistants myself, both of them are based in Manila. I’m down in Cebu, which is about an hour away from Manila by plane and is actually the fastest growing economic zone in the country right now. But I have two virtual assistants, one has worked for me for a couple of years, the other one has been with me for a little over a year and they both do completely different things for me. But the reason why I work with those home-based VAs is because there are certain things that I do as an entrepreneur myself that I don’t want to, shall we say, bring in to my office. Nothing bulgy but [laughter] for instance, I own a handful of niche sites that I work on and I don’t necessarily want people at Live2Sell knowing everything and anything that I do from a business standpoint.

13:10 DB: True.

13:11 CD: I like to keep things a little bit separate. And it also allows me to focus on different things at different times as well. So, if I’m in the Live2Sell office, I’m there for Live2Sell. If I’m working from home or another location, then I work with my other VAs or whatever the case may be. I work with those VAs because I don’t want to lose touch of what it’s like to work with a VA, because I am kind of regarded as, I guess — I hate to use the word expert — but people look to me for knowledge and experience and how-to in regards to everything when it comes to virtual assistance. For example, I have free e-book “Saving the Day, the Virtual Way”. It’s being downloaded well over 4,000 times in just over a year. And when you have that many people downloading a book like that, you know that there’s genuine interest out there for it. And I think the harsh reality here is that, if I was to not work with virtual assistants, I don’t think I could give people the kind of feedback and info and advice that I do even if I am, and have been in the outsourcing industry for a long, long time.

14:25 DB: You mentioned $400 to $500 a month. That sort of could have blown a lot of people’s minds in UK or in the USA. Is that a reasonable amount to be paying to get a decent quality person that you want to stay with you for a reasonable length of time?

14:38 CD: Yeah, it is. I know some people that pay $250 or $300 a month which I just think is just too tight. It’s tied… That’s backside. That is, for me personally, if you want someone to stick with you and not keep continuously looking for other jobs, you need to pay them what they’re worth. And you got to understand, these are home-based workers. They have no commute. They don’t have to go out and buy different wardrobe every three months and all the rest of it. So, there are distinct advantages of working from home not just in the Philippines but anywhere for that matter. Telecommuting has become huge in the United States. Massive in the United States. So, $400 or $500 a month here in the Philippines works out, at today’s exchange rate of 43 Philippine peso to the dollar, $500 is 21,000 pesos which is about 5,000 or 6,000 above the average wage for the country. So they’re getting paid very well right there and they’re working from the comfort of their own home and I think that makes a big, big difference. Not only that, but a lot of virtual assistants will be family-orientated. They might even be single moms and because of that working from home gives them that little bit of additional flexibility. If they need to do the odd thing here and there during the daytime, they can get it done and still get the work done and get paid at the end of the month.

16:10 DB: Okay, so outsourcing businesses should have no ethical issue whatsoever with paying $400 a month for someone like that but it’s a simple matter of fact that ultimately, as he says, that’s more than the average wage which is quite incredible.

16:24 CD: Yes.

16:27 DB: So, I heard you also have to pay or advised to pay, as part of their culture, to pay a 13th month tradition in the Philippines.

16:34 CD: Well, it’s… Because people are home-based, it’s not really required.

16:40 DB: Right.

16:40 CD: As a government-mandated corporation, Live2Sell certainly needs to do it. If we don’t, we’d get into trouble. But as a home-based setup, you don’t have to pay it. But I’m on the strong belief that if you have long-term in mind with working with somebody and happy with their work, then what the hell is an extra bonus at Christmas time? We’re talking about a few hundred dollars here, not a few thousands. So, I certainly pay it to my VAs and I suggest that if you’re happy with somebody and you want to keep them with you and keep them happy particularly around that time of the year, then it’s a very good thing. Generally you’re going to need to pay that around the 15th of December.

17:23 CD: Right. What about holiday and medical cover?

17:26 CD: Not really… It doesn’t really come in to communication or conversation rather. It is what it is. I pay my VAs the flat fee every month whether they worked the full month or not. You know, there had been times when people had been sick and I got an email and “Sorry boss, I can’t work a full day today. I’ll do everything I deem is a priority or urgency basis, but I’d appreciate if I could take a little bit easier today.” I’m a good boss. [chuckle] I’m not…

18:00 DB: Yes.

18:01 CD: I’m not one of those guys that sort of cracks the whip too much. I can crack it if I need to, but you know, generally, if… Unless I’m getting an e-mail like that once a week, that’s a different ball game. But I, you know, I believe I pick my people well, and I treat them well at the same time.

18:16 DB: Okay, good stuff. And what kind of training does a virtual assistant require? How easy is it to train them? How much time is required?

18:23 CD: Well, it really depends on the task. And I mean for instance, if you’re looking for something like a web developer, nine times out of ten, the people are hiring web developers because they don’t know how to do the work themselves. So, at that point, you need to hire somebody that’s very well trained and experienced already. But generally, the majority of the training that I see taking place usually comes down to the general VA role. And the general VA can handle everything from managing social media or accounts to online research, filtering e-mail, putting together key word research, and all that sort of type of stuff. And you know, as entrepreneurs, it’s sometimes a little hard for us to let go. We tend to believe that we’re the best at everything and nobody’s better than us. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

19:13 DB: Absolutely.

19:14 CD: Yeah and it’s one of those things and… You know, I did a post on the blog awhile back called Ending the Entrepreneurial Madness, and I talked about everything from getting notes down and out of your head from ideas, right way to micromanaging, and all the rest of it. And I’m a strong believer that, if there are certain things that you want done in a certain way, then you need to tell somebody, or train somebody, or give them the tools they need to be able to train themselves up. And one of the things that I utilize a hell of a lot is videos. And I mean if you want… If you want to teach your VA, say, how to install WordPress onto a server, you can go to YouTube and find a video showing you how to do that. You can go to YouTube and find a video showing you how to do pretty much anything nowadays. I’m sure there are certain things that they don’t put live. [chuckle] But I’m pretty sure that the majority of the stuff you might want your general VA to do for you, there’s probably a video on YouTube right there. So, I utilize YouTube a lot for that sort of type of thing.

20:17 CD: But you can also do audio training and screen casting, and things like that as well. One thing I’ve started to do quite a bit also is share my screen via Skype, which you can now do. So, that way you can get on the audio, and speak with each other at the same time as you’re showing them how to do this, and how to do that, or where you want something placed on a website, or whatever the case may be. And I think, generally speaking, as long as the communication doors are open and you’re talking and you’re communicating properly, then training is not as much of a headache as you might think it is. Now, if you’re going to hire someone that hasn’t got a lot of experience, expect to do more training, obviously.

20:59 CD: But I mean with something like Virtual Staff Finder, for example, majority, in fact not the majority, all of our virtual assistants with Virtual Staff Finder are experienced people. They’ve got at least, usually around a minimum of about a year in regards to experience of working from a home-based setup, or working with people overseas, and things like that. And that’s another reason why I believe the service is so valuable for entrepreneurs because it means that they don’t have to spend so much time kind of micromanaging and training people particularly at the beginning of a relationship. So, yeah, it’s one of those things. But, you know, it can come down to everything from teaching people how to put together a document for you, or telling them what fonts or colour you want used, and things like that. There’s just… There’s a lot of things involved. And I think that it… A lot of the time people get a little bit scared about the idea, or sitting or having to train somebody, but you’d be surprised how smart some of these little cookies are. They’re pretty damn good at what they do nowadays.

22:10 DB: So, what kind of level and style of ongoing communication do you recommend having with your virtual assistant? Would it be a case of catching up on Skype once a week, an e-mail once a day, or more involved than that?

22:23 CD: I think it comes down to the person. Like I say, the entrepreneurs are tough buggers. I mean [chuckle] we… You know, we don’t like to let go a lot. But I, yeah myself included, I used to be an incredible micromanager, I mean, really bad micromanager and that stopped a couple of years ago and I slowly but surely took myself away from a lot things. And like you said in the intro to the podcast here, you know last year, I fundamentally removed myself from my business on a day to day basis. And I couldn’t have done that, obviously, if I hadn’t stopped being an amazing micromanager. But I think, you know, it really is a personal preference thing. A lot of people like to get a daily report, some people are happy with a weekly, kind of touch base phone call, but I think it also comes down to the type of work somebody’s doing for you, as well. If they’re doing a lot of revolving tasks, and a lot of tasks that are changing from day to day then probably a daily report of some sort is a good idea. But if their building a website, for example, then you don’t need a… They… You don’t need to know that they added three pages that day, and created three icons or buttons, and things like that. You just want to know that this is a four week project, this is where we are today, and this is where I want to be in four weeks. Give me a daily, or give me a weekly up to date kind of report as to where you are to make sure that we’re on track. So, you know, that sort of type of thing.

23:45 CD: But for me, personally, I get a daily e-mail from both of my VAs every day. But they are literally bullet point, six seven point e-mails. And you know, I can scan them within a minute, both of them. And if there’s anything I need to react upon or reply on I can do it immediately. Just write in a reply and bam, bam, bam. Done. Over and done with. But again, these are people that worked for me for sometimes so they know how I like things done and things like that. So, I think at first when you get going with somebody it might be a nice idea particularly from an entrepreneurial mindset standpoint to maybe get a daily update for the first week or two. But after that I suggest that you take it off the gas a little bit and try to take yourself out of the day-to-day side of things a little bit.

24:30 DB: Okay, so not necessary to micromanage your virtual assistant. What about software and systems? What software would an entrepreneur find most useful? I mean if you could possibly get two or three better software that are good resources for people to perhaps manage time or use for perhaps storing documents, sharing documents, and maybe communicating a little bit more effectively.

24:52 CD: Sure. Well, you know, a lot of people like to utilize project management systems. I have played around with two or three of them. There’s one called Hive Desk, there’s another one called Huddle which is a UK company, then also one called Basecamp. Now I favour Basecamp, which you can get at basecamphq.com. It’s done by the guys over at 37signals who are incredibly smart people. And why I like Basecamp is because Basecamp is very simple to use. You can… Never used it before in your life and within half an hour you know exactly how to navigate it and utilize it and all the rest of it. So, for me, Basecamp is probably the best project management system. In there you can post new projects, milestones, to-do lists. You can even message each other, share the odd file here and there, and it’s a very kind of simple, easily used project management system. When it comes to sharing documents particularly things like audio and video files, I used Dropbox which is phenomenally great. I’m a massive, massive Dropbox fan. I use it on all of my devices. I have it on my laptop, my computer at home, my iPad, my iPhone, across the board. I used it everywhere and anywhere. And I found it incredibly useful when I’m working on the hop, in other location independent places like beach resorts and things like that. I know that even if I don’t have my laptop with me, if there’s a report or a video I need to look or an audio file I need to check out quickly, I just can get straight into Dropbox and check it out by my iPhone and my iPad. So, it’s incredibly powerful, and free to start off with as well. And if you refer a few buddies you get small storage space as well. So, Dropbox is definitely another really good one. And, let me think of some more. I think Skype is a no-brainer. I think a lot of people are already involved with Skype. I’ve been on Skype for many, many years. And sometimes you can be kind of like a victim of its own success. You do get the odd choppy line here and there, but I think on the whole, Skype is a great, great piece of equipment to be able to use. I mean generally other than that I think it comes down to at that point personal preference thing. But those are the ones that I really use I would say on a day-to-day basis for sure.

27:20 DB: Okay, Chris. That sounds pretty great tips, thanks. What if it does not work out? It is not nice to talk about it, but is it difficult to fire and replace?

27:29 CD: No. I mean at the end of the day, people are home-based. And if you’re not happy with somebody just let him know. It’s one of those things unfortunately, you’re right, it’s not a nice thing to discuss but at the end of the day everybody has their, they run sort of lineup in terms of what they want from an employee. And if you’re not getting it, it’s best to remove that employee and replace them earlier rather than later. You know, simple as that. But you can go about it by just disappearing, I suppose, if you want or you can tell this person what the situation is and everything. I mean with Virtual Staff Finder we have what we call our 10-day promise where if for whatever reason the virtual assistant we found for you is not up to scratch for whatever reason, and again it differs from one person to another, and we will run through the entire process for a second time completely free of charge. And you know you can come to us and tell us that immediately as soon as you feel negatively about it. But we placed well over 70 to 80 of VAs now in the last 7 or 8 months. And we’ve done it literally handful of times. Some people are fastidious than others but fact of the matter is our sourcing setup and our testing setup is in place so that we do only get good quality people.

28:53 DB: What about things like security with different private login details like bank information. Is there anything that you wouldn’t recommend sharing with your virtual assistant?

29:03 CD: Yeah, anything moneywise for me is a no-no.

29:07 DB: Right.

29:09 CD: I think a lot of people are reluctant to give away that sort of info anyway. I certainly wouldn’t do it. I mean, it right the away down from my PayPal account, credit cards, bank. Come on, are you kidding me? No way would I ever give anybody my bank details. So, again, a personal preference part of thing. Some people have given their VAs the ability to use maximum of $100 or something on their credit card. I know some people actually overcome this by getting prepaid credit cards or debit cards where there’s 500 bucks on it and that’s what you can use if you need to purchase this book or that piece of software for me or whatever, which I guess is one way to get around it. But yeah for me anything financial for me is just off limits. That’s one of the things I will not let go off. Simple as that. As for passwords, there are things around like onepassword.com and lastpass.com that you can use where you can colloquial of your individual password which is one password and get your VA to sign in to all of those services which is one particular password, for all of those sites with one password. So it’s a lot easier obviously if at that point, the VA disappears or you fire them or whatever the case maybe. You just have to change one password not 25,000 of them. So simple as that.

30:35 DB: Okay, that is a great tip as well. What about other points? Are there any other points that prospective entrepreneurs looking to outsource should consider before making the first hire? Or is it a case of just going first and just jumping right in there with the toothpick first?

30:52 CD: Some people are happy doing that. And I guess sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. I think like anything else, anything business related. Before you do actually get involved with something, it is always a good idea to research and read up on it and really try and get to grips with the entire process from start to finish. I mean, again I hate to sort of try and go into a pitch here, but one of the reasons why I produce my free eBooks “Saving the day the virtual way”, was It was because I got all these questions on a very regular basis from people looking at hiring VAs for the first time and I just found myself writing one email after another with the same stuff. So I put the eBook together and, I mean, if any of your listeners or followers or whatever are interested, you can download the book directly from virtualassistantebook.com. And they’ll be able to sort of learn everything and anything there is to know about finding, hiring, training, motivating and working with a VA on a day to day basis. And again, it just comes down to a personal preference thing. Some people are, they have an immediate requirement. I mean you need to hire somebody ASAP. You haven’t got so much time to research. But if you got a little bit of time and you don’t mind doing a bit of research and reading, then that is always a good thing to do.

32:14 DB: Okay. And outsourcing internationally is probably still very much in ascendency. How do you see the industry changing over the next couple of years?

32:24 CD: I think it’s going to become a hell of a lot more mainstream than it is now, for sure, particularly for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Since the Four Hour Workweek book a few years back, there is definitely more and more people utilizing VAs now than they were before. And the VAs are nothing new. Tim Ferris did not discover virtual assistants. There’ve been virtual assistants working for ten odd years, you know what I mean? But I think what Tim did with a very, very good book was bring it to the mass; the mass community of entrepreneurs or savvy business owners that wanted to sort of try and leverage their time a little bit more and things like that. So ultimately, it will become more mainstream. I think that more and more markets are going to come in to play in certain countries as well. The Philippines right now does have the stronghold, but I see a lot of movement over in the Eastern European countries particularly with things like web development and iPhone Apps and things like that. And I just think that overall… We are all bang smack in the middle of the global economy now. People should not feel bad about utilizing the services of somebody outside of their own country, for two reasons. Number one, it’s going to save them money. And as a businessman or business owner, if you are not looking at the pennies and the pounds, they are not going to look after themselves, plain and simple. So that is the first reason you shouldn’t feel bad about outsourcing. The second reason is because it will help you grow your business, plain and simple. Because of the fact that you are leveraging your time, if you have to do all the things that you will give to your VA every day, there is now way in the world you could be able to strategize more, mind map more, spend more time with clients on the golf course, take more potential clients out to lunch and dinner and close more deal and produce new products and services and all the rest of that. Utilizing outsourcing enables you to incredibly leverage your own time. And as an entrepreneur or business owner, that is very, very important.

34:35 DB: So if you are an entrepreneur based in the UK now, then it will be no brainer if you are looking to take on someone else, the chances are it will definitely be an outsourced person based in the Philippines as opposed to unemployed person based in the UK?

34:50 CD: Well I mean, you’re saying no brainer, but for some people it wouldn’t be a no brainer because they might not look at it like that. For me personally, knowing what I know about the outsourcing industry… And again, I think it’s going to become a lot more mainstream two, three years now, certainly has done in the last two or three years. And it’s not necessarily just come down to the Philippines. Then there’s a lot of people all around the world that you could outsource work to. So I think just ultimately if you are a business owner and you are not utilizing outsourcing yet, it is just a matter of time before you do so doing it for a number of reasons.

35:28 DB: Great stuff. Well, you certainly given a lot of nuggets there. Are there any, maybe final tips that you don’t want to leave on?

35:39 CD: I think we’ve covered a hell of a lot in this interview actually. I’ve been interviewed a lot on this particular subject and I must say that with your questions we’re bang on. I think they are very relevant. And I hope that your listeners have been able to take or are going to be able to take away a lot from this chat because based on the type of readership that you have, I know that a lot of people listening in probably should certainly start looking outsourcing for sure if their not already doing it. But I think it all comes down to just getting your feet wet, above and beyond everything else. I think that if they haven’t been involved in outsourcing yet, have some fun with it to begin with. Hire somebody on Elance to… Whatever, phone ten of your friends up. Or maybe send twenty or thirty e-mails to invite them to a dinner party, or a barbecue, or something like that, or just have a little bit of fun with it to begin with and test the waters out a little bit. Get someone to do some online research on a product, or a service that you might be thinking about buying, or utilizing. Just get your feet wet a little bit and when people are ready to take the bigger plunge, if they want to get in touch with me, I’ll be more than happy to chat with them.

36:57 DB: Excellent. Well Chris, many thanks indeed for joining me. It’s been a pleasure. Now if people want to find more about you, or your services, what’s the best place for, for them to go to?

37:07 CD: I think probably my blog is the best place. It’s certainly the most accessible for most people nowadays. So if they want to pop over to virtualbusinesslifestyle.com, they can certainly do that.

37:18 DB: Excellent stuff. Thanks again.

37:20 CD: No problems. Take good care David.