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Inside the sixth episode of Outsourcing Live, Iíll be talking about how to outsource an
internet business part two. Iíll be continuing on from last episode and explore how to outsource
content creation and traffic generation to the niche site using the case study we have
been talking about. Also in the quick tip, thereís a fast way allowing you to communicate
your tasks to your virtual assistants by easily recording your screen and speaking to the
microphone. So letís get straight to it.
VO: Welcome to the Outsourcing Live podcast where you will learn to build a virtual team
to run your business. And now, your host, Tyrone Shum.
Hi everyone, and thanks very much for listening to this next podcast in this series on the
Outsourcing Live. In part two of today, Iíll be talking a little bit more in detail on
how to outsource your internet business which I pretty much will be leading on from last
sessionís podcast which I talked about last time where to find the VA, or virtual assistant,
how to be able to get them hired and also what kind of things to give to them as they
need to do to focus on the niche site. And I went through the initial stages which is
to show them or show you how I went about with the engagement gift ideas niche website
where we looked at basically doing market research for the niches then we jumped into
talking about how to purchase and going about getting the domain name and then lastly I
showed you last time exactly how we went about setting up the websites as well, too.
So in this session, Iím going to be talking about creating content, how to outsource all
that and Iím going to be talking about how to be able to generate traffic to your site
by using the virtual assistant to do that all for you and then lastly, weíll talk a
little bit more about how to go about monetization and that will be something you want to take
your hands on because thatís an important aspect to manage as the site continues to
grow.
All right so todayís topic is really, really exciting because these are the things that
I also got outsourced quite pretty much the whole time and I can be - Iím going to be
honest with you, Iím not a strong writer, Iím usually a better presenter when Iím
on video and Iím better at audio so thatís why Iíve done video and podcasting. All my
videos and everything have been all transcribed which is all been written in text but when
it comes down to me sitting down and actually writing an article, I canít do it so thatís
the reason why Iím very fortunate to have an extremely, extremely well-skilled, extremely
successfully-skilled virtual assistant who has very strong article writing skills and
she loves writing and thatís the reason why sheís great for this.
So what Iíve done - is the first thing with engagement gift ideas after she had gone through
to setup the whole site, she already knew exactly what to do because Iíve provided
her with all the training. But essentially the whole training that was in between for
all this to get her to create content for the site was just the simple guidelines that
I went through and it comes back down to copywriting 101 which is to write an article with roughly
at least 400-600 words, these are really articles that are targeted towards that niche, and
also too write at least 3 articles daily. And essentially, all it had was the introduction,
a body and then also a conclusion. And within all that body and introduction or the heading
I should say we had our targeted keywords in there. With those targeted keywords inside
the - introduction, and also for the body, it allowed us to be able to write some really,
really good content and use that content to create some backlinks.
So Iíll explain to you what backlinks are shortly in the moment but what we did when
I trained her to do was I got Jo which I mentioned in the last episode, to write articles for
me on a daily basis and she had to write a minimum of 3 articles and what weíd do is
we aim to write at least 30 articles within say a week or two. And, once thatís all written,
these articles can actually be turned into multiple different articles. So you have a
set of articles ready to be posted out and they can be scheduled to be posted out on
a daily basis. Up until theyíve all been finished - finished posting which is for the
first month so youíve pretty much had everything already done for the first month to get your
content on your blog.
Now, to do content writing, she has to go out to do the research for me which is exactly
what she - she was hired to do. Go out and find out all about the niche then come back
and start writing the articles and that does takes a bit of time. You know you need to
allow and to give them at least an hour or so for each topic to be able to do some research.
And what Iím saying - Iím not saying you need to allow an hour for each post, but an
hour or so for them to go out and research as much as they can about the topic and then
start writing about the different topics. And what we did was we did like 3-part series
just exactly how Iím showing right now the two-part podcast series, we split it all up.
So the first topic might be on something like how to be able to setup and engagement party
and one of the topics that we just wrote about was a two-part topic on how to setup an engagement
part - what gifts to buy, what etiquettes you need to be aware of, how to write the
cards, etc and so forth and you can obviously see that on engagement gift ideas on how those
articles are written but the thing is is that if youíre scared to learn to be smart about
it, she can write say 10 articles from basically a 2,000-word articles or something like that
so she might write 3,000words or 2,000words of one post and split up into separate parts.
And thatís what Iíve taught her to do with having between 400-600 words per articles.
So thatís how we get content created quickly and fast.
And I canít really quite say much more than that because when I got it all outsourced,
I didnít even have to be involved. The only time that I got involved was when she said
to me can you please have a look at it and tell me what you think. And I said all right,
Iíll have a look at it and I did and I just didnít have to make any changes because her
writing was absolutely perfect so she gets doing what she did and just have it all scheduled
for 30 posts to be scheduled out to go daily, so one post everyday and that was perfect
for that blog.
Once thatís been done, thatís the first part of creating content. The next part is
to look at getting content syndicated out into - pretty much the web. And this is how
weíre going to be - this is how we did and generated traffic back to our site and to
be able to get it to rank on Google as well. There are few things that need to be done
in order for that to happen and Iíll run through with you some of the steps that was
going through and this is what youíll need to do as well to get your virtual assistant
to setup for you and to have running in the background. These things are quite simple
to do and it does take time and thatís why I got my virtual assistant or outsourced it
to my virtual assistant to do.
Now Iíll give you some examples. We have to setup numerous accounts on different sites
so that way we can post our different articles to them and that way we can get some traffic
from them. And the reason behind that is because if you want to be ranked on the first page
of Google, and to even be ranked on Google, Google looks at one of the criteria of your
site and one of the criteria is that if you have any links going back to your site then
thereís obviously a ranking or a positive thing for your site and Google looks at that
positively and obvious - and if you can have more links back to your site then the better
it is for your niche site.
And this is what weíre doing. Weíre creating separate accounts on say sites like WordPress,
Blogger, Tumblr, Squidoo, numerous article directories and Youtube as well. And by doing
all that and embedding our content to it in different version of the original content
and left a link in there, it allowed us to create more backlinks to our site. And by
having these backlinks, weíve got something like over 1,200 back to our site because weíve
actually syndicated these out to different areas. Makes a huge difference because obvously
itís helped us rank on the first page of Google and currently sitting at position 8.
And not before long I think weíll probably be reaching the first few spots as well and
when we get that spots we can obviously get all that traffic organically from Google in
itself.
Now, talking about setting up accounts, these things are necessarily to be done and it doesnít
necessarily need to be done yourself and thatís why Iíve been talking quite strongly about
outsourcing all this. Setting up and creating a new account is a simple repetitive process
so get her to login to WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr and so forth and thatís what Jo did
for me. Also too, we had a separate email that was setup as well so that way we receive
these activation accounts as per se. Most of these accounts when you need to set them
up you need to confirm them, so we had it like a separate email, not the main email
from our niche siteís setup so that way we can receive it because most likely theyíll
send us out newsletters and information that we donít want to read anyway.
All right, that was really important because once those things are setup, youíre done.
And I asked Jo previously how long does it usually take to setup these sites. Initially
when she first started, she said it took her about 15-20 minutes to setup each one individually
which was not too bad because I thought thatís how long it usually takes me to sign up but
she said she got that down to about 3 minutes or so per site because there are going to
be a lot of sites for her to setup and in total, just the article directories alone
thereís about 20 article directories and then numerous different video channels as
well that we setup and also too, we went across the different forums as well to setup, different
links as well.
So what Iíll do is if youíre interested in getting a list or the details of all these
directories and also where to get your virtual assistant to do, Iíll put a list of all these
things on this podcast shownotes which you can find basically at Outsourcinglive.com/podcast-006
which is episode six here and youíll be able to just get access to that and you can literally
just take that list and just copy it and give it to your virtual assistant and get her to
set it up all for you.
Once thatís all been setup, weíre all pretty much ready to go because you only need to
setup this once for your niche site and then start to send out articles and posts onto
there. And thatís the beauty of doing this is that when you get it outsourced to your
virtual assistant, theyíll know exactly how to go about doing that because theyíve firstly
written all the daily posts and also know exactly whatís been written to go to those
directories. And all I did was I provided her with some additional training material
specifically on how to be able to get some links or put these links inside these individual
posts. But before we did post them out, what we need to do is to get these 30 articles
which we wrote initially as original content and spun them, spun them so that they - theyíre
not - theyíre rewritten and theyíre not the original articles because you donít want
to be sending anything the exact same content that youíve written for you post out to these
directories. And the reason behind that is because - at the end of the day, Google looks
for original content and if you have numerous versions of exactly the same content, it will
say that all youíre doing is spamming the internet with the same content.
So itís wise - to actually get your articles rewritten and - or spun. Now, there are two
ways you can go about doing it. You can either get your virtual assistant to spend time to
rewrite each individual of the 30 articles and basically sit there and just do it, which
will take a lot longer. Or, use a spinning software which allows you to be able to spin
those articles very quickly and have them rewritten uniquely for you with the software.
And the tool that Iíve given to my virtual assistant Jo to use to spin all these articles
we did for engagement gift ideas was a software called Trythebestspinner. Now this is also
an affiliate link as well so if you do decide to click on this and take a look at it which
is a fantastic software and you do decide to purchase that, I do get an affilate link
from that and I just want to initially just say thank you if you do do that and I guess
in order just to mention that this particular software is very, very powerful because it
will save you a lot of time. Not just you but also your virtual assistant because you
can leverage and get a lot more than. And, basically what I usually get Jo to do for
us is with these 30 original articles, we get them spun into 40 invidual different articles
on top of that. So itís basically 30 multiplied by 40, you can have up to 1,200 individual
spun content available to be submitted. And it comes in handy because not only where you
will be submitting just to those article directories, thereís blog directories, thereís web 2.0
directories that Iíve just mentioned, sheíll be submitting also through different networks
which thereíll be also too Iím going to share with you shortly how she goes about
doing that.
But thatís what you need to really consider doing is to leverage their time and also leverage
using the tools to be able to do that. And something like Trythebestspinner.com is an
excellent piece that allows you to spin multiple initial versions. Therefore youíve got as
I said at least 1,200 different articles that you can send out.
Now you might be wondering okay, weíve got all these articles, how the heck does she
have time to be able to submit these? Okay well one, I usually donít get her to submit
the 1,200 straightaway because one if you submit that many all in one go to all directories
you wouldnít have time to do it thatís one thing because she wonít be able to submit
1,200 in one day. And two, youíll get marked on Google and theyíll notice that all youíre
doing is just creating basically a spam site and you donít want that. What we want to
do is to submit these articles out onto these sites so that it creates basically backlinks,
thatís the first initial reason but also too to provide content in different areas
and different forms.
If youíve seen as an example, thereís a software called Tubemogul. And what Tubemogul
does is that it submits one video to I think 15 different video networks available in the
market. Thereís like Youtube, thatís one of them, thereís Yahoo Videos, Google Videos,
Viddler, Blip.tv. It submits one video out to multiple networks and therefore allowing
for different audiences and different networks to view your video.
Now what weíre doing right here is doing exactly the same thing. The only difference
is that weíre spinning the version, essentially the same content but spinning into a rewritten
versions so that itíll be seen in different networks in order for other people to see.
And when itís seen on different networks such as WordPress, article directories, Squidoo,
etc, thereís a great chance that your audiece or your readers will come to your site because
of that fact and thatís what we want to do.
All right, Iíve explained to you how these things are being setup and by now you can
see that sheís taken over a lot of these. Iíll explain to you actually what she does
and this is what I overlook essentially. I donít get involved in doing this. I donít
sit there and - use the software to spin these things, I donít sit there and submit those
articles. I let Jo to do that all for me and thatís what weíve done for Engagementgiftideashq.
Now to even spin or to get things out faster, weíve used additional software to be able
to submit these content really, really quickly and to out to numerous, numerous place very,
very fast and the beauty of this is that itís actually automatically driven by a tool and
it automatically submits these on a consistent basis rather than all at once. And the software
that does that for us is a software called Tryuniquearticlewizard.com. Thatís a software
that weíve been using that allows us to be able to write - or submit multiple articles
to different blog networks and that allows us to be able to have hundreds and hundreds
of links submitted all in one go. But the beautiful thing about that particular network
is that it doesnít allow you to submit thousands at one go. You just basically just submit
like 50 one day, 50 another day, 60 another day and it spreads it all out and that way
thereís a less chance that you get too many links all at once and thatís exactly what
we want. We want to show Google weíre organically creating these content. And thatís the reason
why I said to you to host out every single post once a day rather than post 30 posts
on the first day. It makes a huge difference to your - your submissions and also too makes
a huge difference to your blog making it seem more natural.
Also another software that weíve been using is called Tryblogblueprint.com and this one
also too allows us to submit numerous and thousands of - articles out to so many different
directories and these guys have done tremendous job to setup a system like this which allows
us to do that. So I recommend checking these two out if you want to get lots and lots of
backlinks. And for your particular virtual assistant to do a lot of the leverage work
because to set these things up is easy but also to do them and follow them through takes
a bit of time and this is where the virtual assistant can follow up doing this on a day
to day basis rather than you yourself doing it.
So this is something that I highly recommend to try out and to also use as part of your
strategy to get traffic. There are also many other ways. We also submit videos out to different
- different networks and - what weíve done is instead of actually sitting there in front
of the camera and do it in usual way, what we do is create a slideshow using like Keynote
in Mac or Powerpoint presentation in Windows and then upload that presentation slide into
a software called Animoto which is spelled A-N-I-M-O-T-O.com and Animoto will take that
clip and mix it up with some music and turn it into a video clip for you. And it only
takes a few minutes to do once you download that, you can upload it to the various different
video networks as I mentioned and once again, that will create additional backlinks back
to your site as well. So thatís a really, really powerful way to go about doing that.
By now, you can see where this is headed because thereís so many things that you need to do
or I should say so many things that need to be done for a niche website in order to build
it up so that it can be ranked on Google and get onto the first page of Google to be able
to rank for that term or that keyword that youíre targeting for and obviously you canít
do this all yourself, if you chose to go down that path and thatís why Iíve always recommended
outsourcing to a virtual assistant or outsourcing to somebody who can do these things. And if
you provide the right training which you can follow through, you know on my shownotes,
if you go back to the shownotes, youíll see a whole step of training videos which Iíve
used to give to my virtual assistant and you can take those as well and give it to them
as well and use it anytime. And all-free you know, thereís no charge for that but what
I want to just share with you is a step by step process because this is essentially what
we do to outsource and create the niche site that we did.
All right, by now if youíve done this successfully and youíve been getting all the traffic from
all these different sources and also too to create all these content, and gotten out there
and your site is getting lots of backlinks and starting to rank on the first page of
Google then you could just start to monetize this and monetizing takes a bit of time. Itís
something that Iím still taking over the process so once Jo has finished doing all
this process and sheís informed me great, weíre up on the first page of Google, weíre
moving, weíre still nearly getting there and weíre getting some traffic coming through
then Iíll take over to start to implement some monetization strategies which Iíll probably
cover in a separate topic or separate podcast because itís a very detailed topic but essentially
what I usually do to start off with is just to put some basic Google Adsense on just to
generate some other clicks and when those clicks start to obviously get a lot better
and income increasing through the site, weíll try different strategies as well.
And the reason why I donít outsource this part is because I want to be in control of
what kind of income and also be in the strategy side and yes, a lot of people say that it
can be outsourced and yes it can be but at this point in time, I personally still handle
it and eventually I probably will outsource it to get my virtual assistant to manage it
but I think sheís already enough on her plate to do all these things. I thought also too
to give you a rough estimate of time frames because all of these doesnít happen overnight.
Obviously this episode has expanded over a few days and if in my time you listen to this
second episode itís probably two weeks or so or week from the last one. And you can
understand it takes time to set these things up. I mean like your virtual assistant who
will working for you for full time or part time will be able to work on this on a day
to day basis. Setting up the websites, getting the domain name found, doing the market research,
that probably take you at most from there to find out on three to four days or so. So
on the first week once they start working, it usually takes four days but to write content,
to submit it to article directories, to sites and so forth, that is a process that takes
months. And just from experience, weíve taken at least 2-3 months to be able to build up
that kind of traffic and that kind of backlinks to engagement gift ideas and weíre still
building it.
You know, we havenít reached the first place of Google but if we do, we know that we can
back off a little bit more and continue to let her to do maybe once a week or twice - twice
every month or something like that on submission of articles to directories but you need to
do spend this consistently and it does take time. So donít expect this to be all happening
all overnight. And expect that your virtual assistant will do it all for you right now.
You know, thatís not going to happen. Give her time and allow for these things to be
implemented. And I said two to three months is at least a minimum to expect and donít
expect that itíll happen within first month or so.
I think Iíve gone through quite a bit in detail on how this niche site has gone through
and as I said you can check out Engagement Gift Ideas HQ to see what itís like and you
can ask me any question that you may have but I always get this common question that
I thought Iíd answer and also address is how can you trust theyíll complete all this?
I know Iíve talked about how successful my assistant Jo has been, Iím very blessed to
have her but a lot of stories I do hear is that the virtual assistant will not be able
to do any work, you know they come back and they say yeah Iíve done this little bit but
I canít do that.
And I think the thing with trust is to - you have to give them trust in order to receive
it. Because initially when someone start on, you donít know, youíre really putting a
leap of faith into their skills and into what theyíre going to show and help you do. And
really at the end of the day, you have to give them the trust that you would give to
someone who is going to run the business and if you can entrust into them and encourage
them and to motivate them at the same time that theyíre going to do a great job and
to support them, theyíre going to do a great job. So give them at least a month to trial
it out and within the first month, make sure that youíve set the expectations as Iíve
mentioned back in the first episode and also too, to put in the boundaries. Boundaries
in place. So if you set these deadlines and say in the first week youíll have this, this,
this setup and if they donít make that deadline whether it be they donít know what to do
because sometimes they just donít, or that theyíve just not done anything because they
donít want it then thereís boundaries in place and also there to ensure that they meet
those boundaries. So if they donít meet those boundaries. If they donít meet those boundaries
then theyíve got those consequences.
And if you were listening to my previous episode, I talked about boundaries and also setting
expectations so you can jump back over there and listen to that again. The other thing
as well is to ensure that they send to you a daily accountability. The daily accountability
is so so important because one, it helps them keep track of what theyíre doing and two,
informs you of whatís going on because a lot of people find oh men, I donít know whatís
going on. Theyíve just been setting the - nothing. And I can understand why because youíre sitting
there scratching your head going what have they done, what have they done. So if they
send you like a daily accountability of what they completed, what things theyíre struggling
with and what they can help you with or what you can help them with, then at least it keeps
you in the loop whatís going on.
And thatís how the process works for me. My virtual assistant Jo is very, very stringent
on that, sheís very disciplined. And at the end of everyday I receive a report of what
sheís done and whatís been completed and whatís not and I always say thank you. So
ensure thatís correct as well.
And then last thing I just want to also recommend as well is once you get to the stage of creating
backlinks and you are at that stage ready to be able to generate more traffic from backlinks
then what you want to do is to ensure that you have a report to track these things. So
maybe use Google Docs for example and get your virtual assistant to list out all the
backlinks that sheís submitted to, all the different directories, all the blogs that
sheís submitted to, and have them listed in there because it will come in handy for
them on to be able to use and track whatís going on because sometimes Google doesnít
pick up these things initially and if youíve got no idea where they are then you obviously
canít track them back. So make sure you have a report created on how many backlinks are
being submitted, how many articles are being created, and so forth like that. And then
when we get to the next stage which is to track your monetization, track how much income
you bring in then you want to write the report thatís created to be able to track all your
income, all your traffic, and also too to just track what kind of ranking youíre getting
through Google and also Bing and Yahoo.
Okay, I think thatís pretty much it on how to go about outsourcing to - niche site. And
if you are interested in following me more on whatís been happening in these niche sites
that Iíve been doing, Iíll be continuing to talk about that through a little self-challenge
that Iím also doing and in correlation with Virtual Business Lifestyleís niche site challenge
as well or niche site accountability kind of thing thatís going to be running, a community
challenge that Chris Duckerís running on there, Iíll be also participating in there
as well and yeah, Iím more than happy to answer any of your questions if you have anything
in regards to outsourcing an internet business or outsourcing creating more niche sites as
Itís time for Outsourcing Live quick tip. Until now Iíve been using with my virtual
staff for quite some time to communicate with them and to show them step by step on what
things they need to be done and changed in tasks and so forth is a tool called JingProject.
In short itís just called Jing and itís a free tool which allows you to be able to
capture your screen up to five minutes and then automatically upload it to their service
and send that link off to your virtual team. Now itís one of the quickest and fastest
way I found in the past to be able to communicate with my virtual team. Instead of typing up
a long email, copying and pasting images, putting arrows on it and sending all in email,
all I have to do is hop onto my screen, draw in simply using a little tool called Jing
as Iíve mentioned and itíll automatically capture your screen whichever size you want
and all you have to do is talk to your microphone and just point to them exactly what things
need to be done and itís one of the most easiest and the very fastest way - or one
of the quickest way that I found in the past to be able to communicate with them.
Now if you want to be able to get access to this as a free tool, you can go simply to
my website at Outsourcinglive.com/jing spelled J-I-N-G-tutorial and inside the jing-tutorial,
youíll see the specific details on how to use this tool to outsource and also communicate
with my virtual team and also too youíll be able to get access to that link to download
it directly from Jing themselves. Which is owned by the company Techsmith and if youíve
heard Camtasia, is also one of their other very famous and popular tools that theyíve
made so theyíve realized that Jing for example is a perfect tool for all the people out there
who doesnít - who canít afford to purchase Camtasia. So yeah, definitely check it out.
JingProject is an awesome tool and as I mentioned you can get it from my website and Iíll show
you the step by step tutorial on how to use it and setup on your computer.