10 Mistakes That Newbies Make + 5 Great Outsourcing Tips !!

Marching Through 2011.

Yes it is March already and here is your “Tuesday Tipster” for March 1, 2011.

This week I have 10 tips about Mistakes Newbies make courtesy of Jamie Lewis and 5 Great Outsourcing tips from Jesse Regan. 

– 10 Mistakes that Newbies Make

Article Courtesy of Jamie Lewis

“I wanted to let you know my thoughts on why a lot of newbies fail to make any money online.

I talk with a lot of newbies on forums and on the phone and I have compiled a list of the top 10 mistakes people make.

Here are the top 10 mistakes that newbies make:

1. Failure to understand the basics.

Check with Wikipedia …

These are the basics: http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=MY2zx&m=1b7KptLEu3GFDv&b=Kgg42Yu6wBeNpWukE2sUFQ

2. Failure to take action and make some money

Have you ever worked a sales job? That sales job was probably
ten times harder than what you will be doing. Sell! Find a product,
and sell it to the corresponding niche with your computer.

3. Failure to concentrate on one niche at first:

If you put the time and effort into one niche, you have a very good chance
to have an ebook completed, your own sales page, articles, ads posted
in classifieds and your landing page getting traffic in one week.

If you spread out your efforts between more than one niche, you will end up
exhausting yourself, and have uncompleted projects all over the place,
zero commissions.

Build up your marketing arsenal in one niche first!

4. Not watching and learning the entire course:

You watch the first video, and then try to guess the rest.

NO! lol Watch all the videos in the course you bought, and then write notes.
Watch it again until you are good enough to teach the course! 🙂

5. Spending time doing things that will not work, then getting discouraged.

Affiliate marketing is easy, but you need to stay focused on the right things.

Remember the “Rules.” I make the “Rules” very clear in my videos, check them out:

A. Promote products that are in demand and in niches where people will buy them.
B. Don’t promote products that are given away for free, like Jokes, recipes, etc.
C. “How to solve a problem” is the BEST niche you can get into (Whatever that
problem is)

D. Don’t procrastinate! Spend a good week setting up shop (Learning all about
affiliate marketing) and then build your “arsenal” -This is what I was speaking on
in regards to sticking with one niche until you have everything you will need to
DOMINATE it.

E. SEO is good, but don’t just do SEO. Diversify your traffic strategy. Do 25% SEO, 25% classified ads and articles, 25% PPC (Depending on if you have money to spend) 25% traffic swaps with other marketers.

F. Have a product on clickbank AND promote other products as an affiliate
(Do both) but remember, ONE NICHE at first.

6. Not wanting to do the right type of work whatsoever..

C’mon. Watching affiliate marketing videos is work. Doing your taxes is work.
Bringing grandma to the doctor is work..

Write an article! If you don’t know how to write, practice.

Or, purchase an article spinner, but be ready to re-format the articles and pick
the best parts for your headlines. EASY!

7. When discouraged, you do not seek information online. Hit wikipedia for info if you do not understand something.

8. Campaign Abandonment:

Have you ever written and posted an article, created a site or built a campaign
and then left it there?

Give it some love! Watch the stats and pay attention to it. It will grow into a business!

9. Limiting yourself technically:

If you dont want to spend $20 here and there on a coder at http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=MY2zx&m=1b7KptLEu3GFDv&b=kh1PCdANA1CwM16wi20KEg
to make cool pages for you and stuff, then learn how to do the coding yourself.

Check out these scenarios:

Newbie A makes $34,372 a month:

Newbie A writes 5 really good articles a day and submits them to Ezine Articles.

*These articles bring traffic, because they are in a very “desperate niche” the
headlines are good, and the links are placed at the bottom as a “continuation”
of the story.

People are enticed to click on the links and buy what Newbie A is selling.

Then, Newbie A has put up a landing page with a really attention-grabbing
headline and informative article, and an OPT IN BOX!!! YES!

Newbie A builds a list with this page and then broadcasts to the list.

After Newbie A gets this page up, he or she presses a button every morning
and makes $1500.00 Voila!

now consider ….

Newbie B doesn’t make any money.

Newbie B skips from one method to the other. Newbie B spends all day buying
IM products and then doesn’t finish watching half of them. Newbie B still does not know much of the terminology used and therefore doesn’t understand how to work
the article submitter or why they would use the article submitter in the first place.

Newbie B also doesn’t want to write. Writing is the easiest thing ever!! 🙂

Newbie B ends up getting discouraged because he or she felt that the product
creator would send them money for buying the ebook.

Perhaps they would send Newbie B money if Newbie B promoted their
product and sold a couple of them? They will! 🙂

10. Giving up:

This is understandable if you are wasting your time and it is NOT your fault half
of the time. There is a lot of rubbish out there and the best advice I can give you is to..

A. Understand the concept of affiliate marketing
B. Pick ONE HUNGRY niche where people really NEED what you are selling
C. Stick with that one niche until it works for you (Build your business in that niche)
D. Obsess yourself in that niche, educate yourself about the niche
E. Once you start to make money, keep building that business and your list
F. Get all my ebooks and continue to read my emails. I really try to help.

Ok? I hope this helps. Lets make some money!”

****************************************

5 Great Outsourcing Tips:

Article Courtesy  Jesse Regan

Ebook Profits Unleashed

“I have been getting quite a few questions about outsourcing and what is the best ways to get it done. If you really want to make it online, go to a place like http://iwillreplacemyself.com.

I’ve spent thousands and thousands of dollars on outsourcing and wasted way too much time. But it all really is a solid lesson learned for me and I hope can learn the same from my mistakes.

I’m going to give you the 5 best tips I have learned over the years so I can help save you a ton of time and money.

My very first outsourced project was an online website with an integrated affiliate system and lead generation software built in. It was a huge learning experience for me.

I actually paid someone $1000 to help make sure that it was completed with the least amount of resistance. I was told she had a lot of experience working on projects, so I thought it’d be wise to get her help rather than starting from scratch.

I spent hours writing scopes, videos, flowcharts and was told the project would all be completed in 10 days. Long story short, 3 months later, I had gone through 3 different programming teams and the project was still not completed.

I ended up ditching the project as it was getting too complicated and costing more than I’d like. All up I invested about $4000 in that lesson. So after 3 months of pulling my hair out, what did I learn?

1. Be absolutely clear on exactly what you want done

I’m primarily visual so for this project I actually went and bought some wrapping paper, then drew on the back of it. I drew all the pages I wanted created and their design. From there I could take photos and record it using video. This helped me get clear on exactly what I wanted.
When writing the scope its best if a 9 year old could understand it. Write it as though you’re telling a 9 year old what you want. Make sure you use screen shots if possible.

If designing a site or online system it’s very beneficial to find a similar system to “model”. This saves a lot of explanation and removes a lot of room for error due to mis-communication.

To avoid mis-communication early on

2. State your expectations up front

Before they start any work it’s important they understand your expectations and terms. After talking with them and negotiating the price I then state all the terms in an email and make sure they agree to them.

One time I spent 3 hours explaining a project with someone, only to find they weren’t going to charge me $300 (like they said on the quote) they decided they were going to charge me $1600.

From then on I always spoke about terms and expectations for a project before I explained the whole scope to make sure they understand it.

In the terms email I say “so I will pay you $___ paid on completion of the project. I expect a daily report on what you do sent via email every night so I can keep track of the progress. I also require you to be on skype while working in case I need to contact you. Do you agree to do that?”

Now obviously it all depends on the situation, for example if you’re hiring a virtual assistant you don’t say “paid on completion”. You usually work out a monthly fee then decide on the payment method and whether they’re paid weekly, fortnightly or monthly.

Every situation is different, for all my outsourcing my preferences are they are paid weekly via paypal, they send me a daily report and they’re on skype. Also usually working from 9am to 5pm (depending on the type of work I am getting done).

IMPORTANT: If you’re using ESCROW (which is where the money is held while the project is being done) make sure you document all important changes within the ESCROW system.

The paid on completion through ESCROW is based on what has been communicated within the system.

So a good idea is to organize it on skype then tell them you’ll send them it within the outsourcing system you’re using and get them to agree to it. That way you cover your ass for having to pay for a job that isn’t complete.

When it comes to explaining the project, it’s important that you

3. Make sure they understand

When you first explain the project to the person make sure they understand. Asking “Do you understand?” is not good enough! I like to ask “What questions do you have?”

After that I will then get them to explain it back to me. That way I am sure they actually do understand it.

I found that a lot of the time people say they understand and then they try and figure it out later. By the time I see their work, it’s obvious they didn’t understand. Communication is key – get them to explain the job back to you, it’s well worth the time to avoid major mistakes on the project.

4. In the scope use a secret word

This is a tip that has saved me lots of time, energy and money! When you post a job you will find you get different types of replies.

Most of them are automated messages that could not have possibly read through the scope.

You want to make sure that the person offering to do your project read the scope and hopefully understands it.

So how do you make sure they’ve read it?

That’s easy, at the very bottom of your scope, in big green text write the following “If you understand this scope and are ready to do this, please reply with the secret word “ready” to let me know you’ve been through the scope.”

It amazes me at how many people don’t actually get to the bottom of the scope. When you get a whole heap of bids, only consider the replies that have your secret word in it.

This saves a lot of time because you can identify the people who have read the scope and you cut out all the people who didn’t read it.

5. Get a daily report

In the past I used to just trust my workers to work. I found that if I didn’t keep on top of them they would either slacken off or not do the work at all.

It’s important to check up on them daily to ensure they’re doing the work correctly and efficiently. Remember to give lots of feedback, especially early on. That way they know their work needs to be accurate and will get it right in the future.

Make sure you actually do check their work! In the past I’ve just assumed it was correct and had to go and re do a lot of it.

Outsourcing is an amazing skill to have, when you master outsourcing it means you can master implementation. When you can implement ideas and get things done, that is when you get results.

Outsourcing allows you to leverage other people to get more done and free up your own time. These outsourcing tips have been learned the hard way.

Have fun with it and be persistent!

Please let me know if you have any questions.”

Jesse Regan

Ebook Profits Unleashed

See you next Tuesday !

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