Over the last few months, Tina and Cindy have offered a “Boost Business with a VA” teleclass. The call is geared towards educating business owners on how a VA can benefit them in building their business. It also includes useful information on how a VA can assist their client(s) in generating traffic to their website.

To listen to the recording, click here.

Call Notes:

Remember to always be asking yourself - Is this something that a VA could do for me?

It is sometimes easy for us to get caught up in the ‘busy’ work at the expense of spending time on the more important tasks of building our business. A VA can definitely take some of the administrative stuff off your plate, freeing you to spend more time on revenue generating activities.

Think of your VA as a “Profit Center”. Have them also assist you with marketing and business building activities to help increase your profits, rather than only on day to day administrative tasks.

Here are a few tasks we covered that a VA can do to help “boost your business”.

Many of us want to drive more and more traffic to our websites. We want people to sign up for our newsletters, learn about our products and services and other benefits to our business. But how do we drive the traffic to our websites?

A VA can do a variety of tasks that will help in bringing traffic to your website. Below are a few we mentioned on the call:

Submitting your articles online
There are numerous article banks available online that you can submit your articles to. This is a GREAT first project when you start a new relationship with a VA. This provides the opportunity for the VA to learn more about your writing style, what your business is all about AND also suggest other ways to increase traffic to your website.

TIP - all article submission pages are different - have a byline (2-3
sentences) available to include with your article. The byline should include your name, business name, link to your website and some kind of enticement for people to visit your website (i.e. visit our website for a f’ree report on ..)

As promised, here is a list of article directories to start with:
http://www.onlinebusinessmanager.com/blog/archives/2005/03/traffic_tips_ar.h
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Participating in Discussion Groups
A VA can read and respond to target specific discussion groups on your behalf. Keep in mind that a discussion group is not a promotional forum, they are generally looking for honest and valuable participation. By just having an offer or link to your website in your signature you can participate in these groups while also having a “mini” promo

Researching Joint Venture Partners
Find others that compliment your services and products and create a partnership with them. For example, they may publish something about you and your product in their newsletter and you can do the same for them. Be sure that this is a win/win partnership for both parties.

Newsletter Publishing
The VA can take care of researching some of your newsletter topics, formatting, and broadcasting newsletter issues. As they become more familiar with your writing style and general content, they can start to draft the newsletter on your behalf.

Submitting Speaker Packages
One of the best ways to market your business is to get and speak to various groups. Your VA can assist you with locating potential places for you to speak and sending out your speaker profile. This includes online speaking opportunities such as teleclasses.

Managing your Affiliate Program
Not only can a VA manage the technical aspect of your affiliate program (sending checks, etc), they can also help manage the relationship with your affiliates. Have your VA keep in touch with affiliates, letting them know of your new products and reminding them of existing products that include affiliate fees.

Some of the common reasons that prevent people from hiring a VA to help them build their business:

The Potential Cost
The cost of having a VA assist you can vary depending on the VA’s rates, the services you have them assist you with and the amount of time you have them assist you each month. Many VAs are willing to work out a rate or plan that works best for you. If you have the VA work with you to build your business, you will see your revenue increase and it will worth your while (plus your stress level!)

Letting Go of Control
Some people find it challenging to delegate work to someone else. They’ve worked hard to get where they are and they’re not comfortable with letting go. Take “baby steps” in starting with a VA. Is there a project you have wanted to do for a long time but just haven’t gotten around to it? Have them start on that - provide the opportunity to get to know them better and you will learn to trust them more and more. In very little time, you will wonder how you made it without them!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 4th, 2005 at October 4, 2005 - 2:00 pm and is filed under Audio Library. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.