If you decided to start selling information products from your website you need to decide on how you are going to automate the delivery of purchases to your customers. Information products offer a good way of converting your knowledge and expertise into products that can be sold online and offline regardless of the amount of hours you work every day. If you are trying to implement the 4-hours-working-week concept – you know that’s something that you need to do as soon as possible. You can then use social media marketing to promote your products.

One option would be to integrate PayPal into your HTML/CSS website. It’s easy and cheap to do. Your payments will be securely processed by PayPal so you don’t need to worry about handling someone else’s card details. However the downside is that every time someone places an order for an ebook or a mp3 recording – you have to go online and send the customer the file or a link to download it. This will take time. And by no means the income, generated from such sales, can be called “passive”.

The other option is to use a shopping cart. Whichever system you are using at the moment to manage your website – WordPress, Joomla, HTML – there is a way to integrate a shopping cart solution. Some are free (like ZenCart), for some you need to pay a regular monthly free (like 1shoppingcart). However the system will handle the whole purchasing process on your behalf – from listing the products to sending a Thank You message.

The main benefits of a shopping cart over basic PayPal:

• Easier to update – you can add products & categories via an online control panel, image resizing is done for you, download links are automatically created for each product;
• Access it from anywhere – all you need is a web browser;
• Multiple payment methods already integrated – you may be able to use PayPal, Worldpay etc.;
• Automatic email notifications – you get notified of all new orders, your customers receive an automatic thank you message;
• Statistics available online, all in one place;
• You don’t need to have any technical knowledge of how to build a website;
• You can create discounts, multiple purchase offers, use affiliate schemes, send promotional emails to get customers to return and buy again;
• The purchase will get delivered automatically;
• You can create content pages to fully integrate the shopping cart into your site (or make your site as a shopping cart);
• The system will collate customers’ emails, so you can keep in touch and follow up;
• In most systems you can send a newsletter to your customers or integrate it with e-newsletter systems like Aweber, MailChimp or Constant Contact.

So very quickly you will be able to set up and manage your online store. All you need now is to finish off that e-book you were working on for a while.

The role of the virtual assistant is so varied it’s nearly impossible to make a conclusive list of tasks – but the one thing VAs are likely to have in common is diary management for busy business owners.

Juggling the appointments of a busy executive requires diplomacy, patience, forward thinking, and a reliable and effective system. Technology has made huge advances in this area and a range of software is on the market for computers and portable devices like mobile phones. Google Calendar is easy to set up on your PC or laptop, it will automatically synchronise any changes you have made in Outlook with online version in Google. You can give your virtual assistant permission to view your Google calendar in Settings. And that’s all that’s required! If you use a Blackberry or iPhone – your device can have an uptodate diary too so you know what you need to do when you are on the move.

It’s very helpful for scheduling. A virtual assistant can view multiple clients from her calendar, can email the appointments to your business partners and customers, can add notes, links to Google Maps for location, attach documents (agenda, minutes of previous meetings, action lists). It is a user-friendly, easy to use system with good options for listing tasks, colour coding and setting alarms.

What are the benefits of letting your VA coordinate your diary?

Still in doubt? Give us a call on 0203 468 8594 to discuss your particular situation and see how we can make more time in your 24h day.

Do you often find that you hire temporary staff in order to cover for a key member of staff (like executive assistants to MDs, office managers) or to cope during the extremely busy periods at work? If so, the new government announcement will have a major impact on your business.

Currently many employment law rights (the right to claim unfair dismissal, the right to a statutory redundancy payment, right to certain minimum periods of notice, etc) are only available to employees. However, the government has announced that it will implement legislation to give greater employment protection to agency workers.

The basic principle is that after 12 weeks work, agency workers should be entitled to equal treatment in terms of pay and “basic working and employment conditions”, compared to their colleagues who are directly employed or engaged by the hiring organisation (you).

So what does “equal treatment” actually mean? Under the draft regulations, agency workers would be entitled to equal treatment in relation to holidays, breaks, overtime, notice period, etc. Equal treatment in relation to “pay” would include basic salary plus other contractual benefits directly linked to the work undertaken by the agency worker. This covers holiday pay, payment for overtime, shift allowances, unsociable hours premiums. However, occupational social security schemes (such as sick pay and occupational pension rights) would be excluded. It is also proposed that from day one agency workers will have equal treatment to on-site facilities, for example, staff crèche, transport facilities, canteen.

Therefore if you regularly engage agency staff on engagements lasting for 12 weeks or more, you will need to review your policies to ensure that agency workers are treated in the same way as you would treat permanent employees.

New rules mostly likely will come into force after October 2011.

The difference between an agency worker and a virtual assistant after October 2011:

(video from one of the NLN meetings)

One key thought related to virtual assistants: number 1 – stay focussed on what you love about your business (5min onwards). There are many things that sidetrack you, that you have to do as an entrepreneur, which you won’t enjoy (admin can be one of them!). To stay inspired – remember in what areas your inspiration and passion really is, constantly remind yourself of it. Think “How do I build more of my business around the bit I love rather than what I should do or have to do?”

The answer for you can be to use a Virtual Assistant. It will allow you to outsource most of the areas you wouldn’t naturally enjoy (unless you are a virtual assistant yourself). So you will have more time for your business and less time for “should do” or “have to do”.

For those of you in London – North London Network is a networking organisation in North London (Muswell Hill and Hampstead), meetings and tasks take place every month with a networking opportunity over lunch. Members can have a short profile posted on the website – click here.

There are many good reasons why Entrepreneurs need to let go and delegate.  In other words, outsource the things that can be outsourced so you can use your ‘boundless energy’ to be more creative in your business.

If you’d like to know what the Entrepreneurial Curse is – keep reading!  And make sure you read this post to find out how you can best utilise a Virtual Assistant.

It’s so cool to be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs have boundless energy, the need to create, the capacity to work for long hours without sleep, and the ability to make things out of nothing. These qualities can all be powerful drivers of success, but this enthusiasm can also keep you from moving forward and cause you to strangle your business — you can only do so much yourself before you hit the wall. Recognizing when you need help, and being able to let go and empower others to help you, can really be liberating.

Check yourself against the following symptoms to find out if you’re a victim of the Entrepreneurial Curse!

Symptoms of the Entrepreneurial Curse

1. You’re always jotting down notes about your great ideas but you can’t ever get to them.
2. You find yourself saying, “I can do it better myself.”
3. You find yourself saying, “It will take me longer to tell someone else how to do it than it will for me to do it myself — so I’ll just do it myself.”
4. You find yourself saying, “No one can do it without my help anyway, so I might as well do it myself.”
5. You find yourself saying, “Nothing gets done right around here unless I do it.”
6. You find yourself saying, “My clients expect me to be doing all of the work — they won’t accept a phone call from an assistant. So I might as well do it myself.”

I guarantee you that none of those statements above are true — you just think they are (it’s okay, we all do at one time or another).

It’s a blessing to be an entrepreneur. But it can turn into a real drag if your business is at a standstill because you’re holding on too tight. Think about using that boundless energy and need to create more expansively by getting out of the busy-ness of your business and using your genius more effectively.

Now that you know you’ve got “the Curse,” you’ve got no excuse.

By by Marcia Hoeck, Coach, mybreakthroughbusiness.com