Benefits of Hiring a Virtual Assistant

I already mentioned before the work a virtual personal assistant can do for you—research, secretarial tasks, audio transcription, travel planning, and customer support—but I still haven’t told you the other benefits you will be getting once you hire one.

1. Once you hire a virtual assistant, you can increase your productivity. You can now focus to your income-generating tasks since you already handed down your administrative tasks to your VA.
2. Having a VA will also enable you to give more time to your family, and even to yourself. You now have time for a picnic on the weekends, go to theme parks with your kids, or start a new hobby—without worrying that your office work is piling up.
3. If you own a business, utilizing the service of virtual assistants makes it possible for you to save the overboard expenses. You don’t need an additional office space and equipment. Your VA has already taken care of it.

So, a virtual assistant improves your personal and professional life! However, you are not the only one reaping the benefits. The relationship between virtual assistants and their clients is a win/win relationship. Virtual assistants also have more time with their families now since most of them work in their homes. They also have a flexible working schedule, and at the same time working on something, that is their passion.

5 Things a Virtual Assistant Can Do For You

Here is a quick list of five things a virtual assistant may be able to do for you to help you be more effective.

Researching: Using the internet other forms of communication your virtual assistant can act as a very useful researcher, who can look up information, research facts, double check sources, and take care of any researching tasks you may have.

Secretarial Tasks: Your virtual assistant can act as an online secretary by keeping track of appointments, creating documents, and accomplishing other related secretarial tasks that will help you be more effective.

Audio Transcription: Transcription can sometimes be a tedious task, but is something that a virtual assistant with a good command of the English language and some time can handle with ease.

Travel Planning: A virtual assistant can be used to take care of all the mundane details of planning a trip. Tasks may include reserving airline tickets, booking hotel rooms, researching various tourist attractions, and other such travel preparation tasks.

Customer Support: A virtual assistant can also act a customer support representative by taking care of the concerns of your customers through email, chat, or phone communication.

Goodbye Google Supplemental Results - Increase Quality Rank Score or Trustrank

One very interesting tidbit I learned from attending the recent pubcon / webmaster world search conference was listening to matt cutts explain how to get a site out of the supplemental listings.

Supplemental search engine result positions ( SERPs ) are often seen with very large, new websites.  These sites often times have thousands or even hundreds of thousands of pages listed.

Generally, these sites are databases of content which have been published online.
Sometimes the content could be very valuable - for instance - if an academic journal decided to publish an archive of their article abstracts online.  This might add 30,000 new pages onto the web overnight - all of which would be very unique and valuable content.

Other times, these database websites are not very valuable.  The worst case might be an automated scraper site which mangles the content in a way that reads like jibberish.  In a situation like this, a blackhat webmaster might publish an almost unlimited number of pages (limited only by the size of database storage at his disposal).  This kind of content is basically garbage, and would surely frustrate anyone who clicked across this in a search engine listing.

At the conference, some webmaster asked ‘how can i get my very valuable website out of the supplemental listings?’.  I was a little bit surprised in how Matt Cutts replied to this.

Basically, he replied that when a site is showing up in the supplemental listings, it’s an indication that the site does not have enough backlinks coming to it.  If the site does not have enough backlinks coming to it - this would be an indication that the site was still lacking trust or reputation in it’s niche.

I consider this interesting because Cutts is basically advocating proactive link building in this case.  Building up links which would not develop naturally - rather links that would require the site webmaster to go out and solicit for others to link back to this site.

I suppose the rational behind his recommendation is that - if people really consider that your site is garbage - they would never bother to link back to your site anyway (who would want to link to such a scraper site described above?).  Thus - webmaster that links back to your large database website is a webmaster who is voting that your database is adding value to the internet.

At the Webmaster World conference there were also several references to a Google Quality Rank Score (which must be something like Trustrank).  There has already been a publically discussed Google Quality score which is used for Google Adwords - to determin how well an advertisement listing and landing page convert into leads for advertisers.  But in this case, I think the Google Quality Rank Score discussed at the conference was actually something different - maybe something that encompasses all of the different quality factors, as mentioned on Matt Cutts’ blog and in the Google Patent listing.  These quality factors include things like:

site age, document age, domain factors (how old the domain is, how long it is under the same ownership, domain name class - .edu, .org, .info, .com, .gov - hypens in the url?, etc), internal linking, external linking (how trustworthy are the sites your site links to?), link stability (are the links long lasting?),  frequency of updates, affiliate links, bad words, backlinks, site penalities (cloaking, hidden text, bad linking, etc).

What Should Enterprise Outsourcing Companies do When Long Term Deals Start to Decline?

It was widely reported today that long term outsourcing deals have recently been on the decline. This means that the offshore outsourcing mega deals that have been announced in the past, will be happening less frequently in the future.

The third-quarter developments in the global outsourcing industry of 2006 saw a decline in contracts by volume and value from the same quarter last year. The cause of the falling aggregate contact values can be tied to the decline in contract durations, especially for Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) contracts. Since 2001, the average duration of a Broader Market contract has decreased 12 percent. In ITO, it decreased 18 percent, while for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) it dropped 5 percent; as per the TPI Index report

But how is this going to affect offshoring companies based in India? It might not have a significant impact on their growth rates at all!

Therefore, while the global majors may see a slowdown in their growth, Indian companies will not do so. According to Nasscom, the Indian ITES-BPO segment continued to chart strong year-on-year growth at 37% for FY06. The IT body has also said Indian ITES-BPO exports have grown to USD 6.3 billion in FY06, recording a growth of 37%.

The figure is expected to grow to USD 8-8.5 billion in FY07. Net employment in the ITES-BPO segment has grown by about 100,000 in FY06, taking the total direct employment in this segment to 415,000, the body has said in its factsheet about the industry, as per the report.

Generally speaking, this means that the service provider companies most significantly affected by this news would be the giant onshore outsourcing providers. Overall, companies like Obian, Oceanwide, Omgeo LLC, OmniPod, Inc. Omniture, Inc. [OMTR], Oncontact Software Corporation, One Network Enterprises, One Voice Technologies, Inc. [ONEV.OB], OneClickHR plc, OneMind Connect, Online Insight, Inc., OnRelay, Onset Technology Inc., ONStor, Onstream Media Corporation [ONSM], Onyx Software Corporation, Open Country Inc., Open EC Technologies, Inc. [OCEIF.PK], Open Ratings, Inc., Open Software Solutions, Inc., Open Solutions Canada, OpenAir Inc., Openet Telecom Inc., OPIN Systems, Optas, Inc., Optiant, Optima Technology Corporation, Optimal Payments Inc., Optimal Solutions, Inc., OrderPro Logistics, Inc. [OPLO.PK], OrderWare Solutions Ltd., Orsus Solutions USA, Inc., OSIsoft, Inc., OTES Consulting, OTF Group, Inc., OutlookSoft Corporation, Outtask, Inc., OZ Communications, Inc. would not be too significantly affected, especially the ones with less than one billion dollars in revenues yearly.

Fast Ebook Creation with Webmaster Outsourcing

Ebooks can be worth their file size in gold in today’s knowledge based economy. The knowledge encoded into a high quality ebook could empower someone to build a successful business, have a high quality marriage, or even make a brilliant invention.

Author Sean Mize has put together a quick tutorial for how you can create an Ebook information product in less than a week. Combining the techniques that he mentions, along with webmaster outsourcing would create a successful force for anyone who wants to create high power ebooks quickly.

If you have never written an ebook, you probably think that is an incredibly impossible statement. And if you have, you know that it is possible.

My first ebook took me three months to write. My second, about three weeks. And my eighth, I actually wrote in about 1 ¼ days.

So when I say write an ebook in a week I mean it, and I have done better than that. In this article, I will simply give you the steps I used to do it and share with you a little of my mindset as I was working.

1) I sent out an email asking my subscribers what they wanted to learn more about. Once I had a feeling about what the next ebook should be about, I went into Word and wrote out an outline. The outline had the basic points of my topic, then under each basic point, I put several ‘subpoints’ that I could write about.

2) I began writing in sections - just one subtopic at a time. Do not look at the book as one huge project, look at it as many small projects, and just finish them one at a time.

3) I wrote about 5 pages one evening, then the next business day, I set a goal of writing the rest of it. I think that is the important part. In the middle of the afternoon, when my back started hurting, and I was tired, I only kept going because I had made the goal. One thing that is important here is that you have to learn to write even when you are tired. When I first started writing, I would write when I was fresh. Now I write when I tell myself I have to get the expected number of articles out, or the required number of pages out. And when I say expected or required, that is kind of how I think of them. I decide I am going to write 10 articles or 20 today, and that is usually what I do. And the same thing with the ebook. If I have decided that I want to release it on a certain day, then I have to do whatever it takes to get it ready to release that day.

4) Once it was finished, I put it down, and worked on the sales page for awhile.

5) Once I was rested from writing, I went back into it and worked on links that needed to be inserted, made headers and footers for it, ran spell check, and checked it for appearance.

6) Later that evening, I read it and corrected grammar and spelling errors not picked up by spell check (note: never trust spell check).

7) The following morning I had the sales page live and made sales by the evening.

Do I recommend you do this in one day? No, take a week or two to do what I did. But you can do it in a week or two; do not think you have to take a month or two or three. You don’t.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed a brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: Email List Building

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has created over 280 articles in print and 8 published ebooks online.

The Nebulous Relationship Between DomainPeople and Hostway

In the past one of the companies that I used for domain registrationwas Hostway. Overall they seemed to be a pretty reputable company, and also seemed to offer pretty competitive prices for their services.

A few of the domain names I’ve registered with them in the past have been coming up for renewal now. A strange thing is that the registration reminders that I’m getting for these domain names are all coming from a company called DomainPeople. Here’s an example of one of these letters:

support1@domainpeople.com
to danny
More options 6:11 pm (1½ hours ago)
Dear Domain Name Registrant,

Your domain name expires today — Sun, 05 Nov 2006!

Renew right now at http://www.domainpeople.com/renew

Please Note: Once the domain has expired, it will be placed on hold. While on hold, you will not be able to use your domain name in any way - including your web site, e-mail address or e-mail forwarding.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us anytime, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. E-mail us at support@domainpeople.com or call us toll-free in North America at 1-877-734-3667 or internationally at +1-604-639-1680.

Sincerely,
DomainPeople Customer Support
support@domainpeople.com
http://www.domainpeople.com

I heard something in the past about Hostway buying this company DomainPeople, to handle the some domain registration services, so in the back of my mind I wasn’t too alarmed about getting this email for domain name renewal from a different company than the one I used for registration.

This relationship is all explained in a bit more detail on a FAQ page on the Hostway site:

Who are AAAQ and DomainPeople?
AAAQ and DomainPeople are the domain name registrars Hostway has partnered with to process domain name registrations. On the Whois record for your domain name, AAAQ or DomainPeople will be listed as the domain name registrar. In particular, DomainPeople is the registrar for .info, .pro, and .us domain names.

Well, the tricky thing about this all is that - if you follow the link in the email reminder from DomainPeople - they end up wanting to charge you $35 dollars for your domain name renewal!

Hummmpf!  Well, luckily I was still able to find my old Hostway account information … logged into my control panel, and was able to manage my domains from there.  Renewal price?  $6.95!

This seems almost scandalous to me.   Is this some sort of scam that Hostway is using to increase their profit margins?  Has anyone else encountered this same inconsistancy in trying to renew a domain name registered by Hostway?

Strange enough, when I’ve googled for ‘Domainpeople Suck‘ or ‘Domainpeople Scam‘, I haven’t found too many negative comments… however one blogger - RFJason - describes the DomainPeople as being utterly clueless!

Mobile Tools for the Outsourcing Professional, Focus Blackberry Chat Applications

As a professional in the webmaster outsourcing industry, it’s very important to stay in touch over instant messenger.  Tools like Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Jabber, and Meebo are all critical for successful communications!

Sometimes it’s not always possible to open up a laptop to chat with others.  In cases like that, using a mobile device might be a perfectly suitable alternative.  In this case, a great tool to use is a Blackberry device.  Blackberry’s have support for an application called IM+, which gives a user a single application interface to all of the open, public chat applications.

The developers of IM+, ShapeServices, are very concerned about device compatibility so far, and have made their application functional on the devices such as Windows Mobile Pocket PC ,Windows Mobile Smartphone,BlackBerry,Symbian S60 (v.1, v.2, v.2 FP3, v.3),Symbian Series 80,Symbian Series 90,Symbian UIQ (SE M600, W950, P990, SE P910, P900, SE P800, Motorola A920, Motorola A925/A1000, BenQ P30, Arima U300),Palm OS,Java phones,i-mode,Nokia 9210, and the Nokia 9290.

The Origin of Wealth is a Simple, Repeatable Process for Brilliant Business Ideas

The latest book on my lap has been ‘Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics (a very heavy Hardcover)‘ by McKinseyite Eric D. Beinhocker.  The author draws on the concepts of complexity to give a ground up understanding of how an economy really develops, and really works.  Beinhocker points out that economics has not given us a satisfying answer on how wealth is really created … because economists have prefered labouring over convoluted mathematical answers instead of searching for a plausible answer!

Do you want to be wealthy?  Successful in business?  Respected by your peers?  You may want to remember the simple 3 step plan that the author recommends:

1. Differentiate.
2. Select.
3. Amplify.
The idea seems to be interesting enough, that already more than 3 bloggers have covered this topic, including Edward Vielmetti, John Leach of the Bell Pottinger Group, John Hagel writing on his Edge Perspectives blog, and outsourcing expert Sadagopan!

I highly recommend  adding Sadagopan to your RSS feed reader, if your interested in the topic of business outsourcing.  I’ve been following his weblog for years, and his insights are very exceptional!

KPO in India - Harnessing Offshore Brainpower of Knowledge Workers

KPO, a subdialect of offshore outsourcing, has a real focus on high brainpower work. This is the kind of work that businesses have typcially called on firms like Monitor Group, Mercer Management Consulting, IBM Global Services, Deloitte Consulting, Accenture, Gartner, A.T. Kearney, PwC Consulting, KPMG Consulting, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Marakon Associates, Hewitt Associates, Mercer Human Resource Consulting, Towers Perrin, Electronic Data Systems, or The Parthenon Group.

What is the best city in India for KPO? India is a country with over a billion brainy souls. It’s hard to say right away where the best city is … obviously, the places endowed with a great high tech infrastructure would be at the top of the list … and places near to a world renowned, prestigious IIT university. But, to start research on the subject, I would just recommend starting with the A’s! Cities like Abohar, Abu Road, Adilabad, Agartala, Agra, Ahmedabad, Ahmednagar, Aizwal, Ajmer, Akola, Aligarh, Allahabad, Almora, Alwar, Ambala, Amber, Amravati, Amreli, Amritsar, Anakapalle, Anantapur, Anklesvar, Anuppur, Araria, Arcot, Arrah, Aruppukkottai, Asansol, Ashok Nagar, Aurangabad, Auroville, Ayodhya, Azamgarh

For the feature part ot this post, please continue reading below for an article by an industry expert on KPO, Prajakta Chandrakant Dhote , Jr. Faculty Member in ICFAI National School, Chandrapur.

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Knowledge Process Outsourcing is picking pace in India. In Knowledge Process Outsourcing the focus is on knowledge expertise. It is just the higher end of Business Process Outsourcing. Knowledge Process Outsourcing delivers high value to organizations by providing domain-based processes and business expertise rather than just process expertise. After reaping the benefits of outsourcing low –end processes to India, foreign companies are now trying to outsource the high-end processes to the country.In Business Process Outsourcing there is a predefined way to solve a problem. Business Process Outsourcing’s normally include transaction processing , setting up a bank account, selling an insurance policy, technical support , voice & e-mail based support. While in Knowledge Process Outsourcing the knowledge solution for various sectors is provided like- investment solution through their personal guidance about the information’s and insight of every investments option available today, unsorted data going through a black box and coming out as useful information.

Skills Gap Hurts Webmaster Outsourcing Boom!

The title of this post is a bit of a parody on a recently published New York Times article titled Skills Gap Hurts Technology Boom in India. But still, I think it’s interesting to study the article, and see if the same ideas and concepts are relevant!

A few quotes from the article:

The Problem Faced by Outsourcing Companies in India

n a country once regarded as a bottomless well of low-cost, ready-to-work, English-speaking engineers, a shortage looms. India still produces plenty of engineers, nearly 400,000 a year at last count. But their competence has become the issue.

A study commissioned by a trade group, the National Association of Software and Service Companies, or Nasscom, found only one in four engineering graduates to be employable. The rest were deficient in the required technical skills, fluency in English or ability to work in a team or deliver basic oral presentations.

The skills gap reflects the narrow availability of high-quality college education in India and the galloping pace of the country’s service-driven economy, which is growing faster than nearly all but China’s.

Raw, Unbridled Economic GROWTH!

Software exports alone expanded by 33 percent in the last year.

The university systems of few countries would be able to keep up with such demand, and India is certainly having trouble. The best and most selective universities generate too few graduates, and new private colleges are producing graduates of uneven quality.

Many fear that the labor pinch may signal bottlenecks in other parts of the economy. It is already being felt in the information technology sector.

With the number of technology jobs expected to nearly double to 1.7 million in the next four years, companies are scrambling to find fresh engineering talent and to upgrade the schools that produce it.

What to do about the SKILLS SHORTAGE?

Some companies are training faculty members themselves, offering courses tailored to industry needs and improving college labs and libraries. They are rushing to get first choice of would-be engineers long before they have completed their course work. And they are fanning out to small, remote colleges that almost no one had heard of before. The country’s most successful technology concerns can no longer afford to hire only from the most prestigious Indian universities. Nor can they expect recent graduates to be ready to hit the shop floor. Most companies require in-house training of anywhere from two to six months.

Demand is beginning to be felt on the bottom line. Entry-level salaries in the software industry have risen by an average of 10 to 15 percent in recent years. And Nasscom, which helps companies wanting to outsource find workers, forecasts a shortage of 500,000 professional employees in the technology sector by 2010.
…

The team came to Tiruchengode with the goals of selecting its next generation of software programmers and assessing how, in the short term, the company could help the college churn out more of what it needed. “These are the guys who are going to write my Windows 2010,” as one of the recruiters put it.

“We can’t afford to let talent go” was the verdict of A. K. Pattabiraman, a member of the team.

I suppose that many of these ideas are relevant in the webmaster outsourcing world too. Just the main question is, what are the skills that a webmaster outsourcing recruiter would be hunting for? Surely they are slightly different than what the big BPO companies are hiring for.

Relevant skills for webmastering might be:

• Basic Information Retrieval theory - most “SEO’s” don’t have a clue about how a search engine actually works, they only know bits and bobs of information they read on forums and in books.
• Usability basics - it’s not just for the handicapped - it’s for everyone. Someone who is new to an area (including the web, or your websites topic) is effectively handicapped, even though it may be temporary and less serious than being blind.
• Copy-writing and Marketing basics - why does this sell? What are the basics of good copy? What should you avoid?
• Web technology basics - basic HTML, CSS, server configuration (IIS, Apache and Tomcat), DNS configuration and so forth. You don’t have to be a major tech head, but you need to know a problem (and who to call) when you see one. In my experience, about 60% of major SEO issues are technical in nature, not spam, link or content related.

(source Search Engine Watch forums)