One of the greatest challenges most of these solo-preneurs face is the “solo” portion of it, which is largely the result of the fact that they often lack entrepreneurial or “big business” education which teaches leverage.

You know the picture… you strike out on your own, and quickly realize you are wearing so many hats in your own business and get stressed out…

Or you have so many great ideas for businesses, sites, products… but so little time and resources to put them all into place.

…or you have a ton of energy and excitement, but you lack the “big idea” you need to really make things happen for you.

Or maybe you have that one great idea, but you just don’t have the experience to bring it to its fullest potential.

This post is designed to give you some ideas, inspiration, and specific strategies you can use to create more leverage in your business today to help you overcome some of the adversity you face as a solo-preneur, and take your entrepreneurial drive, energy, and ideas to the next level.

5 Ways To Achieve More With Your Online Business

#1 – Outsource!

As a solo-preneur, you must start outsourcing some of your tasks and responsibilities. These can be things you need done but aren’t doing, things you’re currently doing but aren’t part of your unique abilities, things you’re currently doing but can be done cheaper (based on how you value your own time), or just things you suck at that someone else with specific training can do better and probably faster!

I can get into a lot of detail on outsourcing… but you’ll be better off reading the specific strategies I outlined in my previous article: The 10 Steps To Successfully Outsourcing Your Online Business.

My life and my business has never been the same since I started outsourcing many of my technical, research, and even managerial tasks.  I can now focus on my unique abilities that actually earn me money, and I have much greater leverage in my business and what I can do for myself and for my clients.

#2 – Get A Business Partner!

Having a business partner can be one of the greatest forms of leverage for both you and your partner, especially when done correctly. This doesn’t mean you take what you currently have and give half of it away to someone who’ll be your partner, and it doesn’t even mean that you’ll start a new venture and split everything 50/50.

You can set up revenue sharing and equity partnerships for new or existing ventures based on what each person brings to the table.

This can be a great option if you have new ideas for businesses, but don’t have all the time or resources to build them. In such a scenario, you would provide your ideas and some resources and some of your time, but find a business partner to run that “profit center” for you where you give a fair share of revenue and equity to that individual. This allows you to leverage your ideas, resources, and creative abilities, while having someone else do most of the implementation work. This also allows you to build multiple businesses simultaneously and expand your larger brand while also providing other entrepreneurial minded people with great opportunities that may be much greater than what they could produce on their own.

On the flip side, you can partner with a more successful entrepreneur and help them build out their new ideas, giving you great experience and a huge financial upside with less risk, while leverage their ideas, resources, experience, and creativity.

Of course, you can also equally partner with someone on a brand new venture, in which case you want to make sure you are really leveraging each other’s unique abilities. You want a partner who is strong where you are weak, and vice versa. This way, 1 + 1 does not equal 2, but something greater, because you can do much more together than if each of you just duplicated yourselves. It’s not just about finding someone “like-minded” but more so about finding someone with complimentary skills and strengths – even if you might not always agree, you can create more profitable and leverage businesses this way.

My biggest piece of advice, something I learned from my mentor Yanik Silver, is to clearly define your own unique abilities and having your business partners or profit center leaders do the same, and create partnerships based on these results. The Kolbe test is a vital tool for determining your strengths and unique abilities. Yanik had me take this before he considered working with me on any level, and since then I’ve had each of my employees take it and anyone I’ve considered working with on a significant level in business (and in life… I even had my girlfriend take it!)

#3 – Leverage Other’s Larger Brands or Traffic!

You don’t have to have the massive traffic or own a recognized brand to reap the benefits. You can leverage others’ brands and traffic in a win-win relationship where you both benefit greatly.

Guest blogging is one of the best and simplest examples of this leverage strategy. I am writing this post for IncomeDiary right now… sure I could write and publish the same content on my personal blog, or build my own blog about business advice and making money online, but it would take me ages to get nearly the same amount of traffic to my content as I get on the first day of having this post published here. In addition to my name and my ideas being exposed to thousands of readers, I am also getting brand recognition by association with the IncomeDiary brand, which increases my credibility online and opens up all kinds of other opportunities for me… I never know who might be reading this. Meanwhile, Michael gets some awesome (my humble opinion) content on IncomeDiary and gets a get variety through his various writers. He makes money from the site each time a new article is published, so it’s in his best interest to get people like me to write.

Find a popular blog in your industry and start guest blogging for it. You’ll be impressed how quickly you gain credibility and industry recognition… and you’ll find that your own traffic will increase as a result, as will your sales and your ability to charge more for what you do because of the association with a larger successful brand. So long as you provide great value, the owners of the blogs or magazines you write for will greatly appreciate your contribution. It’s a total win-win, and doesn’t cost you anything except your time.

Guest blogging is just one way of leveraging others’ larger brands and traffic. You can also explore different co-branding opportunities, such as co-authoring or contributing to others’ literary works (there are branding agencies for new authors that help align you with best sellers… costs some money but can be worth it if you want to be a recognized writer or contributor to your industry). Another great strategy is to interview big names (like IncomeDiary has done)… this not only gets you great content and big-name-brand association, but if you do it right the big names will share the interview content with their audiences, which can drive some great traffic back to your site.

You don’t have to necessarily have a “blogging business” to leverage such strategies. For example, my primary business is a web services company, but my blogging for IncomeDiary or doing my own side interviews with Internet marketers helps establish me as an authority in my industry, all with a lot less work and less money than it would take to get the same level of recognition through paid advertising or direct sales.

The flip side of this is that if you already have a recognized brand, you can totally use this strategy to let others leverage your brand to create more leverage in your own business. If you own a blog, you can recruit great guest bloggers. If you own more of a traditional business, you can use your recognized brand to recruit interns who will work for you for free in order to gain the experience and the brand association that comes with working for you. What better leverage than free labor! Especially free labor passionate about the opportunity to contribute to your business…

#4 – Create a Product!

An excellent way to leverage your current efforts is to create a product if you haven’t yet. Since we’re talking about online businesses here, you’re likely familiar with information products. You have to realize that if you are doing something successful in business, people are probably willing to pay you to teach them how you do what you do, what resources you use, what strategies you’ve picked up, and how to become successful at what you do.

If you believe that you do something or know something that people are willing to pay you to teach them, then you have a simple opportunity to leverage your current knowledge and/or business processes by creating an information product out of them.

This is pretty simple… document what it is what you do that others would find valuable. Write it in such a way that you could understand it when you were brand new and wish you had this information. You can make it a combination of PDF’s, videos, audios, worksheets, etc. You can sell it through a marketplace like ClickBank or entirely through your own membership site. There are entire products and sites dedicated to teaching you to create and monetize your own information products, so I won’t go into all the steps here, but I’ll definitely encourage you to explore any unique value you have to offer that others would pay for and turn it into an information product. One of the several ways this site (Income Diary) makes money is through Michael’s product where he teaches how to make a profitable site like this. He could have the profitable site with the product, but Site Profit Domination makes the site a lot more money from a process that was already being used and documented anyway.

Even if you only sell it for a few bucks (you can do better than that!), you’re creating additional leveraged income that you would not have otherwise had from knowledge you already had. In addition, documenting your unique processes and success story can actually help you improve and systemize your own business!

I’m going through this exact process now, putting together a high ticket product on how to build a successful web services company, and in addition to opening an exciting stream of leverage income for me in the near future, it’s been an incredible process of documenting and systemize my business processes and increasing efficiency and delegation within my company.

#5 – License Your Ideas or Strategies, Let OTHERS Do The Work!

You might have some great ideas or business processes, but don’t want to put in all the work to make and market your own product. Maybe you just want to make some of the product, then let some professional put the finishing touches on it, do all the marketing and distribution for it, take care of all the customer support and business development… then you just take a check every month for having the idea and getting it started.

This is what licensing is like for physical products, unique business processes, technologies, information, and more. In the online marketing world, one of the simplest way to pursue leverage this way is to let an Internet marketer or Internet marketing agency publish your product. You’re responsible for creating some good content, they do the rest… you can have much more successful results this way, and it’s a whole lot more leveraged than doing it all yourself. Meanwhile, you can focus on your primary business or go work on more content.

Of course, if you have marketing skills and distribution networks, you can leverage other people’s efforts and intellectual property while you use your marketing abilities and resources to publish their products, making the bulk of the revenue for their product or concept. What makes this somewhat different from a partnership described in the first strategy is that the one creating the product here is quite different from a business partner or a profit center, but more so an author or in some cases an idea catalyst.

I hope these five strategies for creating more leverage in your online business help you to create more freedom, earn more money, and focus more on your passions. If you don’t end up using any of these specific strategies, then take the inspiration and start think about other ways you can better leverage your business or your personal abilities. You’ll find you can reap massive benefits and also serve a lot more people.

Read more: ‘21 Ways Successful Entrepreneurs Think Differently’

The post 5 Ways To Create Leverage In Your Online Business appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

A key component to your blog’s success is getting organic traffic from people searching for what you’re writing about. Whether you write about a passion, your industry, or product reviews, getting targeted organic search engine traffic will help you get more unique visitors and earn more money.

In this article, I outline exact how to write blog posts (and even pages) and rank well in search engines for any topic. The steps and tips in this article are largely based on a cool plugin I use called SEOPressor, which helps me follow all these rules every time I write, without ever having to think about it. Without SEOPressor, I would barely have a clue on how to rank my content for myself or my clients.

Know Your Target

What this post will not help you do is identify your target audience or keywords. If you’re writing to rank for something, you should already know what you’re trying to rank for. Decide on your keywords and phrases. Keep in mind, the longer and more specific the phrase is, the easier it will be to rank for it. You can use tools like Google Adwords keyword tool to do this kind of research. I won’t go into much detail here as researching keywords and phrases and identifying your target market merits an entire article in itself.

With that said, here are the key points and steps to keep in mind when writing your content. Remember, SEOPressor literally makes the steps below a total breeze.

Headings With Keywords

You want to ensure that your keywords are somewhere within your header tags. You actually have to get quite specific here…

Ensure that you have your keywords in your H1 tag – this is like your title.

Have your keywords in your H2 tag – this can be any heading in your content.

Have your keywords in your H3 tag – this can be any sub-heading in your content.

You might think: If heading tags with keywords help rank my content, why don’t I just put ALL my content with keywords in h3 or something instead of a paragraph?

Simple, because Google will know what you’re trying to do, and there goes your ranking. They figured that one out many years ago.

This can be easy to forget, which is why I recommend SEOPressor so you never have to remember.

Keyword Density

You want to make sure you fall within the ideal keyword density of the terms you are trying to rank for. This means that you keywords or phrases should appear a certain amount of times throughout your content for it to rank well – not too little, not too much.

The ideal keyword density is 2% – 5%.

This means if you have a 200 word blog post, you should have your keywords appear 4 – 10 times. With any less, you’re not significant enough… with anymore, Google might think you’re sketchy.

This occasionally takes some basic math. Take your word count and divide it by the amount of times you mention your keyword phrase. You can see your Word count at the bottom of your post while writing:

Again, SEOPressor does this for you, so you never have to do any counting or even have to remember it.

Another tip on this: size does matter. There’s no specific rule for this, but generally a 600 – 800 word article will do better than a 400 word article. SEOPressor checks article length for you as well.

Optimize Your Images

You want to include your keyword or phrase in any images on your site. You do this by clicking the edit image icon and adding your keyword to “Alternate Text.”

SEOPressor will not only remind you to do this, it will actually do it for you automatically… so you never really have to think about it.

Underline and Italics On Keywords

It’s important that you underline your keywords something and put italics on them. Do the underline and italics for two separate occurrences of the keywords.

Again, SEOPressor to the rescue. Not only will it remind you, it will actually do it for you.

SEOPressor Will Rock Your World

The real key to powerful SEO is automating the process. SEOPressor does all the stuff above, and so much more, for you.

Check this out:

It literally checks everything for you, and a bunch of this stuff for you automatically. It even gives you an overall “SEO Score” and measures your keyword density. All you have to do is type in your keyword or phrase and let SEO Pressor do all the work.

This is like having an SEO Export standing next to you while you write every post or page.

Actually, it’s like having that SEO expert edit your post for you without you thinking about it!

If you already have a bunch of content on your blog and don’t want to go back through each post individually, SEO Pressor actually has a tool that scores all your posts and pages and makes individual suggestions. Check this out:

SEOPressor is awesome for you if:

• You have a niche site or blog
• You have a personal passion site, and want people in your community to find you
• You have a virtual assistant that writes for you
• You are a professional SEO consultant
• You have a web design business or you freelance
• You are totally new, and want to start off right

Anyway, I can’t recommend this enough. It will boost your ranks and save you countless hours… and help you make a lot more money in the process.

Even when I’m not particularly writing to rank for anything, but just to share, I keep my SEOPressor score in mind. It’s hard not to, since it actually tells me on every post.

What’s this thing cost?

The single site version is only $47, but I wouldn’t recommend that you buy it.

I have the multi-site version, and always recommend that it’s the version everyone buy… unless you know for sure you’ll always only have one site and domain. I use it on all my own sites and my clients’ sites.

It also comes with a 7 day trial for $7, so you can play around with it before you make a final decision. Of course… you’ll probably end up keeping it because you’ll be hooked.

Once you get SEOPressor and automate your SEO, make sure you take these other SEO practices into account as well…

• Create relevant permalinks for your posts and pages. Don’t always just rely on the title.
• Create custom descriptions for your posts, you can use a plugin like All In One SEO to do this.
• Do some external SEO. Get backlinks. Comment on blogs. And more… we’ll have an entire post on this later as a complement to this one.
• Actually follow all the suggestions SEOPressor gives you. While it automates a lot, it also tells you what you can personally tweak to improve each post and page.

If you have any questions, please comment below! Note that I’m not an SEO expert… I seriously do rely on this SEOPressor plugin to do the hard work and “research” for me.

Even if you don’t automate and simplify this process with the plugin, I hope the tips and tricks in this post were valuable for you and serve your blog!

The post How To Easily Write WordPress Posts and Pages That Rank appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Wishlist member is the best and most flexible membership site plugin for WordPress. It’s very powerful, but also easy enough to use that you really don’t need to be a techie to build a great membership site with it. The Wishlist member plugin allows you to build a high quality membership site that also looks sleek and very easy to manage as an admin.

I use this plugin personally, and know a lot of top online marketers who use it. It’s so popular for two primary reasons:

1. It’s really powerful – the features and options kick ass.
2. It’s really easy to use.

If you’re thinking: “But I don’t need a membership site.” Think again. Membership sites help you make money like a pro, big time. The bottom of this post gives some clear reasons.

Here is some of what Wishlist member does, broken down…

Integration:

Wishlist Member seamlessly integrates with…

• Various shopping carts and payment processors, such as SamCart, PayPal, ClickBank, 1Shoppingcart, and more.
• Affiliate systems such as SamCart, 1shoppingcart, clickbank, and iDev Affiliate.
• Most common autoresponders, and has a general option to integrate with other autoresponders.
• OptimizePress (actually, this is by far the easiest way to build a membership site: OptimizePress + Wishlist Member … it’s exactly how I have all of my clients do it)
• More! It has an API for flexibility… if you want to get all techie.

Total Content Control:

Build An Elegant Welcome Area:

You can have an elegant welcome area with some content, even for free members. That way, you can sell them more stuff within the members area. This can be a great way to convert your leads into customers by giving them “access.”

Import/Export:

Easy to use and manage:

What does Wishlist Member cost?

There have been some sweet sites built with Wishlist Member

While you certainly don’t have to be a design pro to build a good membership site, you can definitely see the possibilities by checking out some of the membership sites others built:

How does Wishlist Member stand up against other membership plugins?

Here are two that are often talked about:

S2 Member.

There are others, such as WP eMember and aMember. WP eMember is by the same people as WP eShop, and I know from experience that eShop is a poor option in comparison to its competitors. WP eMember lacks important integration tools, you don’t want to get stuck with it long term.

aMember used to be popular, but now Wishlist wins out in my book, especially in terms of user friendliness.

The Bottom Line

Wishlist is the best membership plugin for WordPress sites. While there are other good options, such as DAP, Wishlist makes it easy. And I’m a huge fan of making WordPress easy so that you can focus your time on content that will provide value for your members and readers and ultimately make you money… rather than playing around with complicated plugins.

If you’re looking to build a membership site, get Wishlist member.

Make More Money with Membership

If you’re not thinking about building a membership site, think again…

A membership site is one of the best ways to distribute your premium information (info products), create a continuity program, and distribute your premium tools and plugins. It makes it easier for you to keep selling to the same customer base over and over, while making it much easier for them to access the stuff they paid for. It also dramatically ups the security of your content, so you don’t have to stress about people sharing your hard work for free.

Because you can use Wishlist to upsell stuff directly through your membership site, you can create more passive income for yourself by just making different membership levels. You can even put all of your recommendations within your site. Since everyone in there is a buyer, they’re now more likely to actually purchase stuff through your affiliate links, without you even having to mail them!

Virtually every online marketer with any products or premium content uses a membership site. Start yours today.

The post Make Money With A Membership Site: A Wishlist Review appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

There are countless benefits of outsourcing, ranging from greater personal freedom to more profits to just plain necessity in some case.  I’ll skip the details of outsourcing benefits and just cut straight to the meat: how to actually do it.

The outline below is written such that you can follow it verbatim to get great results with outsourcing, even if you have never tried it before and don’t know where to start.

10 Steps To Successful Outsourcing

Just kidding… sorta. Now to the serious stuff!

Below I outline my exact outsourcing formula for you step by step. Like Tim Ferriss’s DEAL in The Four Hour Work Week, it starts with Definition and ends in Liberation!

1. Define

The first step is actually figuring out what it is what you do, what you want to do, what you don’t want to do, and ultimately what you can and should delegate. Take a piece of paper (or a spreadsheet) and break it into four columns: What I Do, What I Do That I Don’t Like or Am Not Great At, What I Want To Do, and What I Can Delegate.

Start from the left and move to the right. Before filling out the delegate column, eliminate. Cross stuff off from the 2nd column if you can. This can be a great exercise to stop doing your least productive and unnecessary activities… especially before you go and pay someone else to do them!

Here is a snippet (not the whole thing) of my own list when I started this process several months ago to give you some direction in your own list:

As you can see when I started there was a huge disconnect between what I was currently doing and what I WANTED to be doing. Since then things have changed significantly, and are still changing in the right direction. This takes time, but this first step is absolutely necessary to understand where you are, where you want to be, and what’s holding you back.

I’m still working on outsourcing some of these, but in the last couple of months I’ve been able to boost my revenue and do a lot by outsourcing, while also freeing up my mind to focus on bigger and better things. In a few months, this list will evolve, and so should yours. The more you go through this process, the easier outsourcing gets, and the more freedom you experience.

Don’t be conservative on the “delegate” list. If you think you might be able to delegate, put in on there, regardless of how much you might think “but this requires my knowledge/skills/access to do properly.” Just put it on there and figure out the details later.

2. Decide What’s First

Take your “delegate” list from above and determine the top 2 or 3 items that you need done most, at least one of which you feel pretty comfortable delegating immediately.

Write out exactly what it is that you do or need done on these items. Outline it in the action steps that you would follow to do it. Then break down these action steps to be super simple that a skilled technician can follow.

However, if you have a technical task that you want to outsource from your “Things I Am Not Great At or Don’t Like Doing” List then don’t spend too much time on your outline. Just determine what you need and write out scenarios in which you might need it.

I did this with a lot of tasks that I was really incompetent in…

For example, because I run a web design agency, most of my outsourcing needs relate to web design and development. I first looked for a coder, because that was something I didn’t really do well myself. Then as my business scaled up, I hired more people to do the stuff I knew how to do well in WordPress and Photoshop, but having these employees at such great rates allows to focus more of my time on building relationships, doing the consulting, and working directly with clients… not to mention all the other things that I actually love to do in personal and entrepreneurial business life.

I defined what I needed done first, and what kind of work was needed for what client sites. In this particular case, I didn’t outline all the steps since the people I’m hiring know them better than I do, but I defined my needs very clearly, down to the level experience required with each programming language and software.

3. Identify

The next step is to profile your ideal employee. The more specific you are here, the more qualified applicants you get, and the easier the next steps will be. Being clear about what you want is more like to… well, get you what you want.

Also, the better you identify your ideal candidate, the easier the interview (step 7) will be.

You should decide:

• What skill areas you need
• What level of skill you need in those areas (on a scale of 1 – 10)
• Approximately how many hours per week you need done (better to overestimate than under) and which working hours you prefer
• Level of English speaking skills
• Level of qualities such as independence, problem solving, creative thinking, communication, etc.
• Determine what your budget is for this. How much is it worth to you to have it off your hands personally, or to have it done in general?

Outline all of these areas and more in your Ideal Candidate Profile before you go recruiting!

4. Post Your Job

Once you have your needs defined, your most immediate tasks/jobs outlined, and your Ideal Candidate Profile, it’s time to go to the job boards.

Start by posting a job. Create a document from the steps above, defining what you’re looking for in terms of skills and quality. The best way is to create a separate email address for your applicants, so that you can easily review them all at once, and you reduce spam.

Collect your applicants contact information, resumes, and portfolios if appropriate.

I recommend NOT giving out your Skype ID, phone number, or other contact information for questions. Just give that unique email address, and request their Skype ID for interviews. Unless hiring in your own country, a phone number is usually unnecessary.

Now, in this post I am outlining my own process, and I recommend outsourcing primarily to the Philippines. I have had experience with both Philippines and India, and find that the Philippines provides better overall results for less money. There are many other specific reasons that I recommend the Philippines as your primary spot for outsourcing, but ultimately it’s whatever works best for you and your specific situation.

Here are a few great sources for posting your job listings in the Philippines:

EasyOutsource.com
craigslist.com.ph — some cities are better than others for different tasks
hirefilipino.com
onlinejobs.ph

There are other options, and you can find quite a few through Google. I’ve personally had the most successful with EasyOutsource.com

If you choose to post your job in India or other countries, you can find similar sources for these countries, or use the local Craigslist to post a job or “gig” as well as search through other job/outsourcing networks.

You can also choose to look at a few outsourcing agencies. The advantages of an agency, which has many potential employees ready for you, include that the include employee is trained, available at a specific schedule, always has an Internet connection and power, and can be quickly replaced if they quit or get fired, or don’t meet your needs. However, an agency is typically much more expensive.

For example, I’ve found quality workers in my industry for as low as $2.50 per hour for some WordPress tasks, while an agency would start at a minimum of $8 per hour and go way up from there.

Of course, you can also try finding a freelancer, which is also a form of outsourcing, on one of the following sites:

AwesomeWeb.com

Freelancer.com

odesk.com

5. Seek

One you’ve posted your job and are waiting for replies, you should go and start proactively looking for candidates. Keep your criteria from step 3 in mind and use the same sites above to search through postings.

You should have a prepared letter to send to anyone whose post interests you. You can base this letter almost entirely off the previous steps and the job posting, except that here you can give a little more information on you or your company, as well as your contact information, and ask for some good times to set up a Skype chat for an interview. Always suggest 2 – 3 times that work for you – an eager and dedicated applicant will usually make one of those times work, and you avoid the back and forth of scheduling. See more on step 7 about tools for scheduling and conducting interviews.

6. Sift and Sort

Now that you’ve posted a job and sent out some outgoing requests, you’ll start to get a number of applications to sift through. Depending on how many you get, narrow it down to the top 5 – 7 applicants based on your profile, and decide to schedule an interview with those applicants.

Here are some things I typically see in an application:

• Resume with some past employment and education
• Links to previous projects (since I’m in the web design business)
• Their answers to my job post requests, either in a list or in a paragraph “cover letter” format.
• Take the application itself as an evaluation tool. Take a look at how complete it is and the language used – depending on your requirements, this can matter a lot in and of itself.

Then of course evaluate the technical details of the application. Pick your favorite 5 – 7 applications and move onto the next sorting step: The Interview.

7. The Interview

The next step is to interview your qualified applicants.

This is the part where a lot of people screw up when they get started. I know I did. I was so excited when I first started getting applicants that I started to hire the wrong people. My biggest problem? I didn’t interview properly.

So how do you interview properly?

Here are a few tips:

• Make interview questions in advance based on your Ideal Candidate Profile
• Ask specific questions. For example, I ask: “How skilled are you in php on a scale of 1 – 10?”
• If hiring for something that requires a portfolio, ask for your applicant’s role on each project. Just because they post a website link in their portfolio, doesn’t mean they built the entire site. The might have just made a few graphics, or coded an optin form. Ask for specifics so you get a better idea of skillset.
• Ask them a little about their previous work experience, what they struggled with, and where they performed well.
• If possible, test their knowledge on the spot. Have a few technical questions prepared for them to answer once they tell you their skill level in that area.
• Whenever possible, perform an audio interview after an initial Skype IM chat. If the applicant does not have a microphone, this might already be a significant enough issue to merit dismissing the application. It’s pretty important for you to be able to connect on a call occasionally for Skype screen sharing, and generally explaining some concepts and tasks. It’s also important to get a voice interview in to better judge communication skills and character.
• Be specific, but not intimidating. You want to build a good relationship in the beginning. Filipinos especially can be easily intimidated with aggressive language, so choose your words more carefully than if you were speaking to someone in your own culture (their sense of humor is generally great though!)
• Even if you like the candidate a lot, don’t hire them immediately after the interview. Tell them you like what you’ve seen so far and you’ll get back to them very soon. You should have 2 – 4 applicants that you like from the interview to move to the next step.
• However, if you know right away from an interview that you won’t hire them, tell them so: “Sorry, right now you don’t match our needs. I appreciate your time and wish you luck.” If you think you might need them in the future, add “but feel free to stay in touch as your skills develop.”

8. Try Them Out

Now that you have 2 – 4 qualified applicants, test them out! Make a sample task based on your outlines in step 2 and give your applicant the instructions.

Notice how well the applicant does the job, how long it takes, how many questions they ask, how comfortable they seem with the work, etc. Keep in mind this is their first time working with you, but be critical enough to ensure you get the right person.

You should feel confident that based on the application, the interview, and this sample task, that this applicant is a good fit for the job. If the first few steps turned out well, but the sample task was a disaster, you either have to give better instructions or your applicant is under-qualified and ultimately over-sold you on the application and interview.

If you have a few great prospects, use the last and often best tool at this stage: your intuition. At this stage, don’t hesitate too long, make a decision, hire the right person, and get them trained and working!

Once you hire someone, make sure to pay the other applicants at their agreed hourly rate and thank them for their time, and tell them to stay in touch if you like them. If they got this far, there’s a good chance you might hire them in the future or refer them to someone else looking for a good employee in the same field.

9. Train & Organize

Once you’ve hired your new outsourced employee, make the best use of your time and theirs by providing proper training and organization.

A few training and organization tips:

• Use Google Docs Spreadsheet for login information. Change your passwords to something you feel comfortable sharing, and different from your most important secure accounts (personal email, bank, Facebook, etc unless you are outsourcing something relating to these). In the spreadsheet, include columns for: Account, Login URL, Username, Password, Notes.
• Set up standard communication systems and stick with them. If you have a project management system such as Basecamp, put your tasks and projects in there and assign them, and avoid extra emailing. Use Skype for instant messaging and voice talks, but try not to rely on it for scheduling tasks throughout the week.
• If you do decide to use primarily email for communication with your new employee (again, not recommended, especially once you hire more than one), make sure your emails are well structured with all the instructions and some what-if scenarios to reduce back and forth and information bottlenecks.
• Use Jing (free tool) to communicate visual tasks. You can take a screenshot, draw and write directly on the screenshot, and upload directly to a link that gets copied to your dashboard – all within seconds. You can also record 5 minute videos for instant upload. This communication tool alone can change your life.
• If you assign a long term task, as for progress reports, ideally at the end of each day. This will allow you to correct course if necessary and better estimate future project timelines and investment required.
• Use a system for your new employee to track hours. Google Docs Spreadsheets can be a good start, but many project management systems and accounting systems will have a feature for this. I currently use my accounting software, QuickBooks, to track all my team’s hours and it works perfectly.
• Write a welcome email for your new employees, outlining the communication details above, a little bio about yourself and/or your company, and an overview of your expectations and procedures.

(You can give clear visual instructions within literally seconds, and upload and send them instantly)

Make sure you go back to step 2 and outline your desired tasks and projects well each time you put your employee on a new project.

You can even buy information products and have your employees learn and implement them, but that topic would merit an entire separate post

10. Let Go!

Finally, the last step is to let go a little. Don’t micromanage. The step above helps you to create systems for your employee, and eventually for your team, to be productive with or without you. Sure, you have to check in, assign new stuff, make sure all is going well, etc… but remember, the idea here is that you are getting more done with less of your own time (and if done properly, with less of your own money), so that you can enjoy life more and earn more money doing what you do best.

Work hard but… Relax.

The first time you go through this process, it can seem a little overwhelming. You might be tempted to quit it and just continue to do-it-yourself. Remember: successful entrepreneurs all use leverage; the sooner you learn it, the better.

Once you get over the hump and master this process, you will earn more, work less, and be able to contribute more to the world with your own unique abilities. It can also be a lot of fun!

Feel free to share your own outsourcing experience in the comments below.

If you have any questions about outsourcing, please ask them below! I’ll do my best to answer each one, and may even write another post on the most frequently asked questions about outsourcing.

Read more: ‘10 Lessons From 10 Years Of Hiring Freelancers’

The post 10 Steps To Successfully Outsourcing Your Online Business appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

 1. How To Optimize Your WordPress Website For Mobile

You’re probably missing out on quite a few readers, and you’ll miss out on more if you don’t go mobile with your blog. In January 2012, nearly 9% of all global pageviews were from a mobile device. This number is expected to keep growing, to the point where in 2015 the pageviews from mobile devices will outgrow the pageviews from laptops and personal computers. Upgrade your site to have a mobile version!

The easiest way to do this is through the free plugin WP Touch. Once installed, you edit some settings, create a few icons or use stock icons, reformat some pages if necessary, and you have a beautiful mobile site that looks and functions like an app! Now if someone opens your blog (let’s say from an email, or from a Facebook link) on their phone, they’ll actually be able to consume your content easily, as well as comment on it and share it, rather than zooming in and out in frustration trying to navigate your site.

If you want to take things to the next level, upgrade to the premium version WP Touch Pro, which has some additional options to customize even further.

A lot of newer themes are also mobile friendly (responsive), meaning they already have a mobile version built in, so you don’t have to worry about it. So if you’re thinking about changing themes, keep this in mind while doing your research.

Upgrade your site to mobile and be better prepared for the future.

2. Speed Up Your WordPress Website

Viper Video QuickTags

If you have ever embedded a video, you know that you need to use HTML code to make it happen. Make your life easier and save time by utilizing the Viper’s Video Quicktags plugin.

After installing the plugin and adjusting a few settings, you will have the ability to copy and paste the video link and embed videos with the click of a button. The plugin is super simple to use and gives you the option to embed more than one video at once!

Check out the activation details below:

1. Viper’s Video Quicktags will show up on your Dashboard Menu under “settings”
2. Uncheck everything under “Show Editor Button” except for YouTube
4. This will create a button when you add a page/post
5. Click on the new button above the WYSIWG visual page editor
6. Paste the direct URL to your video and edit the size by opening the accordion below
7. Click okay and this will populate a shortcode into the post box
8. Click on update and check out your super slick videos once you refresh the page!

Mission accomplished in a quarter of the time and you didn’t even have time to think about it before the video was embedded and sized.

Faster Image Insert

Embedding images into a page requires a couple of steps. You need to click on the media button and this opens a light box. Once you upload the image, you can edit the size and insert into the page or post.

The process is slow because a lightbox has to load in between every image that is added. It’s easy to imagine why waiting for a lightbox to open in between inserting each image can get pretty annoying, and not to mention time-consuming. This is where Faster Image Insert comes in.

Faster Image Insert allows you to upload images much faster because it adds a meta box (no more lightbox) right below the WYSIWYG visual editor. You can insert multiple galleries or images at once, including NextGen Galleries, which is pretty awesome. You can also change title/captions on a mass scale with a single click.

It appears right below your post, whether in visual or HTML:

3. WordPress Plugins To Improve Search Engine Rankings

All In One SEO Pack

This plugin is a must have for anyone interested in getting search engine traffic. It is great for both the beginner and the advanced user. The plugin is intuitive and includes features like automatic optimization of your titles for search engines and meta tags. This is a plug and play plugin, which means that it is effective as soon as it is activated.

Advanced users are able to fine tune just about any setting, such as the ability to override any title and set any meta description and meta keywords you want. This is going to increase your SEO presence drastically, which will definitely help you increase your sites traffic.

Google XML Sitemaps

In order for your site’s pages and posts to be found in Google’s search engines, they need to be indexed/stored in Google’s massive database of websites and other web content.

There are many ways to get indexed faster by Google such as Tweeting your new page or post but using this plugin makes the process simpler.

Each time you create a new post or page, the plugin will update your site’s XML sitemap (which the search engines use to index your site) and automatically let the search engines know about the update. The benefit here is obvious. Get the plugin asap and start sending your message to a larger audience.

SEO Pressor

SEO Pressor takes the SEO within your blog posts to a new level. It allows you to write for a specific keyword, and measures your post white you write for how effectively you are writing for that keyword. It even gives you an overall score along the way. Here’s a screenshot of what it does:

4. How To Uncrash Your Site! (for plugin issues)

Steps to Uncrashing Your Site

This is one of the easiest problems to fix, yet I still notice a ton of forums being bombarded with questions like “I Installed a plugin and my site crashed!! I need a developer ASAP!”

Take a deep breath, regain your composure and listen to me. Even though the issue may appear to be fatal, it is actually one of the simplest issues to fix.

Here are the 5 easy steps to uncrash your site:

1. Login to your FTP Client
2. Find the Plugin Folder in your Directory
3. Sort Plugins by “Last Modified”
4. Select the Plugin in Question
5. Delete the Plugin
Once Plugin is deleted, it will no longer show up or crash your site. You can thank me after you calm down!

5. Plugins to Make Affiliate Marketing Easier

Pretty Link

Say you have an affiliate link: www.domain.com/longconfusingmess

Let’s also say you have a domain called: www.incomediary.com

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could customize the link and still get credit for the referral? Wouldn’t it also be valuable if you could track both the total number of clicks as well as the total number of unique clicks to monitor performance – regardless of if the link is in your email, WordPress site, or anywhere else?

Pretty Link allows you to do both. The process is super simple and it creates a ton of value. Here is an example:

Before Pretty Link: www.hostgator.com/longconfusinglink
After Pretty Link: IncomeDiary.com/hostgator

In addition, it tracks both total and unique clicks and displays the respective numbers in the plugins options. Pretty damn awesome.

It also makes it easy for you to remember all your affiliate links in case you ever need them on the fly while chatting with someone. This alone has easily hundreds of extra dollars in my pocket .

Amazon Associate Filter Plugin

Amazon is one of the largest and most well known internet companies in the world. It would only make sense that the Amazon Associate Program is one of the best affiliate programs, aS they offer a massive number of product categories, which is great for Niche sites that are unable to find relatable affiliate programs.

Amazon makes it very simple to integrate the program with your current site. If you don’t have an account, I highly suggest that you head over to the site and sign up.

The Amazon Associate Filter is a great time saving plugin for Amazon affiliates. It automatically will change any links to the amazon website to your affiliate link without revealing it to the reader. Say goodbye to being slowed down by finding and pasting your affiliate link into your page or post. Amazon Associate Filter is a must have plugin for any Amazon Affiliates!

6. WordPress Contact Form Plugins

When you first logged into WordPress you may or may not have notice that there is no page or theme option to add a contact form to your site. Contact forms allow visitors to contact you with questions, complaints, suggestions, etc.

Here’s some good news: You have options! I introduce you to three here, but use Google to find more information. You may even discover a brand new plugin that makes Gravity Forms look like childs play. Don’t spend too much time, but definitely check out a link or two.

Contact Form 7 (Flexible)

If you value simplicity and flexibility, Contact Form 7 is a great option. It allows you to design the form, email, and even lets you manage multiple contact forms. In addition, it supports many features including AJAX submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering, file uploading, and more.

Contact Me

In addition to providing you with a neat and flexible contact form, this plugin allows you to have a floating contact me/us floating button on the side of your site on every page, like this:

It’s a nice call to action, especially if you provide any services or are looking for leads to get in touch with you. While the plugin itself is free, to remove the Contact Me branding and get more options, you do have to upgrade to the premium version.

Gravity Forms (Premium)

If you prefer a premium contact form that includes an intuitive user interface and the works in terms of options, then Gravity Forms is the best option for you. While the plugin costs a little bit of money, the time it saves you and the improvement in quality is well worth it, especially if you are building multiple forms.

7. Make Your Site Neater and brand more visible!

Favicon! – plugin and creation tool

A Favicon is the little image that shows up on your browser’s tabs when browsing your site and can really help brand your site. It may be a small image, but has potential to be a significant part of your branding effectiveness.

An awesome site for Favicons is: www.favicon.cc. You can even draw a custom Favicon but I don’t recommend this because it has proven to be less effective – unless you’re great with design. You can also upload an image and turn it into a Favicon, or find tons of free favicons that might match your brand.

Plugin: All in One Favicon

All in One Favicon uses the favicon you created and displays it on the browser tab for the public. You can create both front end (what the viewer see’s) and back end (what you see in your dashboard). If you don’t have a favicon, you are missing out on an opportunity to brand your site.

Logo – cooltext.com

While creating a custom logo in Photoshop or Illustrator is great – a lot of new bloggers don’t have the skills, time, or money to do so. You can actually create a unique text based logo in minute using this cool tool. It’s a lot better than having a plain text header on the top of your site!

Enter: CoolText.com to save the day (or at least a few minutes). They offer a ton of customization options which makes the experience much more personal.

You can choose from a boatload of fonts, effects, colors, sizes and file types. I promise that you can create very professional logos as long as you make sure to explore ALL of the options first. The best part is – it’s all free!

8. WordPress Plugins For Increasing Website Speed

Get A Caching plugin

I’m sure you have been on a blog or even corporate site that feels as if it is taking forever to load. Why would you want someone to have the same, annoying experience? A slow site can have devastating effects on site traffic, but thankfully there is a plugin to make it easy to speed your site up.

There is a solid selection of Caching Plugins on the web. The most popular ones are W3 TOTAL CACHE and WP SUPER CACHE, but don’t let this stop you from researching and trying out other programs.

A caching plugin is valuable because it saves your page the first time that a visitor visits it.It then will used this saved information to automatically load the page based on the information. It will also automatically re-cache your site if any content changes!

One less thing to worry about.

Some tips: One of the simplest ways to speed up a slow site is to be sure to deactivate all of the plugins that you are not currently using on your site. We recommend a lot of plugins here and I know this may appear to contradictory, but it’s important not to go overboard! Deactivate unimportant plugins, especially those that work on the outside of your site vs. the admin panel, and you will see the difference in speed.

Decrease Image Sizes before Uploading – Some people just upload images and then resize them using the WordPress (HTML) image editor. Try to avoid this when you can. Go into Photoshop, Save For Web and Devices, and resize the images to your desired dimensions. That way you get smaller file sizes, which load faster, and speed up your site, sometimes very significantly.

9. Get Social!

You work hard putting great content on your blog. Make sure it’s easy for people to share and discuss so you get more traffic, credibility, and user engagement.

Sharing

I recommend using the Digg Digg plugin. It’s the quickest, simplest, and neatest way to get all your social media sharing buttons on your posts.

If you want to look cool, use the floating option (like you see to your left). There are a ton of sharing options, and which ones you use depends on the nature of your content.

I recommend including at least: Facebook Like, Facebook Share, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. The rest is up to you.

Comments

I STRONGLY recommend Facebook comments. They will get you more comments (people are so familiar with Facebook comments already, it’s more natural for them to Like and

Comment via Facebook than through the WordPress commenting system), they will reduce your spam comments, and they will ultimately get you a lot more social links back to your site, so more traffic! Make sure you make the settings such that it automatically posts the comment on Facebook unless the commenter disables it.

The other social commenting option is Disqus. It’s also a free plugin which allows people to comment through social profiles, but since people are usually logged into Facebook when surfing the web.

Facebook comments will likely get you more traction than Disqus.

10. Improve Branding On Your WordPress Website

Make sure you brand yourself in your posts and your comments on others blogs!

Start by completing the profile in Users > My Profile with your complete bio, and include this bio on the bottom of your posts (this is usually just a theme option). Your bio helps people connect with you and makes them want to learn more about you. They’re not just reading your content – they’re reading you!

Next – and this is very important – head over to Gravatar.com and create your Gravatar. This is like your profile image on the Internet. You should add all the email addresses you use in WordPress sites, whether on your own site or any you might guest blog on. Add a cool image of you that people will remember (for example, see my Parrot picture in Aruba below!).

If you made a WordPress.com account at some point, you might already have a Gravatar and not know it. Try logging into Gravatar.com with your WordPress.com details before making yourself a new account, to make sure you can get the username you want and your primary email address.

Save Your Self Some Time, Energy, and Money

Do you think some of the tools and tricks in this post will save you some time and create more money for you with your blog? When applied, of course they will.

This is just a small list. You can literally become a total WordPress master – and save yourself a LOT of time, energy, and money by taking this course: Make WordPress Easy. It’s not only the best course on WordPress – it’s also extremely entertaining to watch. Enjoy it!

I hope this list helped you out a lot. If you have any questions about any of these, or have any additional tips, please comment below!

The post 10 WordPress Tools Guaranteed To Boost Your Results and Productivity appeared first on How To Make Money Online.