Have you ever ended a week with more time than things to do? Not me! How I wish I was that capable. And the more successful I am, the less time I have to do all the extra tasks! So, what do we do? Of course, hire a virtual assistant.

There are many ways to do so, one being through elance, which we talked about last month, by searching for VA’s through Google or by personal referrals from those who have had success. There are many different types of VA’s and you’ll want to be very specific on the type of tasks that you want them to do. The more detail you put into the description of the tasks, the easier it will be for you to ensure you get what you want to accomplish.

The major benefit is that a VA is much less expensive that a local assistant. They can accomplish tasks while you are sleeping, traveling or off doing what you get paid the big bucks for. 

The type of tasks they will do is anything and everything any assistant can accomplish, but from outside your office. They can be trained to weed through your emails, answer them, answer various correspondence, update your website, create effective SEO and SEM techniques as well as billing and typical billing processes. 

If you can write it out as a specific task, they will be able to accomplish it for you. The most important component in working with a VA is great communications and specific details. 

Then put your new found free time to good use and start speaking and promoting your book.

Everyone knows that your database is worth gold! The infamous “they” say when you have 10,000 people in your database; you’ll end up with 10% buying a product from you every month. So, if the product is $10, you earn $10,000 a month from the 1,000 people in your database.

Your web host has a database structure you can use to generate a database. Most people use constantcontact.com but I started out using a service called icontact.com. Now I’m in the process of moving the capture details to my sites so I’m not a subjected to the whims of another service.

I’ve found the easiest way to set this up is to hire someone! I know, you never thought you’d find me making that statement. But, knowing how to do everything and knowing when it’s better to have someone else do it for you are two different things.

You now know the importance of having a capture page on your home site. But why would people want to leave you with their name and email address? For one thing, you can create great products and offer them free when new people come to your website. The products should be related to your site and have a defined value. 

You can audio record an mp3 using a free download audacity.com with a good headset and microphone. It is fairly easy to learn how to overlay 15 seconds of music as an intro and exit music to your product. This is also a great method of creating back of the room sales materials and give-away products for your speaking engagements.