Obviously, when it comes to setting up an online business or even an internet marketing strategy for your business, you and/or your business team that you work with currently don’t know everything and certainly you don’t want to know everything. So if you want to implement part or all of what we have been discussing in this report, then a great place to get fast results and with minimal time from you, is to outsource.

“Yes, but Tim this will cost me money” I hear you say. Yes, it will cost you money, but let me give you a reason why it is sometimes better to invest money in outsourcing, rather than save money doing it yourself. Firstly, you can’t know everything, so learning how to do all this and implement yourself will take time.

Secondly, you should put a price on your time. Let me explain. If your hourly pay rate is say $40.00 an hour. If you take 10 hours to learn how to setup an email database and link this to auto responders, even if you do this in your “spare time”, this effectively costs you $400.00. What if you could get someone who had the skills to be able to do this for you? They have the knowledge and skills already, so they get it done is 3 hours.

Assuming you paid them exactly what you would pay yourself; you would pay them $120.00 – effectively saving yourself $280.00 of income producing time for yourself. But, generally, you won’t have to pay this rate – it will generally be more like $15-$25 / hour, depending on the work you want done. But that means it is only costing you $45.00.

So outsourcing lets you work smarter, not harder.  Greater leverage for your time and producing greater results with less and less effort.  Sounds like a good deal to me. 

Here are some things you can outsource:
• Website design and development
• Blog site setup and maintenance
• Submitting articles to article directories
• Online research
• Data entry
• Database and customer management
• Customer Service
• Managing Web 2.0, including submitting videos and managing social network profiles.

Now, if you are ready to start outsourcing and don’t really need any support in getting components of your business and website outsourced, then here are some great places to find people and companies to outsource to:

Website design and development, software development
• www.elance.com
• www.rentacoder.com

Virtual Assistants
• www.odesk.com
• www.b2kcorp.com
• www.getfriday.com
• www.taskseveryday.com (Bill in Australian Dollars and provide GST Invoice, if you are an Australian based business)

Logo design:
• www.99designs.com

Now, I have also come across a really powerful outsourcing unit that can really help if you are running online businesses or want to be running an even more successful online business.  How would you like to learn the outsourcing secrets of the business elite and put these to use in your business? 

By putting into place a few fundamental systems, you could increase your output while cutting your work hours in your business.  This website to check out is Outsource Method.  If you are serious about working smarter and not harder by outsourcing – check out Outsource Method right now at www.internetmarketingfromscratch.com/outsource

Having sound or a video on your website can increase your conversion rates dramatically.  Whether it is sales or even optins from your web page, having a small audio player on your site can really increase your visitors engagement with the site.

Although video is a great way to get interaction with your visitors to your site, sometimes video may not be the best option for you.  Possibly you don’t know how to create the video, or you just don’t have a camera or screen capture software to record your video.  This is where having an audio option on your site is really good, because it can be easy to capture the sound and just as easy to put the audio file on your website or blog.

Here are a few applications for audio that you may not have thought of on your site or blog:

• Use it as an introduction to the website.  So put a picture of yourself on the site and just below the picture, but an audio player with a personal message from you.  This could be great on sales pages, blogs or even product landing pages
• You can use them to play actual recorded testimonials.  This can be far more powerful than written testimonials, because it is more authentic than a written testimonial that anyone could have posted.
• Provide your visitor with instructions on what to do next.  You could have this on your optin confirmation page for example, where you ask the visitor to check their email and add your email address to their white list
• Use it as part of an upsell page when a visitor is placing an order.  A great way to increase conversions and also potentially result in more sales.

But you are wondering, this is all well and good, but what if I don’t know anything about audio files, creating an audio file or even how to get it onto your website or blog.  Well, here is a simple 3 step process that can make it really easy for you.

3 easy to follow steps for getting audio on to your website:

Step 1: Record your audio.  This is something you can do easily if you are just recording your own voice using free software called Audacity.  You can download this software to your computer and then simply open the software.   Plug a mic into your computer (you can buy headphone mics in most good electrical stores), if there is not one already installed on your computer or laptop.

Open the software and when you are ready to record, simply click the big red button at the top of the screen.  This will record your audio.  To make sure you get the best results from what you want to record and so that you don’t have to continually record the same audio over and over again to get it perfect, I would suggest writing a script of what you want to say and then use a Teleprompter software to read your script off.  It may sound a little unnatural, but at least you won’t waste hours trying to get it right.

When you are done recording, simply click on the “File -> export as MP3″  You can also use WAV if you are going to provide the audio file as an audio product for download, but for the purposes of this setup, it is recommended to select MP3.  Save the file somewhere on your computer that you will remember.

Step 2: Upload your audio Now you have your audio file, you need to get it onto your website right?  I use a system that makes this really easy to do.  It is a called Xiosoft instant audio.  There are others that will do the same job, but I have found this to be a great service to get audio onto a website in the shortest amount of time.  You can get a trial of the software by going to Xiosoft Instant Audio. Simply upload your audio file that you just created.  This is easy to do under the upload and encode section of the system.

Step 3: Get the website code for the audio Once your audio file is uploaded, you will now be able to create the HTML or website code that will provide you with a neat audio player for your website.  These images demonstrate how you select the audio player look and colour and then what the HTML code is that results from this.

You then simply take this HTML code and paste it in the appropriate location of your blog or website.  Or provide this to your website designer to implement for you.

Really simple and straight forward – 1 hours work and you have an audio player on your website.

Examples:

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Welcome message example:

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Audio Testimonial:

You can use audio on your site to give your visitors easy to listen to audio testimonials about your product or service.

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I use a system called Xiosoft Instant Audio.  Here are a few reasons why I use it and therefore recommend it:

• Super easy to upload and get audio published to your website – which means your audio can be up in minutes
• Ability for your customers to dial a phone number and leave you a voice recorded testimonial that you can publish to your website in a matter or minutes
• Creates various audio player buttons in various different colours suitable to your needs
• Easy to create audio postcards that you can use in email marketing campaigns

Check out this awesome audio software for easily getting audio onto your website, blog or Wordpress site in a few easy clicks.
Xiosoft Instant Audio

Please leave your comments about this below.

Have a question you would like me to address on this blog, click the “Ask Tim” link on the right hand side.

Thirty Day Challenge Review (Early Days, but It is Awesome!)

I have been following the progress of the 30-Day Challenge with Ed Dale and the team from Market Samaurai. Even after just 4-Days, I can see that the quality of the video training and the information they are providing is really helpful to anyone looking to follow the basic steps to setting up online businesses.  So far, this is looking like an awesome program!

Having used Market Samaurai now for some time and seen the power of what this program can do in identifying niches and micro-niches, and finding out the commercial viablity of going into that niche, I think the video training they are providing could really help anyone just starting out on the internet.

Keep up the good work guys – great to see!

If you are interested – check it out here : Thirty Day Challenge (no affiliate link here, just think it is a great program : )

Tim

Hey There – how is your week going. Maybe you are facing some challenges and you are not really sure whether what you are doing is going to get results.  Possibly you feel like quitting!

Whether in business, personal endeavours, when the option to quit looks like a good one, think about this blog post.  I found this on Wayne Mansfield’s blog and thought I would share it.  There is also a video that I like to watch from one of my favourite books and movies.

For now, focus on gratitude and what you have, rather what you don’t have.

Move forward postively and don’t quit!

Also, I will be moving this blog to be more about personal experiences and setting up my Internet Markteting From Scratch.com Brand site to be focused on online training.

Check it out, but make sure you catch every moment from my blog, by joining my email database and claim your bonuses.