Last night I caught part of John Jonas’ live presentation to a packed room at The Webinar Summit. He was giving his usual presentation on outsourcing to the Philippines for $2.50 per hour by hiring full time employees.

I did not catch the entire presentation and I will be going through the replay videos to soak up all of the advice given by John Jonas and many other speakers. That said I wanted to bring up an important point.

At all Internet Marketing conferences, speakers usually pitch their stuff. John pitched ReplaceMyself.com, naturally.

Nobody was pitching products for less than $997. Not a single person. So John came up with a creative way to get his price point up that high. Normally, customers can purchase a membership to Replace Myself for $97 per month, or get permanent access (the “pro outsourcer” upgrade) for $797.

So how can he sell the same thing at $997? Well, he added in a pretty good extra bonus that is technically worth $800. The bonus was a pre-screened and pre-tested employee. You see, because John Jonas owns OnlineJobs.ph he also setup a business by which he tests candidates and places them in a separate pool. Those candidates are more likely to be successful to you in your business, and he guarantees they work out for you or he will replace them free of charge. A tested employee costs $800 (a finder’s fee) plus usual ongoing salary. So John was throwing in a tested employee and adding $200 to the sticker price of the package. That means you’re actually getting a 75% discount on the pre-tested employee.

If you just want to do the hiring on your own, you can still buy his package at the usual $97 per month, or currently $797 if you take the “pro outsourcer” upgrade. BTW, that upgrade is pitched to you AFTER you confirm your payment for the first month. So don’t worry. You pay $97 and then you purchase the upgrade. Then you never ever make another payment in your life. That’s what I did, and I’m very happy to have done it. I don’t like ongoing fees.

Useful Links

Visit Replace Myself.

For people already ready to buy, and want my huge and helpful bonus, visit the checkout page.

To hear John Jonas on his next webinar (these are GOOD), register for his webinar.

This is just a quick post on paying your online workers in the Philippines. Now that pretty much everyone in that country has access to PayPal, it’s clear to me that PayPal is fastest and easiest.

However … I would not recommend paying in US dollars.

Here’s why: When I started using Replace Myself and hiring people through OnlineJobs.ph, I would do as John suggested and arrange a US dollar salary. The conversion at the time was about 46 pesos to 1 US dollar. But yesterday, on August 1st, I went to send payment for July’s work to my team. The conversion rate is now about 40:1 instead of 46:1

I hadn’t noticed this because we shifted to Pesos a while back, and I’m glad we did. It’s costing me a bit more money because of the currency move, but imagine if I was still paying the same $US salary? They would be getting penalized for something they can’t control.

Let’s do some math on this: Say you paid $300/ month to an employee. That would work out to 13,800 pesos back at the old 46:1 conversion. But now that the US dollar has been weak, this same employee would only be getting 12,000 pesos. That’s eighteen hundred LESS per month.

You might want to have a conversation with your guys about this to see what they prefer, but I am going to guess that most of them want stability. They get this when you take the foreign exchange risk yourself. And if the dollar recovers, then you can inch in some raises for them while not even spending more money. Then they’ll be doubly happy.

Hey everyone,

I woke up early while my kids are still sleeping because last night John Jonas sent out an email with a case study that I wanted to watch.

I always learn good stuff from these case studies, so I prefer to watch / listen when I won’t be interrupted.

Go watch this awesome case study on John’s blog with a guy named Eric.

Eric talks about his particular business (local SEO work for local companies), and how he hired his first few employees, what worked out and what did not. Hint – his first hire did NOT work out and he explains exactly why. I’ve seen this happen before. Eric also has a great mindset about what work he wants to do himself (almost none) versus what he wants to leverage his team to do (almost everything).

Go watch Eric and John talk. You’ll learn something.

Today I signed up as a paid member of ActuallyRank.com so I figured I’d start by writing an ActuallyRank review.

I’m not YET an affiliate. I expect to become one if I am happy with the system. I signed up for the basic package charging $69 per month.

Here’s how Actually Rank it is supposed to work. You sign up and you get access (via login) to 2000 places per month where you can leave a blog comment with a link to your money site.

The blog comment is supposed to be dofollow, rather than nofollow, although I’m not going to be upset if 10-20 percent are actually nofollow. Anything more than this and I’ll feel a bit misled.

The rules are simple. You go to the posts that you are given (up to 2000 at my level of subscription) and you leave a comment that is OF VALUE. You do NOT spam these sites. You leave a useful comment and then drop anchor text links after your comment. Being respectful keeps it all good.

Chris Rempel, the guy running this site, says that members will only share their links with at most 14 other users. So say the users in my shared pool only leave 200 links per month, then I’ll be sharing with only 1.4 users per blog post on average. That’s totally reasonable.

The system has just launched, and I haven’t had a chance to even log in yet, so I’ll update my review here when I know more.

My plan for this service is to use it myself, but also to give my login to one of my guys in the Philippines. Then he doesn’t need to write me emails telling me where we need more links. He can just look at our Google results (analytics, etc) and go build links himself where he deems them necessary. That’s the best way to do things for me because it is more or less hands off.

Anyway, I applaud Chris Rempel for putting together what looks to be a pretty awesome backlinking system. I have no idea what algorithm they used to find and then filter all of the high PR links they are giving us each month, but if it delivers on the promise it would be a bargain at 10x the price.

UPDATE 1: I was able to log in and check out how the system works. Overall I like the layout. I don’t really see the need to support projects within his website though. I think people should manage their linking projects within their own spreadsheets rather than on this membership site. So I’m not using that feature.

As many people are noticing from day one, the initial link package that we’ve gotten is not high quality. Most of the links are nofollow. Chris Rempel is MORE THAN AWARE of this problem and has acknowledged an algorithm problem that is to be resolved in a couple of days (we’ll get a new link package at that time). I’ll reserve judgment until after this happens.

We all know that the Gurus do a pretty good job of giving away good quality content. I’ve started having my Filipino workers go through this training and send me their notes. This way they are the ones learning it so they can implement it, and I’m not spending my time watching & explaining concepts to them. After all they will often be the ones doing the work. And by having them send me their notes, I get to see the quality of the information (helps me decide if maybe I’ll go back and watch it myself) … and I also get to see if my Filipino worker truly understood the video (based on the quality of his notes).

I recently assigned one guy the job of watching Jeff Johnson’s pre-launch sequence where he explains how to do Youtube marketing more effectively. This is pretty timely since we’ve started taking all of our articles and converting them to video and uploading to YouTube. The Youtube “Bounceback” strategy that my guy sent me notes on makes lots of sense and I’m having him implement this.

FYI, here’s how we take articles and turn them into videos. This happens to be for a website where the content is really important to me so I tend to write most of it myself. What I do is take the articles and read them into my microphone. If they are long articles I will break them into 2 or 3 sections and make up to 3 recordings.

I save the audio as MP3 and upload to our project management software. My guy in the Philippines then takes the MP3 and throws it into Windows Movie Maker (free) and ads a title slide with a nice background. The background actually moves, so the viewer can tell that it is actually playing properly, not stalled. This features is built into Windows Movie Maker.

So he takes my MP3, ads a title, and saves as an MP4 and then uploads to YouTube. He crafts a description of the video based on our chosen keyword + snippets of the published article.

From my perspective it takes less than 10 minutes to turn an article into a video. All I’m doing is speaking, saving and uploading. He does the rest.

Now, thanks to having him use Jeff’s free training, he has a better knowledge base on which to achieve better results for my business.

As a final little piece of advice, I’ve found that I used to get WORSE results out of my outsourcers when I tried to give them every possible piece of help needed to do a job. I was simply training them to rely on me for help and answers. Not any more. Now I give them just the basic description of what I want done and I tell them to do their best to figure it out and ask me for help only if needed. Instantly better results. DO THIS. It really does work.

“How should I track the time spent on a project by my outsourcer?”

This is another often-asked question by people who are just getting started doing outsourcing. I know I asked the question myself in the beginning, but now I don’t ask it anymore.

Here’s why: If you turn the tables and imagine that you had a boss, how would you want your hours tracked? Would you want to punch a clock and feel like a robot, or would you want your boss to notice your results and care about these results rather than the punch clock?

Exactly. Thought so.

Full time employees vs freelancers hired for specific tasks:

If the employee is a full time person working for me such as somebody I hired at OnlineJobs.ph then I get daily reports of their results and I have a general “feel” for how long the work takes them to complete. If I think it’s below par I tell them. If I think it’s great volume I pay them a bonus and thank them. I have only ever had one situation where a person’s work output was too low for too long and I ended up letting her go.

If the person is a freelancer doing work for me such as graphics, usually I’ll agree to a per-project fee rather than an hourly rate. This sidesteps the problem that we’re discussing altogether. Good solution.

I do have one graphics guy that I work with almost every week (seems like every day these days) and I get him to bill me by the hour. I never question his hours because it seems like he works in fast forward. He will deliver me a nice little header for a website and tell me it took 15 minutes. He will format an entire ebook for me in Adobe Acrobat and it looks like a work of art yet he bills me a few hours.

If you are not getting a feeling of fairness in your outsourcing activities then you either need to change the way you bill, or find new workers.

I do not believe it is a good idea to ask them to install screenshot software that sends you by-the-minute reports on what they were doing. If they want to use Facebook for 2 hours I could care less – so long as they actually deliver quality results and MAKE ME MONEY.

So that brings us to the simplistic answer that I learned from John Jonas. Whenever someone asks him the question we discussed here, he will answer by saying “Does the employee make you money?” If yes, good. Keep them. If no, then you know what you need to do.

Tonight I was browsing the Warrior Forum and came across another oh-so-common thread where the original poster was asking how people make money from the Amazon.com affiliate program.

Here’s my post to explain what I’m doing. Full disclosure, my Amazon activities are by no means a full time income today, but they are decent and growing and because I see how good the potential is, I’ve been doing a lot more of it over the last couple of months.

What is Amazon’s Affiliate Program All About?

Let’s start with the basics – if you have a website where you promote Amazon products you’ll earn a commission ranging from 4% up to about 7% depending on how much stuff you sell every month. You only need to sell about 6 or 7 items to get to the 6% mark, which is incredibly easy. So you should think about it as a 6% commission. Check the terms of the program because some categories, like electronics, only pay 4% no matter what.

There are two main ways to promote Amazon products. You can either write reviews, your you can contextually market products. Let me explain.

Reviews are pretty obvious, and are probably what most readers here will be doing. You either have a website in a niche and you post product reviews, or you create a website with a focus on niche product reviews. This is very common and is exactly what I’m doing. You summarize the product information along with customer feedback and provide a link to where the reader can go buy the product. You get traffic from people who are researching these products, and if you do a good job writing the reviews, you get clicks through to Amazon. Conversion tends to be around 6-7% based on my experience.

Contextual marketing is different. Instead of reviewing a product, you may write a blog post or an email and you may mention a product in the context of a story you’re telling, or information you’re sharing. This strategy is best suited to experienced marketers with a following. Say you had a popular email list in the health and fitness market. Maybe you’re writing about how you started cooking with coconut oil because of its health benefits. When you create anchor text (just like I did there), linking to Amazon, without offering a “review”, that’s contextual marketing.

But most of you are probably interested in doing product reviews. So let’s talk about that for a bit longer. There are some rules you need to abide by when writing reviews.

Here they are:

1) Make sure you review products that will pay you. You need to consider search volume and price. Most people say don’t promote products under $100 because they don’t pay much commission. That’s true, but if you find a $10 product that gets 30x more search volume than a $100 product, you’ll still make 3x as much money. Factor in volume AND price when you consider writing a review.

2) Always do keyword research on the product name or niche keyword, and then make sure you do proper on-page SEO by incorporating keywords in your title, description, headlines, URL, and several times in your body text.

3) Pick products that your writer is interested in writing about! This is REALLY important. If you are the writer, then you need to be interested. If you are hiring a full time writer from OnlineJobs.ph then you should ask your writer what gets him or her excited. Perhaps you can find good niches that your writer is personally interested in. This will help you add value in your reviews. This leads us to …

4) Make sure your reviews HELP PEOPLE. If they are crap, nobody will click them. If you can’t write, do not write reviews. Hire someone who can. Even hiring an American writer for $0.02 through TextBroker.com will be better than doing it yourself if you are not a good writer.

5) I personally find that text links work best. I link to the actual product page on Amazon, and I link to customer reviews. Amazon makes it easy to get an affiliate link to these variations of pages.

Outsourcing Amazon Review Sites

These days I outsource all of the review writing and most of the niche research. I hire people through OnlineJobs.ph to write for me full time and in their first (probation) month I will assign them a complete website to build. Obviously it takes less than a month to build a site, but I’ll hold their hand through the process without doing any of the work for them. I’ll just show them how to do things. I get them to pick products, pick domain names, install WordPress, write reviews and write articles to promote the site.

Other than “English writing”, everything else is easy to teach, so I focus on hiring people with some writing talent.

I do not have a full time graphics person. I simply outsource some small jobs to a freelancer that I like. A website header for my Amazon sites will cost me $2 (yes, I’m serious).

I spend my time managing projects, doing some niche research, and proof-reading some of the reviews to make sure quality is in check. I send my guys lots of emails or training videos to suggest ways to do things better. I work “on” my business rather than “in” my business. This is the only way to grow, in my view.

Getting Started with Amazon Review Sites

I recommend two products that happen to be sold at Clickbank.com to get started. Both of these should be handed over to your outsourcing team so that THEY can implement these for you, so long as you known enough to guide them. Remember guys – Clickbank forces vendors to offer a 60 day guarantee so I wouldn’t recommend this stuff (using my affiliate link) if I thought it was crap. These are both systems I purchased with my own money.

The first is Dan Brock’s Super Deadbeat Affiliate Program. I previously wrote about it here, and if you use my affiliate link to buy it I’ll send you my notes on how to make the program even better.

The second is Gary Gregory’s MOBS system. He doesn’t advertise this as an “Amazon” system, but it is PERFECT for building sites that promote physical products and it is a very complete system. You really can’t go wrong if you follow Gary’s instructions. He even shows you his own demo site that acts as a perfect model to follow. You need nothing more. If you buy this using my affiliate link I’ll send you a report I’ve been working on (for my team) that explains how to make Gary’s strategy even MORE powerful. Email me at info (at) replace-myself-bonus (dot) com to claim the bonus.

The Most Important Part: You won’t make money sitting on your ass thinking. You won’t make money analyzing stuff. You will only make money by taking action and making LOTS of mistakes. Trust me on this. You NEED to make a ton of mistakes to become profitable and luckily these are low-cost mistakes. But the faster you start, the faster you’ll make money. Once you make money you’ll understand exactly why you’re making money and you’ll be self sufficient. It really is that simple.

Today what I’ve got for you is a simple suggestion for making sales pages in WordPress. It’s a pretty common topic, so I hope this is helpful to you. If you don’t ever create sales pages, or if you have a HTML / CSS guru on your team, you can ignore this.

This is for the rest of us

I use a theme called FlexSqueeze to make sales pages. It seems that so many people ask about how to make beautiful sales pages in WordPress, yet so few are aware of this theme. The guy that created it has supported it with awesome service, and the theme just keeps getting better.

I used FlexSqueeze to create this site, and two other sites, including my main product sold on Clickbank. I did this when I didn’t have any outsourcers. I didn’t know much about CSS, so FlexSqueeze solved my challenges. I didn’t have to learn any fancy code. I just did cust & paste on example code and wrote my own copy.

Here’s a demo page I slapped up by cutting and pasting the demo code. You can see exactly can be done, literally, in a few minutes.

Oh, and here’s the pre-sell page I made for Replace Myself, which is the home page of this domain. All I did was write copy. I did no graphics work at all.

It comes with all sorts of styled lists, testimonial boxes, guarantee certificates, feature boxes, big arrows, buy buttons, opt-in forms, etc. It’s very professional.

If you need to have one of your guys in the Philippines create nice looking sales pages, this theme gives you everything you need to do it. Maybe you write the copy, maybe you hire a copywriter and hand off the copy to your outsourcer – it doesn’t matter.

FlexSqueeze makes sales pages (and squeeze pages) dead easy.

The theme costs $127 last time I checked, which is about average for premium themes.

Here’s my affiliate link:
FlexSqueeze Theme

There’s no rush to go buy it or anything. I just wanted you to be be aware of its existence because at some point, if you haven’t already created your own product, you’ll want to. And given the popularity of WordPress, it only makes sense to use it for creating your sales pages.

Like I said earlier – FlexSqueeze is the theme that I use on this website. I chose it because I wanted to crank out a quick Replace Myself Review + Bonus offer and it did the job beautifully.

There are tons of videos over at the FlexSqueeze Theme website showing you exactly how all of this fancy stuff is done with very little effort.

Happy outsourcing,
Chris Thompson

Internet marketers buy a lot of domains. BUT I’m pretty new to the idea of buying domains from other people. In the past I’ve always just picked domain names based on availability of new names, and I’ve never considered buying pre-registered domains.

…Not until my guy in the Philippines suggested it.

I’m not talking premium domain names here either. I’m just talking about domains that some other Joe Marketer registered. I’m talking about making an offer and simply buying it privately.

We’re building a lot of niche sites right now and I have one main guy doing all my keyword research and domain research. Last week he came back to me with a top-3 list of potential names for a new site.

But in addition to the top 3 list, he did something I never asked him to do. I love it when guys go beyond what they were asked to do. How cool is that?

Here is what he wrote to me:

“If you look at ExactMatchKeyword.org it is an abandoned site. Maybe he [the owner] will sell it? It ranks very well in Google”.

He was right. The site had 2 or 3 pages of content, but a perfect exact match on our keyword with a popular .org domain. The site ranks #2 for the keyword. It’s a SUPER thin site that we can make a lot better.

I visited NetworkSolutions.com and did a “whois” search. The owner had not used private registration so I was able to email him and offer him $150 for the domain. He asked me for $200 and we settled on $175. It’s a bargain for me because I know I’ll be able to sell a lot of physical product via Amazon using this site – especially once my Filipino writers create real content for the site.

Anyway, that’s your quick tip for today. When you have your guys look for domain ideas, always tell them to look at the .net, com and org extensions of the exact match keyword. You’ll be surprised how often the domain has been registered, but is not really being used. You might as well throw out an offer to see if you can buy it rather than start from scratch with a lesser-known extension (such as .biz, .info, etc).

Best regards,
Chris Thompson

P.S. I highly recommend you use Market Samurai for keyword research because it speeds up the process about 5x compared to using Google’s free keyword tool. Time is money. Here’s where you can get a free trial of Market Samurai.

This is a guest post from Antony Hayes. I asked him to share some of his tips with respect to hiring English writers. He clearly prefers native English speakers based in the US, but his tips are very useful,and apply equally to hiring offshore writes. Thanks Antony! You’ll find a link to his content writing website at the end of his article

I have been asked by Chris Thompson to write a guest blog on the selection process when looking to hire writers for short or long term projects. This is something that I am quite experienced in since I run my own content production company and always strive to provide clients with the best articles on the internet. For this to happen, I need to know how to spot the best writers and this is something that I have managed to refine down to a few simple points.

My Opinion on Native English Writers

First of all, I would like to just point out that when I first started, I used to concentrate on hiring writers from India and the Philippines but eventually decided to only use native English writers from the U.S. The main reason for this is because the majority of my articles need to be written for an American audience. As a result, it works out better to hire individuals already familiar with the education and government system, as well as the political state, various mannerisms and sayings within the country.

Additionally, it is so much easier to be able to find great writers from English speaking countries due to the fact that it is their natural language after all. This isn’t to say that there are no good writers from non-native countries and many people do choose to use this option due to the favorable exchange rates which invariably leads to cheaper services. In either case, knowing how to spot the best writers is a skill that needs to be learned. Below is a closer look at my recruitment process in a step by step format

Setting up the Advert

Whether you use Freelancer.com, oDesk, Elance or any other freelancing market place; the first step in finding the top writers revolves primarily around the advert. Always remember to offer a rate as high as you can afford as writing is a skill and should be treated as such, especially if you want the better writers applying. When it comes to the advert, be clear on your specifications as well as your requirements. However, keep the advert short and simple as writers won´t want to read an essay.

The First Message Says it All

The first message or introductory message from a writer usually says it all. If the writer’s message is pre written and has been pasted over, I won´t even read it. Secondly, if the message itself is poorly written, that is a direct reflection on the writer´s integrity as a writer. A writer who is truly particular will take care of grammar and spelling at all times, and not just when writing articles. I frequent Freelancer.com which is a bidding site; so I will always request applicant’s to bid a set amount as this also ensures that they at least took the time to read my advert.

Requesting a Sample

I will always request that applicants send through a few samples of their best writing with an introductory message. This should give employers a brief idea on the applicant’s writing skill but it doesn’t say it all. 9 times out of 10, I will also request a sample to be written according to my own specifications which I will pay for (and accept their bid) if it is written correctly. I only do this to those few out of the tens of applicants that make it onto my shortlist. Keep in mind that many writers refuse to do this as there have been some scams, so it helps to build a reputation first as a trustworthy employer.

Understanding the Sample

When analyzing the sample, it is important to consider the flow of the article as well as any subtle habits that the writer may have. For example, many inexperienced writers can only write in first or second person which is problematic for clients who want authoritative articles. However, it is more than possible to write in a conversational, easy to read tone without using words such as “you”, “I” or “we”. When it comes to the flow of the article, it is vital that the article follows a logical progression otherwise the end reader will lose interest after the first paragraph.

Other points to look out for include the structure of the article (even paragraphs / sub headers – both of which I am a stickler for), readability, as well as whether the article is actually helpful. Many writers have a habit of writing a neat article that looks good and may be grammatically correct, but won´t have any substantial information. I usually provide new writers with one chance to adjust their style to see if they will be compatible for future work. Lastly, any hint of plagiarism or a spun article will result in a terminated application.

Don’t Forget Important Details

During the recruitment process, remember to make sure that all aspects of current and future work have been discussed with the shortlisted and/or successful applicants. This will include information such as the writer’s daily writing capabilities, past topic experience, as well as whether the writer can work with short deadlines. Additional details can include formats and writing styles that the applicant is used to; as well the employer’s payment schedule. Making sure that nothing is left out will prevent any unnecessary bumps in the road later on.

Final Thoughts

When a writer has been found, make sure to have patience with the first couple of articles as they will need to get used to your particular preferred writing style. However, if you performed the recruitment process properly – the articles should be exactly what you are looking for. Just remember that writing is not a commodity and writers who do take pride in their art should be respected for it. I hope these points have been helpful, and please feel free to check out my website and get in contact if you have any enquiries.

Antony Hayes runs this online content production company, and kindly contributed this post as a guest blogger.