How much time do you spend maintaining your business instead of building your business? Are you spending all of your time working on administrative stuff instead of doing what you love; doing what prompted you to start your business in the first place? Have you thought about hiring help but think it’s too expensive?

Then a Virtual Assistant is the answer. Virtual Assistants (VAs) are entrepreneurs, just like you, who assist others with maintaining and building their businesses with services from general administrative work to web design and maintenance.

You may think hiring an in house assistant is cost prohibitive for you at this point in time, but a VA might be exactly what you need to propel your business to the next level.

Pay only for the time that you need

A survey conducted by Salary.com and America Online reports that the average employee wastes 2.09% of their 8-hour workday. That can add up day after day, week after week. VAs only charge you for the time that they spend on your project, therefore, if the project takes two hours, then you will be billed for two hours. You do not pay for long lunches or time spent surfing the ‘net. You also do not pay for vacation or sick time.

VAs come fully equipped

Hiring an in-house assistant means providing them with an office and all the standard office equipment. VAs work virtually and therefore have all the equipment they need to assist you with your projects.

No Taxes

VAs are business owners and they pay their own taxes and their own insurance. These are both expenses you would incur if you hired an in house assistant.

How much is a week of your time worth?

Spending two hours each day on the backend of your business equates to 10 hours each week and 40 hours each month. Can you put a price tag on 40 hours of your time? What could you do with an extra 40 hours each month? How many additional billable hours would you gain? How fast could you turn around that new product?

Partnering with a VA will help you catapult your business to the next level. If you would rather be out building your business, a VA can help put together your website or get your marketing pieces done and out the door or help with whatever you need. Isn’t it time you invested in yourself and your business?

About the Author:

Heather Jacobson is the owner of Valley Virtual Assistants, a VA business catering to solopreneurs who require assistance with their marketing efforts. She is also the author of Making Dollars Out of Cents: 101 Tips for the Frugal Marketer and co-founder of the Virtual Assistant Revolution, a low-cost alternative to coaching for VAs. For more information, please visit http://www.heatherjacobson.com

As an online newsletter publisher, I care about open rates and click-through rates. If I didn’t, there would be no point in publishing a newsletter. If people aren’t reading it, then why bother? It would be a waste of my time.

I keep up on current marketing trends, and studies have been conducted to determine the best day to send out a newsletter for a better click-through rate.

I’ve always heard that Monday was a bad day. Think about it. Most emails are read Monday through Friday because it’s the standard work week, and business emails are a large portion of the email world. When people come in to work on Monday morning they have a barrage of emails that have accumulated over the weekend that must be sifted through. Your email may be one that gets overlooked.

However, in the past week I have reviewed two different studies, one from Aweber (the service that I use) and the other by Exact Target, an email marketing company based in Indiana.

Exact Target’s white paper, “Myth Debunked: No Such Thing As A Best Day” by Morgan Stewart, was a result of seeing two studies with varying results. These results stated that Monday was the best day, but past studies led marketers to believe that Tuesday was the best day.

So what is the best day? The results of Exact Target’s study, which was comprised of 800 million emails in 160,000 email campaigns of 2000 companies, concluded that there really isn’t a “best” day to send an email. However, there are some interesting results of the study:

• 97% of all emails were sent Monday through Friday.
• The days that have the highest open rate do not have the best click-through rate. This means that you need to determine what is more important – opening the email or clicking on links.
• Industry publications may “jinx” your statistics. For example, as stated in Stewart’s report, the two previous studies were conducted in the second quarter of 2004. Since 2004, Mondays have been ranked the 5th best day to send an email.
• In the second half of 2004, studies showed that the latter part of the work week sees the highest open rates, with the highest being Friday. However, it was less than one percent higher than Wednesday or Thursday.
• If you’re looking for higher click-through rates, you’ll want to send your emails on the weekend, but remember that you won’t find the highest open rates at that time.

Based on Exact Target’s findings, at some point in time each day of the week was found to be the best day.

I do test and track open and click-through rates with my own newsletter, and here is what I’ve found. Sending emails on Tuesday between noon and 2pm Eastern Standard Time works the best for me. I have sent emails every other day of the week, as well as Tuesday at 8am, and none of them have a higher open rate than Tuesday afternoons. As far as click-through rates, I do send occasional special announcements out on the weekends, and they do have a higher click-through rate.

Let’s apply some logic to this. When you get an email campaign, they usually want you to buy something. When you’re in the middle of your work day, you usually can’t stop and whip out your credit card to make a purchase like you can when you’re at home. However, when you’re at home on the weekends, you’re probably not sitting in front of the computer because you’ve been sitting in front of one all week.

In all honesty, I think it’s 6 of one, half dozen of the other. Test to see what works for you and your subscriber base. Don’t take the word of the experts. Tuesday is still a really good day for me, but don’t be surprised if you occasionally receive my newsletter on a Thursday or Friday, or even a weekend. It’s just me, testing to see if I’ve still “got it”.

To view the Exact Target white paper in its entirety, you may download it at http://email.exacttarget.com/pdf/Best-Day.pdf
About the Author:

Heather Jacobson doesn’t pay for marketing if she doesn’t have to. Discover how she does it and claim 10 free marketing tips at http://www.10freetips.com

There’s a buzz floating around the internet about a new web design software called XSitePro. Its target market? Affiliate marketers.

While I dabble in affiliate marketing, it’s not my main focus, so at first glance, I didn’t think this program would be for me, however, my nine year old was working on developing his own site and I didn’t have the time to do the site for him nor did I have time to sit there and teach him the basics of FrontPage. He’s nine. I never thought this idea he had would come to fruition, but here he came with not only research, but excitement.

I looked in to ways that he could build a site on his own. I once used a really great sitebuilder through InterntBasedFamily.com however; the monthly fee was on the pricy side – more than I wanted to invest in my nine year’s old venture. For all I know, this site idea could be like last year’s wrestling. He was all geared up about it so I went out and invested all this money in a singlet, shoes, and head gear, and he never finished the season. It just wasn’t his thing and now we have all this wrestling gear that we’ll never use again.

I went back to look at XSitePro. I watched the 7 minute video and the program looked easy enough to use. I like the fact that you could use their templates or build your own. I liked that if you wanted to change the layout of the page, you did it in one place and it changed all your pages for you.

I downloaded the free trial and told Matthew to check it out. I printed out the users’ manual that included easy, step-by-step instructions and screen shots and let him play. Sure he had questions, but in the end, he had a nine page website built just by going through the tutorial. What’s even better? He had nine optimized pages. He doesn’t know about targeted keywords, but I can help him with that later on.

XSitePro is a very simple program to use. To add an article page, simply click on “Add Article” and a box pops up where you add your title, description, resource box, and any other additional information you have, click okay, copy and paste your article and voila! You have an article page. XSitePro even indexes them on your main page and automatically creates a site map for you as well.

The same is true for product pages – very simple forms to fill out and the page is created for you. No html or design skills required.

Matthew can even add Google Adsense to his pages with out copying and pasting code. He simply right clicks, selects “insert Google AdSense”, chooses the color scheme and size of his ads and hits okay.

After I saw how easy it was to use, and knowing that I could put this program to use if his online venture falls by the way side, I invested in XSitePro. Matthew works on his site every night and I tinkered with it and I put up a 45 page content based site in 3 hours.

There are two groups of people that I recommend XsitePro to: affiliate marketers and those who have little web design experience but would like to set up a site of their own. It’s half the cost of Dreamweaver and ten times easier to use. The best feature of this program? It comes with a 365 day money back guarantee. You have a whole year to decide if you’ve made a wise investment. I didn’t need a year, only a few hours and now I’m XSited about the future things I can do with this program.

And let’s be honest…if a nine year old can operate XSitePro, so can you!

About the Author:

Heather Jacobson doesn’t pay for marketing if she doesn’t have to. Discover how she does it and claim 10 free marketing tips at http://www.10freetips.com

*Purchase XSitePro through any link on this site and forward me your receipt and I’ll send you a copy of Making Dollars Out of Cents: 101 Tips for the Frugal Marketer for FREE.

The rules:

• You must purchase through a link on this page and send me the receipt. You must indicate the email address that you used when purchasing so that I can verify the purchase.
• NOTE: Your receipt will not contain any credit card information, however, if you would like you can send an email to info@valleyva.net with the email address that you used when purchasing so that I can verify the purchase.
• You will receive your eBook as soon as I verify the purchase. (Within 5 business days.)
• If you have any questions, please contact me at info@valleyva.net

I have a confession to make. I am notorious for meeting people, liking them, and then when they realize what I do and that I could help them, I end up giving away my services…for free. I have this uncontrollable urge to help people, especially when I know it’s something that I am good at and enjoy doing.

Now I don’t do this all the time, but occasionally I will, and I will tell you why. It comes back to me tenfold.

For example, we just adopted a Great Dane. In my search for information on this mini-horse breed, I came across a Yahoo! Group for local Great Dane owners. I joined, sent my welcome message introducing myself and Napoleon, and the owner of the group noticed my signature line and contacted me for possible help with my services. We were on the phone for at least two hours. I liked her.

So when we finally got around to talking business and she told me she needed a sales letter written to send out locally, I told her I would do it for free.

I didn’t think twice about it.

We have chatted a few times on the phone, and we have met at our Great Dane get-togethers, and I did her sales letter. It was pretty good if I do say so myself. But here is what happened that I was not expecting.

She’s telling people about me.

That’s right. I’ve gotten new clients by referral from her, and all I did was spend two hours on her sales letter. Not a bad trade, eh?

I didn’t do this letter for her with the expectation of something in return. I honestly didn’t. My boyfriend, my coach, and my colleagues love to get on me about giving my services away, and I can see where they are coming from. However, I’m a firm believer that what goes around comes around.

This is just one example. I also had a colleague that wanted her blog template to look just like her website. I was almost sure that I could do it, and before I knew it, she sent me the information and hired me to do it.

So I did it. It was a lot of trial and error, since I was dealing with a programming code that I was not an expert in writing. I worked with it until it was just right. When it came time to bill her, I simply dropped her a note and said, “It’s on me. I’m just tickled that I could actually do it.” And I was. I didn’t expect anything from her.

Yesterday, the FedEx man came, and I now have 12 brownies from Fairytale Brownies. (Well, I HAD 12…there are only 9 now!) But again, I wasn’t expecting anything. I was just pleasantly surprised when I got a package in the mail and it wasn’t my birthday or Christmas.

And I’m sure when the conversation comes up and people ask her how she got her blog to look like her website she’ll say, “Heather at Valley Virtual Assistants did that for me.” Even if she doesn’t, that’s okay with me. I felt good helping someone out, the brownies are delicious (and hidden where no one can find them), and I’m content with how I do business.

Let’s be honest. We’re not non-profit organizations, and many of us rely on our customers and clients to put food on the table, a roof over our heads, and clothes on our backs. We cannot afford to give the farm away, but we can give a few bales of hay away, and we can choose who should get them.

About the Author:

Heather Jacobson doesn’t pay for marketing if she doesn’t have to. Discover how she does it and claim 10 free marketing tips at http://www.10freetips.com

One of the best ways to promote your website and knowledge is free. That’s right, I said free. The bonus? This “free” method can elevate your website traffic, increase your sales, and double, even triple your income.

And what is this free method? Articles.

Articles? Exactly how does this work?

Take the main topic or topics of your website and write relevant articles that you can submit to free content sites. These are also known as article directories. It’s easy to write the articles, takes very little time and provides one way links back to your site. This increases your search engine rankings, traffic to your site, and in turn your sales and income.

How can article writing boost traffic and income?

When you submit your articles to the article directories, you’ll include a resource box or an about the author box. You need to make sure that the link to your website is in that box. If your reader likes what they read they may just click on the link in your resource box and pay you a visit. Because they are listed in the article directories, they are also available for other webmasters to publish on their sites increasing your exposure.

When someone takes an article from the directory, they are required to include the full article, unedited, with the resource box included. Therefore, you’ll have another link back to your site. Yet another opportunity for someone to click on your link.

My rule of thumb is one article a week per site. Does this always happen? No. However, I want to get these articles out because as my list of published articles grows, the total number of links back to my site grows. Most major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN are placing a lot of significance on incoming, one way links to websites. This is one way that they determine the importance of the site and in turn, boosts your search engine rankings.

The more articles you have the more one way inbound links you have and the greater search engine results. This makes it easier for people to find your site. Buying on the internet grows more and more popular as time goes on and you want to be infront of them.

Is Article Marketing Really Free?

I say that it is, and in essence, it is. The actual writing of the articles is free if you do it yourself. If you hire a ghostwriter because you just don’t want to write, can’t write, or don’t have time to write, then that will cost money. There are private label sites that will sell you articles that you can do with what you want, but you’ll still need to make significant changes to them before you can submit them on your own.

To submit the articles can be free as well if you do it manually. If you hire a Virtual Assistant or use a distribution service to distribute that can cost money as well. There are some distribution sites that charges as little as $2 per article. Others charge a monthly fee or per article.

Give it the old college try. You’re not going to hurt anything by hashing out a few ideas. If you’re curious to see how it works, add a link in your resource box that’s not accessible from your home page and that you don’t promote anywhere else. See how much comes to it.

Just last week I submitted a new article for a new website I started. I started getting subscribers that same day. I can tell you that it works.
About the Author:

Heather Jacobson doesn’t pay for marketing if she doesn’t have to and uses the power of article marketing to elevate her business. Sign up for the free 5 day eCourse on article marketing at http://www.valleyva.net/article-ecourse.html and discover how you too can market your business with articles!