2011/02/09
Virtual Book Promotion System Secrets 10 Top Best Selling Author
2011/02/07
Virtual Books Tours SELL MORE BOOKS
2010/11/07
Do You Need A Virtual Assistant?
How many hours do you work in a typical week? 40? 50? 60? 80? How would you like to increase your income AND reduce your work week down to a mere 4 hours? That is just what Timothy Ferris, the author of the NY Times Best Seller The 4-Hour Workweek, did. While I do not agree with many of the things Tim did along the way to achieving his 4-Hour Workweek, there are some important lessons to be learned.
How did he do it? Outsourcing. He outsourced virtually everything in his life. Many small businesses outsource certain things, such as Payroll. But how many outsource their bill payment, their research projects, appointment setting? Tim was able to setup entire businesses on the simply concept of outsourcing. For instance, he would setup a web store (which he outsourced), he would outsource the order fulfillment, customer service, billing, accounting, etc. Do I think anyone can achieve the success that Tim had? Most likely it is like any other business. If ten people did this, there would be one or two that made it long-term.
So by now, you are thinking to yourself that you can not outsource your entire business. Well, most of us can not, or at least we are not comfortable with it. What we can do it outsource many of our unproductive tasks to free up time so that we can accomplish what we do best and what drives growth for out business. Virtual assistants are simply someone who provides administrative, technical, or sometimes creative assistance to their clients. They are becoming more and more common everyday, particularly with independent entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Since a large number of our clients are in the real estate industry. Let us look at some of the tasks that a typical virtual assistant can perform for an agent: schedule appointments, communicate with title companies, flyer creation, postcard marketing campaigns, organization and management of client databases, listing coordination, creation of virtual tours, FSBO Campaigns (For Sell By Owner), website creation/maintenance, blogs, client appreciation gifts and gatherings, or newsletters just to name a few.
The list of what VA's can do it limitless. I had one client who is starting an ecommerce website have his VA research where he could find a drop shipper for the products he was looking to sell. I personally have used a VA to design documents, proof read documents, design logos, research products that I am in the market for. Currently, I am having a VA research the best lawn mower for my needs and provide a recommendation, as well as finding me the best deal.
If you are new to the subject of Virtual Assistants, you are probably asking yourself: Who are they? Well the answer varies greatly. Many are executive assistants or secretaries that have decided to go out on their own. Many are solo-shops and many are firms with several professionals assigned to your account, each performing the tasks for which he or she is best suited.
Today, with prevailing technologies such as the Internet, Virtual Assistants can be anywhere in the world. There are many right here in the U.S., but there are large numbers of professional firms in other countries who service clients worldwide.
The obvious major difference is that the typical Virtual Assistant from abroad is typically cheaper than those in the United States. You can get a competent Virtual Assistant firm from India from $4 per hour to $8 per hour depending on the firm and the tasks. In the U.S., rates start around $10 per hour but go up to over $30 per hour.
Do not let the low price fool you. Many of the VA's in India are equally educated to the VA's in the United States. Their price is typically lower because they have a much lower cost of living than do their United State counterparts. It does not necessarily mean that the lower rates mean you are getting a lower quality of service. In addition, most all of the VA's serving clients in the United States are fluent in English.
There are a few advantages to consider when looking at VA's within your own Country. First of all, they are typically working in the same time zone or at least one only a few hours off. When working with VA's abroad, it is sometimes difficult to communicate in real time due to the time differences. For instance, India is ten and a half hours off from the Eastern time zone in the United States. In addition, there is an obvious cultural connection between yourself and an individual living in your own country while there may be vast cultural differences if selecting a VA in other parts of the world.
The time difference is not always a disadvantage, and it can sometimes even be an advantage. You can send a project to your VA in India before you leave work and it will be completed and in your inbox when you get to work the next day. This can produce great efficiencies in that it effectively allows for a "second shift" for some tasks within your business.
Where do you find Virtual Assistants? There are a variety of methods starting with typing the term into Google search. A method that is beginning to gain a lot of momentum are websites dedicated to this and other virtual services. You can list your project or tasks into a project description and have many virtual assistance bid to provide you services. Examples of such websites include Elance.com, iFreelance.com and oDesk.com. You can also try the International Virtual Assistant Association at IVAA.org.
The economic benefits to having a virtual assistant rather than an employee are expansive. First, you may not have enough work to fill a full-time employee's time or even a consistent amount of work to provide to a part-time employee. You only pay for the time in which it takes your virtual assistant to complete his or her task. With an employee, there may many hours of unproductive time.
Because a virtual assistant is not an employee, you do not have to pay payroll taxes or provide any benefits. Your cost is limited to their hourly rate. In addition, you will not have to invest in any of that expensive computer equipment or software since the virtual assistant is required to provide all of that themselves.
When starting with a new VA, I feel that it is best to give them less important projects in the beginning and slowly work up as you are comfortable with their abilities. You may want to even hire more than one based on their specialty.
In today's fast moving world of small business, it is easy to become bogged down with unproductive tasks. If you are not yet using a Virtual Assistant, consider what task are weighing you down and think about whether they can be outsourced. Remember the lessons that Michael Gerber taught us in one of the greatest business books ever written, the E-Myth. In order to grow, we must work ON our business, not IN our business.
2010/07/11
Do Virtual Book Tours Sell Books?
There has been an interesting conversation over at Book Market Ning Social Network concerning virtual book tours. An author was interested in finding out whether virtual book tours worked well as marketing tools and whether they really sold books.
I'm sure everyone else was wondering the very same thing.
We get the same question at Pump Up Your Book Promotion. Authors are very interested in whether their promotional dollars will be spent in a good place and I can certainly understand that.
If you are like one of those authors, let me explain what I tell them. Virtual book tours are but one vehicle to sell books, but if you choose this method to publicize your book, it's money well spent as it will greatly increase your online presence, thus making it more available to people who search for your book online using your key search words.
It's not rocket science, but it is a formula you must use.
So, how does this add up to book sales?
Don't bother emailing the author because they aren't going to know exactly unless they are self-published. If they are not self-published, there are five ways they can at least take a stab at it:
1. Amazon Rankings
Amazon is the world's largest book store and goes by a ranking system. According to the people who think they have solved the mystery of how books are selling there, it operates by putting a ranking number in your book description. The lower the number, the better the book is selling.
If your book dips in rankings, it is assumed you have sold a book. If it does not climb quickly during the next few days, you can safely assume that the book is still selling. If it takes a nosedive under the 100,000 mark and continues to stay there or even dip lower, you can safely assume you are selling more than a few books. Stick around the #1 spot and you are really doing well as far as sales are concerned.
But, there's no real way in telling exactly how many books are being sold and why your rankings are what they are but you can use that guide as a good ball park guess. I've had authors tell me their books moved during the tour, but no one can safely assume it was because of the tour or any other type of promotion they may be doing at the same time. But, a ball park guess is better than no guess at all.
2. Ingrams
Of course, if your book is not distributed through Ingrams, this won't do you a bit of good, but there is a number you can call and their automated system will be able to tell you how many books were sold on a certain date. The number is 615-213-6803.
The problem with this method, though, is that not all the sales may be reported at the time of your call because it could take more time for the sale to get into the Ingram system. This is a fun thing to use and you could get quite obsessive over it, but it's also not a sure-fire way to tell just how many books were sold during your tour unless you wait for weeks afterwards and call. And, then, it's still a ballpark guess as to whether it was because of your tour or not.
3. Word of Mouth
Another surefire way of knowing if your books sold during your tour is for someone you know to tell you they bought one of your books in that time span. If your Amazon rankings have moved about this time, you can assume that this might have been why, but there's no way of knowing this to be a fact or not. And, again, word of mouth is simply word of mouth.
4. Royalty Checks
Of all the ways of telling if you have sold books that we have discussed thus far, your royalty check is your best bet. ONLY, if Amazon or any of the other online bookstores have sent their money to the publisher. I knew I sold books through Amazon (word of mouth) during one pay period, but my sales were not reported on my royalty check. Seems it takes Amazon a while to deliver.
5. Publisher
Perhaps the best method of knowing if you have sold books is to ask your publisher to keep an eye out for sales during this time. However, this method can only work if all sales were reported during this time and your publisher has an account with BookScan (www.bookscan.com).
This is perhaps the ONLY surefire way you are going to know if you sold books during a certain time frame. It is quite expensive to have an account at BookScan, but some publishers feel it's well worth the expense.
Bottom line is, the next time someone asks if virtual book tours sell books, check with your publisher to see if they have an account at BookScan, because any other way of telling is not going to tell the whole story.
Virtual book tours are just like any other promotional opportunity for the author; only, it's probably the best way to hit your audience on a global scale. Besides, virtual book tours are perpetual. Long after your tour is over, it still keeps going and going because as long as the tour host keeps your appearance in their archives, it will continue to bring in those book sales to those online consumers who use the search engines to find what they need.
2010/03/05
What is a Virtual Book Tour?
If you've written a book, or you're in the process of writing a book, at some point you will want to conduct a virtual book tour. A tour implies you are going from place to place. But when you do this virtually, you are just posting information to a variety of blogs. So, most virtual book tours are actually blog tours.
To set up a virtual blog tour, you simply arrange to have various blog owners email you with a few interview questions about you and your book. You answer these questions and email them back to the blog owner and he/she posts this interview on his/her blog on a specific date.
Do this with several blog owners, all within a specific time period - a couple of days, a week, or even a month - and voila! You've got a virtual book tour.
When you find blog owners who have very popular blogs, thousands of people can be reading about you and your book throughout your tour. And the best part is, you can be sitting at home in your pajamas, working on your NEXT book, while they're doing it.
To make book sales from your tour, add a link to amazon.com or your publisher's site, or your own website - just anywhere readers can purchase your book online.
While you're at it, schedule appearances on a variety of Internet radio shows that feature guest authors. Do these shows within a specified time period, then post the schedule on your blog so your readers can listen in. If you do this in connection with a virtual blog tour, you can post your radio appearance schedule on each blog. That way, once people read about you and your book on a particular blog, they can tune in and listen to your interview on one or more of the radio shows.
There are many ways to conduct a virtual book tour. Use your imagination. But always try to connect with hosts on your tour who already have a large audience of the types of readers, listeners, or visitors you are trying to reach.