Thousands of people are eking out a living working as affiliate marketers. When done properly, affiliate marketing can become your sole source of income earning you hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. To get to the peak of your career in this industry one must find ways to assist them scale up faster.
Have you thought about outsourcing? As a business owner, you always want to be in close touch with everything that goes on. As your business grows, however, you may be required to focus on the main tasks and delegate smaller tasks to virtual assistants.
Virtual assistants perform the same duties secretaries or executive assistants do. The only difference is that while an executive assistant operates from your office, a virtual assistant works remotely either from home or from another distant location.
Here are some pointers on how you can use VA’s to support your affiliate marketing business.
- The best tasks to give a VA when running an affiliate marketing business
With help from Virtual assistants, you will notice faster growth and increased profits within your affiliate marketing business. Finding a competent and reliable virtual assistant is one thing, but what tasks can you handle and which ones can you delegate? Below is a list of common tasks virtual assistants can help you tackle;
Researching online
There’s a ton of issues a VA can research about online. You can ask your VA to find out important information about companies on their corporate websites for instance. Other duties in this category include assessing business contacts and evaluating potential employees. Be sure to give the VA specific instructions about exactly what they are expected to research about. Furnish the VA with any logins and passwords required for them to gain access into paid websites.
VA’s can also help you research and suggest interesting topics for your blog. In addition, they can also proofread your posts.
Email management
Affiliate marketers receive hundreds or even thousands of new emails every day. It can be quite a task to go through each email. It is time-consuming and takes away energy which should be spent working on other important matters. A virtual assistant can help sift through your emails by separating important mail from the less important ones. The VA will forward important batch of emails on to you and respond to the rest.
Show your VA how you want the emails filtered. Ask him or her to always forward email responses to you first before hitting send. This way you are able to remove mistakes and make sure that the feedback portrays the right message.
Scheduling
There’s a wide array of tools online that makes scheduling very easy especially when working online. One such tool is a calendar app that helps you note certain key events, duties or activities. Calendars can also act as reminders. A virtual assistant’s job here can be to schedule upcoming tasks such as appointments, phone calls, events, specific correspondence among others on your behalf.
Social tasks like sending thank you notes or writing holiday notes also fall in this category. An affiliate marketer is a business executive who while attending to important parts of keeping the business afloat should entrust a VA to handle such social chores.
- How to manage your VA
Your virtual assistant may not be present physically but you still need to closely monitor and manage them. How do you successfully manage a virtual assistant? Read on to find out;
The 30-minute test
At the selection, stage give the potential VA a 30-minute test. This test is meant to try out their speed and skill by having the person perform a specific request within the given amount of time. Based on how the person performs you can determine whether or not they can make a good fit as your virtual assistant.
This as opposed to randomly picking a VA and assigning them duties without trying them first. Only to later realize that they are not conversant with most of what their job entails. The 30-minute test eliminates try and error and ensures you do not waste time.
Do not tolerate email pile up
A VA’s job is to help ease your workload. In separate instances, you may encounter emails upon emails of questions from your VA about the most basic duties. While constant communication is encouraged, it is better to have the virtual assistant write down all their questions. Thereafter, you can call them and answer their questions satisfactorily.
Instant messaging and cloud storage
Owing to local language influence, you may be unable to communicate effectively with your VA. The solution here would be to find a reliable, secure instant messaging application that can help you and your VA communicate effectively.
Alternatively, always ask your virtual assistant to store all pending and completed projects in cloud storage. This way, if they quit abruptly, you still have access to those files. Later you can offer the files to another VA instead of starting from scratch.
Make your expectations clear
When your VA knows what he or she is expected to deliver from the onset, you provide a sense of direction. This keeps you both on the same page and eliminates the chance of them handing over work that is far from what you wanted. Let the VA prove that they qualify for the specific job description by keeping them accountable.
Communicate regularly
A virtual assistant is like any other employee in an organization. Regular communication is necessary to clarify issues and solve problems. Considering the VA is not going to be physically present at your office, it can be easy to lose touch. One 10 minute call a day is enough to make sure you are both on the same page and in line with your goals.
Fire promptly
There may come a time when the VA is no longer productive. It could be a case of indiscipline, where the person is deliberately not answering your calls, not following instructions or is giving too many excuses for failure to meet deadlines. Instead of giving too many chances to an undeserving person, fire them quickly and find another VA who is worthy of the position.
By teaming up with a good virtual assistant you will realize that you are less tired and have more time to attend to affiliate marketing work as well as your own personal duties. With the right tools, a VA can deliver well beyond your expectations which will see you accomplish much more.
For more on this subject I found this great book.
