One of my biggest flaws is that I’m a control freak. I’m never happy letting anybody do something for me that I know I could do even 0.00001% better myself. This of course is a major flaw, especially for an affiliate. Over the last 5 or 6 years I have worked my bloody balls off. I have though built a good network, which includes leading poker, casino and bingo affiliate sites. The reward for all my hard work is that later this year I will escape the doom and gloom of Britain and emigrate to Spain, reducing my network to just a handful of sites, so I will have plenty of time to enjoy the sun.
Looking back, it now seems clear to me that being unable to delegate has hampered me and perhaps cost me a small fortune. One tip, perhaps the best tip I can give anybody who wants to be a successful affiliate is you must learn to outsource. Over the years I have had many great ideas for new sites although many never came to fruition simply because I did not have the time.
The internet has created a new global workforce which all affiliate have access to. Sites such as Elance, and Freelancer, plus hundreds of others are packed with writers, coders and graphic designers ready and willing to carry out your tasks at competitive rates. For some crazy reason my outsourcing was restricted to hiring writers, although I would waste too much time giving them detailed instructions and research material far beyond what they required. Once they had completed the ordered content, in most cases, I would rewrite the articles anyway, which in effect meant that I had not only wasted my money, but more importantly I had wasted even more time.
In the last year I realised I needed someone like me. Someone who would simply do the tasks I carried out just like me. I spent some time researching Virtual Assistants then took the plunge and posted a job vacancy ad I will be honest and say that 95% of the applicants were not even close to the standard I was looking for. I nearly gave up but knew this was something I had to do.
After 3 weeks sifting through applications, of which many were so bad it was unreal, I had a handful of applicants with possible potential. These applicants were given a research and written test with the promise that the top 3 would receive an interview. As all 3 applicants on my shortlist were based thousands of miles away so the interviews were carried out through Skype. A few days later I hired a Virtual Assistant.
The person I hired was in reality a rough diamond. I knew that to get him to work like me, I would have to take the time to train him. Each of the tasks I carried out on a daily basis I videoed using a free app I found online. I simply uploaded each video and urged him to contact me if he had any question. Over the course of a month or so he learned how to carry out my daily tasks just like me. He now writes articles, posts articles, installs WordPress; edits image files, uploads and downloads files using FTP plus carries out dozens of other tasks, just like me. The more he learned, plus of course, the more money he made for me, the more I paid him. I just wished I had hired somebody years earlier!
In part 2 I will detail how you can tap into the global workforce to find your own VA so many of those great ideas for new sites can be up and earning in no time at all. Better still you will learn that hiring a VA is not as expensive as you may well think!
