Devin made me this nice video the other day asking for some advice.
I think the question is pretty relevant to most IMers.

Here’s my response

The one thing I forgot to talk about on my video is that I would probably install http://www.crazyegg.com on the site to see what people are currently doing when they come to your site.

Good luck!

I’ve had GUYS in the Philippines for about 4 years now.

This was my FIRST trip!

You don’t have to go there to make it work. That’s one of the great things about the Philippines.

While I was there for 2.5 days I recorded quite a bit of video of my observations and experience.

I then sent all the (HD) video to one of my GUYS (whom I hired because he spoke english) and he edited it and put this video together (he really didn’t have other skills except english when I hired him 4 years ago…now he can do anything!).

16 minutes of learning, treachery, kidnapping, disaster, running out of gas, and just good fun!

If (WHEN!) you get a chance to go and meet your GUYS, please take it. You’ll have a blast, and your relationship with them will change for the better forever.

This week I managed to get Joel Peterson on a webinar to explain how he’s generating billions of impressions and millions of clicks for $0.01 using Google Adwords.

I’ve known Joel for a few years, and knew that at one point he was spending about $1,000,000 a month on adwords, but I had no idea how he was doing it.

If generating this kind of traffic interests you, watch this webinar replay.
(video opens in a new window).
I had no idea this was possible.

If it’s right for you, Buy Keyword Rockstar.

I recently had a great comment/question on my blog:
http://www.jonasblog.com/2008/07/how-and-why-you-should-replace-yourself-with-someone-overseas.html/comment-page-2#comment-62563

In a nutshell, David asks “how many sites do your GUYS maintain, and how much are the sties making in order for them to pay for themselves?”

I thought the question and answer were informative enough to make a post out of it.
Here’s my response:

@David - this is a great observation.

I’ll tell you a little about my business so you can understand a bit about how I work.

I don’t know how many sites I currently have…maybe 50, maybe 100?
How many have I built over the past years? …hundreds maybe?

Here’s a quick breakdown of sites my team has 100% built for me:

• I have a site that makes me over $15,000/month that my team built.
• I have some sites that make between $1000-$5000/month that my team built.
• I have lots of sites that make between $100-$1000/month that my team built.
• I have even more sites that make me between $1-$100/month that my team built.
• Most of my sites that my team built don’t make me anything! $0.

Some of those $0 sites are new…at some point they’ll make me money.
Lots of them I’ve given up on because the model/market/niche/site failed. I lost money on those.

For me, I just know that the more sites I build, the better chance I have of finding winners.
I also know that some of them that I build are going to do really well. Every once in a while I’ll get an awesome one.

My team (of 3-5…depending on how you look at it) builds and maintains all these sites.
Once a site is built and established, it requires less and less maintenance.

The thing about all this is that I DIDN’T DO THE WORK!
If it were up to me to do the work, none of these sites would have been built or marketed.
Because other people are doing it, it got done, and I make money because of it.

To me, that’s the key to all this. For years I tried to do all the work myself. With that I think I had built 10 sites in a few years and only 1 of them was really successful.
With other people doing the work I’ve built hundreds of sites and lots of them are successful.

Frankly, I’m capable of doing better work than my GUYS do.
However, I DON’T DO THE WORK even though I’m capable. I don’t know…it’s just some problem I have. If it’s up to me to do the work, it’s just not going to get done.

For this reason I created my outsourcing system. So others can benefit from what I’ve done.

John

StatsJunky does what many previous softwares have attempted to do:

track affiliate accounts/data along with PPC accounts/clicks.

It does it REALLY well:

Go To StatsJunky.com

There are a lot of online tools I use in running my business. Tools which at one point I didn’t know existed, and when I found out about them, I said
“HOLY COW!!! THAT SAVES ME HOURS OF TIME AND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS!!!”

I attempted to create this list somewhat here, but it was just too much content creation for me (I just don’t like creating ongoing content…that’s why I only blog once a month!).

So, here’s a big laundry list of tools I use to run my business, and just in general good internet websites to know about.

This is a list that comes from my experience in doing online business, as well as the knowledge of my mastermind group.
If you have great sites to add, please add them in the comments. Maybe I’ll add them to my main list if I start using them.

Testing/Tracking

• Crazyegg.com - heatmap click tracking
• Woopra - website analytics
• Statcounter - Not the most detailed analytics, but gives very important trend/keyword data easily. Great for affiliate websites.
• Google Website Optimizer - free split testing and multi-variate testing
• ClickTale - web analytics that takes a video of your users mouse/actions
• ClickDensity.com – similar to crazyegg.com…
• Site Yogi Free consolidated website statistics

Video/Audio/Picture

• Audacity - free audio editing
• Jing - free screen capture/sharing tool
• JW Player - best free flash player (the best flash player…period)
• Super - free video conversion tool (the best free video converter - converts from anything to anything) Download
• VSO Image Resizer - right click to resize/save images to a different format
• OnlineVideoToolkit - How to do video with a Flip camera
• LiveFaceOnWeb.com – Pay to have an actor create a video and “appear” on your site
• TubeMogul.com Free Video Distribution service (free alternative to traffic geyser)
• iStockPhoto free stock photos
• sxc.hu free stock photos
• Amazon S3 I use them for streaming video and for reliable image/file/video hosting.
• Pixlr Image Editing - Free alternative to photoshop. Amazing online image editing…free.

Outsourcing

• ReplaceMyself.com - How to outsource to the Philippines
• Elance - freelancers galore
• OnlineJobs.ph - Where to find Filipinos to hire
• BestJobs.ph - Where to find Filipinos to hire
• Guru, GetAFreelancer, odesk, RentACoder, ScriptLance - More freelance job sites

Screen Sharing/Collaboration

• Crossloop.com - screen sharing for tech support
• Logmein.com - free alternative to gotomypc.com
• Adobe Connect now - free (for 3 people) screen/mic/webcam sharing

Phone Calling/Recording

• FreeConferenceCall - a whole suite of phone services - conference lines, voice boxes, broadcasts…
• Pamela skype recording plugin
• PhoneTag.com – intercepts voicemail, transcribes it, and texts the voicemail to you (voice recognition to text)
• Google Voice – If you can get in…
• MagicJack.com - A usb device that gives you VOIP for dirt cheap. My partner, Dan, uses it exclusively at home.
• K7.net Free incoming voicemail and fax service
• AuctionAudio.net or AudioAcrobat.com – 3 way in phone conversations to record

Project Management

• Google Docs - duh
• Mindmeister.com - free mind mapping tool
• RememberTheMilk.com - free online todo list (the most full featured online todo list)
• ActiveCollab - great project management software

Graphic Design

• 99designs.com - People will compete to create a logo/design for your website (cheap graphic design work)contest for cheap graphic/design work
• DoMyDesignStuff.com - Great graphic designer
• DesignGuruRyan - Another great graphic designer
• Kuler.com free Adobe recommended color pairings and design templates

Content Creation

• Screen Steps - tool for creating step by step instructions with screen capture
• MTurk.com - Get articles written for you for cheap. Also automate human processes.
• AssociatedContent.com – get content here and then re-write it for articles
• ExpertVillage.com - collections of video that you can buy from people
• Findarticles.com – searches offline articles – go buy them from people
• HowStuffWorks.com – good source of content, like expertvillage
• Ehow.com – more content, like howstuffworks.com

Online Survey Tracking/Creation

• Zoomerang.com Free Survey Tool
• Survey Monkey Free Survey Tool

Online File Storage/Backup

• DropBox.com Free file storage, sharing and remote backup from a folder on your desktop!
• Mozy - Simple online backup solution
• SugarSync - Online File syncing/storage

Random Coolness

• Evernote - free note taking tool (puts notes on your desktop and online, indexes images/pdf to make them searchable)
• Fatwallet.com - get great deals on “stuff”
• Gliffy.com - free flow chart design - alternative to MS Visio
• Filezilla - best free ftp client
• “The” Paypal Button - Andrew Lock says that if you’re doing more than $3000/month in paypal, you can click this button and they’ll charge you less transaction processing fees
• Kayak.com – travel prices aggregated
• Web-Appointments.com – let people schedule appointments with you when you allow them to
• Doodle.ch – Group date picking (”when works for everyone?”)
• HandWrittenresults.com Send hand written thank you letters to your list!
• Ted - Inspirational video presentations from great minds!
• Windows Notepad Replacement - A better program than what comes with standard windows.
• RescueTime - Auto tracks and categorizes computer usage. Usable with employees.
• LastPass Password Manager - Keeps track of all login info across computers. I’ll never (hopefully) be without this again.
• Kunaki - awesome CD/DVD creation/fulfillment service.

In case you don’t know, there was a typhoon in the Philippines
4 days ago.

It’s bad.

I’m writing this blog post for 2 reasons:

1. A call for donations
2. Answering questions I’ve gotten

————————–
1. A call for donations
————————–
I’ve never asked people to donate to anything before,
but this disaster really hit home.

One of the girls I employ in the Philippines lost her uncle.

Someone else I know has a VA who lost a sister.

People there don’t have water, food, clothes, blankets, shelter.

I hooked up with an organization who normally ships stuff
to Africa but now is sending their normal stuff to the Philippines.

If you can donate anything, please do:

http://purecompassion.org/urgent-shipment-needed-in-phillippines-now/

Whether you can donate $500 or $5, it’s going to help.
On that page, be sure to click the link right below the “Donate” button
to read more.

Please don’t wait on this, people are suffering right now.

I talked with the guys who run that website. They’re not a huge organization,
but they’re very well organized and have a lot of experience with this.

Also, Google has a page where you can find other places to help:
http://www.google.com/landing/typhoon-ondoy.html

————————–
2. Answering questions
————————–
I had quite a few people ask me the question today:
“How does this affect your ability to outsource to the Philippines”

I have 2 answers:

1. Short term: My people are not working for a few days
2. Long term: It doesn’t!

A similar typhoon came through the Philippines 2 years ago and
some of my GUYS were very affected by it. They didn’t have
power for 4 days. They struggled for a while. I sent them money to
rebuild their houses.

Short term I lost a week of work from them. Not a big deal.

Long term, it didn’t affect anything. I still continue working with them.
They still continue doing great work for me.

Please consider donating some money if you can:
http://purecompassion.org/urgent-shipment-needed-in-phillippines-now/

The most common question I receive from so many of you out there is, how do I start out with earning money from the internet, what do I do?

The answer I give people is: Local Business Marketing!

(just last week I told my MOM! to start doing this)

Last night Kevin Wilke did an amazing webinar explaining how he does local business marketing.
His system is amazing because it just works.

I was able to do an interview with him talking about why I like what he’s doing so much, and why it works so well.

This is why I like Kevin’s program:

• You don’t need to know every single detail about internet marketing. (Which is great for those who are still starting)
• You look for clients before even starting, which less risk. (MAKE SALES!!!)
• If you tie it in with outsourcing, it’s totally automatable, plus it’s a great stepping stone for great future business opportunities.

Here’s the interview I did with him:

You can watch the webinar again (hopefully when you see this the webinar will still be available) here:
http://www.jonasblog.com/go/localbusinesswebinar

Here’s a link to join his program if it’s right for you:
http://www.jonasblog.com/go/localbusinessmm

When GoTryThis came out a few years ago I was very skeptical.

Now, I use it almost every day in my business.

Here’s a short list of why I use it:

• It keeps all my links in one place
• I never have to find my affiliate links for any product. GoTryThis has it for me
• I get great stats about what is working and what isn’t
• My GUYS in the Philippines can use it for me. They join aff programs, and I don’t have to know anything about it…except that my link is in GoTryThis. No thinking on my part.
• SUPER simple split testing

I got John Reel on a phone call talking about this.

It’s a piece of software you SHOULD be using in your business.

GoTryThis.com

Notice: I will update this post if the status changes.

Most of my readers know that BestJobs.ph is currently the best place to find Filipino employees (I say “currently” because that will soon change when we release our own site to recruit specifically online workers…coming very soon).

About 3 months ago the owners of BestJobs.ph decided that they didn’t want to allow people outside the Philippines to access BestJobs.

Currently, you can browse through the resumes on the bestjobs.ph website (which in my opinion is the best way to find a Filipino employee) but you can’t join to get their contact info. Worthless!

We have tried to change the minds of the owners of BestJobs with very limited success. They don’t want U.S. based companies posting jobs on their site. That’s how they’ve chosen to run their business.

Currently the only way to contact people in the Philippines after finding them on bestjobs.ph is through your membership at http://www.ReplaceMyself.com. I can’t give any more details, other than to say that as a member of ReplaceMyself.com, you can get contact info for anyone you find on BestJobs. This ability is included in your membership to ReplaceMyself.com.

If the status of BestJobs.ph changes, I’ll post it here.
When our own recruiting site is available, I’ll also post it here.

PS. If you do manage to get an account there (who knows how), DON’T post any job postings. Just trust me on this one. Only do resume searches to find people. If you post jobs, you’ll lose your account.

Following is an email I got from one of my GUYS detailing the promotion methods we use for different types of websites. You can use this for your GUYS.

This is also very instructive for you in terms of what you should be doing for your websites. What my guys do is awesome.

I added the parts in CAPITALS.

---

Sites Handled by [NAME]:
[THESE ARE SITES USING METHODS LIKE THE MINI-SITE FORMULA OR PNE OR OTHER SIMILAR METHODS. THESE ARE NOT SITES WE SPEND A LOT OF TIME ON. THEY ARE OFTEN EXPERIMENTAL OR SMALL/AUTOMATED SITES.
THESE SITES GET BUILT ONCE, PROMOTED ONCE, AND MAYBE UPDATED/PROMOTED EVERY 6 MONTHS AFTER THAT. I DON'T EXPECT ANY OF THESE SITES TO MAKE ME A LOT OF MONEY.]

Method of promotion:

Directory Submission
Submission to ezinearticles

---

Sites handles by [NAME]:

[THESE ARE SITES THAT I EXPECT TO DO REASONABLY WELL ($500-$3000/MONTH). SOME OF THESE ARE USING THE NPC METHOD. THEY ARE SITES WE SPEND MORE TIME ON, BUT THEY HAVEN'T GOTTEN TO THE HUGE STAGE YET (SOME OF THESE WILL MOVE UP TO THE LAST CATEGORY OF SITES).
THESE SITES GET PROMOTED EVERY MONTH, MAYBE MORE OFTEN THAN THAT.]

Method of promotion:

site: www.xxxxxxxxxxx.com (this one is the best of this type of site that we have)
Directory Submission
Article Submission
Bookmarking
Yahoo Answers
Mininet
Blog Comment
Forum

other sites:
Submission to Ezinearticles
Little bit of Yahoo Answers and Forum posting

---

Sites handle by [NAME]:

[THESE ARE OUR BIG SITES. THEY ARE SITES THAT WE EXPECT TO CONTRIBUTE OVER $5K/MONTH TO THE BUSINESS. SOME OF THESE ARE USING THE NPC METHOD. OTHERS ARE LARGE AFFILIATE SITES. THEY'RE STILL COMPLETELY AUTOMATED (from my point of view) BUT WE GIVE THEM MORE ATTENTION THAN ANY OF THE OTHERS.
THESE GET PROMOTED AT LEAST WEEKLY.]

Method of Promotion:
Directory Submission (done)
Article Submission
Mininet
Forum
Bookmarking (occasionally)
One-way link from blogs: Content spooling, 1waylinks, free traffic system
A little bit of Blog comment and yahoo answers.

---

Here are my thoughts. (THIS PART STILL WRITTEN BY MY GUY)

For me, the best method in building backlinks are article marketing and blogs. Search engines love content. Articles and blogs are often updated and SE’s love them. It also looks very natural in the eyes of the SE’s.

For direct traffic, yahoo answers and video marketing are the best strategy.

Forum posting (with signature link) and blog comment can deliver both backlink and traffic as long as it is posted on relevant sites. But the problem is, there are only few forum sites related to the topics. And for blog comments, most of the blogs are moderated so woudl it take time for your comment to be posted. Most blogs now have nofollow attributes on comments and Google does not follow them anymore (as posted to their webmaster support website). But other search engines may handle this attribute differently.

In the case of [NAME], as she handles so many websites, I think Free traffic System can really help her. I am still looking on how this system works. But I think this can make linkbuilding easy and effective. For me, directory submission is good if the website is new. But if it is already indexed by SE, it is not that important exept if the directory is an authority site such as Dmoz and Yahoo Dir.

This is what I’ve been doing:

New site:
Directory Submission
Bookmarking
Yahoo answers
Blog Comment

If the site is indexed:
Article Submission
One-way links from blogs
(this will help the website increase its ranking the natural way)

If there is a sudden drop on the rankings or as the site gets more established:
Forum Posting to dofollow forum sites
One-way links from blogs.
(this can give instant backlink to the site because it does not need approval and review)

For maintenance:
Combination of all these methods
Video marketing for traffic

Not bad as a website marketing plan that we came up with over time. Here are some of my thoughts for your benefit (I sent this to him):

• I want to use 3waylinks.net in addition to 1waylinks.net on all the sites. Both can be used just once on the experimental sites, but should be used regularly on our good sites. Both are very good.
• I haven’t used the free traffic system, so I don’t know how effective it is. My GUY seems to think it’s good so I told him to buy it.
• I think we should be doing video submissions for all sites. Experimental sites can have just 1 video submitted. Better sites should have it done regularly.
• I wouldn’t worry too much about the nofollow attribute thing
  on blogs. I don’t think google discounts it as much as they say they
  do. I think it’s still valid to post comments on those sites.
• We use Unique Article Wizard for article marketing.
• We use Traffic Geyser for video marketing

If you (the reader) have other systems you use to promote your sites, please post in the comments.

Training for YOUR GUYS for all the methods mentioned above are available as a member of ReplaceMyself.com. The training is designed to teach YOUR GUYS how to do what MY GUYS are doing for me.

I buy a lot of domains.
Here are my guidelines for my GUYS when selecting a domain for a niche website.
I have them do almost all of my research for me.

1. I want a .com almost always. There will be times when a niche is too competitive to find a reasonable .com and in that case you can find a .org (first) or a .net (if the .org isn’t available).
2. I want the main keywords for that niche in the domain. If the niche is “pet insurance,” I want the domain petinsurance.com. If that’s not available, try “bestpetinsurance.com.” If that’s not available, try “petinsurancesecrets.com.” If that’s not available, try something else (maybe petinsuranceworld.com or petinsurancesite.com or something like that.) Or, try putting dashes (-) in between the keywords (like pet-insurance.com)
3. I want the shortest domain with my keywords in it first, and then if that’s not possible, add other keywords to it (best, secrets, world, …). If you have to add 2 words to get a good domain, tray adding the dashes to the domain to get a short one.
4. Use your brain on this to get the domain that makes the most sense for that niche. For example, BestDogObedienceTraining.com makes sense, but DogObedienceTrainingSecrets.com is better, and DogObedienceTrainingWorld.com isn’t very good. Just try to think of what would be the best for getting someone who is looking for “pet insurance” to click and come to the site. What domain would they be most likely to believe willhave the answer for them.
5. Ask me before buying any domain, but try to narrow it down to a single domain. I don’t want to have to sift through multiple domains most of the time. If I don’t like a domain, I’ll let you know.

More of my trainings like this are available as a member of ReplaceMyself.com. This is the training I give to my Filipinos to make my life easier.

So often I have people ask me questions that I don’t have answers to:

• “What kind of person do I hire first?”
• “How long does it take them to get up to speed?”
• “What do I have them do for me?”

The other day I got an email from Lisa Schwartz that hinted towards her having a great experience that answers these questions.

I got on skype with her and recorded the call.

Download The MP3

Here are the answers to the questions above:

• “How long does it take someone to get up to speed?”
  • She has been at this for 6 weeks and has had 6 sites built in that time. She expects to be building 2-3 sites per day within the next few weeks
• “What kind of person do I hire first?”
  • She hired a “blog builder.” Someone to get everything up and running.
  • Then she hired an “SEO” person. Someone to promote the blogs (your blog builder could do this themselves)
  • Then she got a “VA.” Someone to do everything else that’s required.
• “What do I have them do for me?”
  • Build Blogs
  • Research
  • SEO
  • Video marketing
  • Article marketing
  • Social Bookmarking
  • Social Networking
  • Phone calls
  • Reporting/Tracking
  • …

Then, notice some other general business items she talks about:

• She understands her business model very well. Please think about this for yourself. If you don’t understand your business model VERY well, go back and learn more before continuing.
• She is working on just one thing. She’s doing it very well. She’s not chasing bright shiny objects (the latest and greatest launch)
• She synthesized all the info from all the things she’s learned and is using it all in this business. Remember, you’re running a BUSINESS here. There will be set-backs. Work through them!

---

Training for all of what her GUYS are doing for her is available inside ReplaceMyself.com.

She’s using Joel Petersons Mini Site Formula which I reviewed here.

---

 
 

During the years of running my online business I’ve come across a lot of different ways of doing online research.

Lots of the info out there is pretty dumb.

Dumb…meaning…it’s just not info that will help you know what’s good and what’s bad.
Dumb…meaning…what they’re telling you XYZ means, just isn’t true.
Dumb…meaning…”this does not help me pick a niche!”
Dumb…meaning…”I will never do this because there’s nothing at all scientific about what you’re teaching me! and it’s too time consuming and there’s no way in the world I could have someone else do this for me.”

So I’ve developed my own way of doing niche research.

• it’s very scientific
• the numbers are super meaningful
• it’s easily outsourced (just give them this video!)
• you will uncover GOLD using it

Here it is for you:

Here are some myths you’ll hear people say:

• Use overture to find keywords
• Look at the number of results returned by google to find how competitive a niche is. For example: (this tells you nothing!)

I use this method when:

• searching for new niches to enter (I create lots of spreadsheets on lots of different topics)
• researching within a single niche to find out what keywords I should target
• researching a market someone has brought to me as a “gazillion” dollar idea

I outsource all of my research.

UPDATE: I had someone tell me that what I said about the PPC ads isn’t clear. I’ll explain.
In general, lots of PPC ads means there’s quite a bit of money to be made in that niche.
If I want to run PPC ads for that niche, then having lots of PPC ads is not good. It means it’s very competitive and probably very expensive. I might want to run PPC ads if I KNOW I’m entering a niche but the pagerank is high and I can’t compete with SEO.
On the other hand, if I discover a niche that has lots and lots of ads, but the pagerank is low, that means that the niche is very profitable (lots of ads = lots of money to be made) and that I don’t have to compete with the high bid prices due to the amount of ads. The low PR means that I can do SEO, get my site to the top, and get the traffic for free. In this case, the “lots of ads” is an invitation to me to enter that niche because it means the niche is profitable.

Yesterday I got a PDF document back from my GUYS:

The Top 7 ROI Activities Your VA Can Do

I asked them to write it. I’m going to add it as a bonus in ReplaceMyself.com. They would know the best ROI activities better than I would…they’re the ones who do the work and who check it’s effectiveness.

Here’s the real kicker. This is why I created ReplaceMyself.com in the first place.

They sent me the 2nd draft. Along with it one of my GUYS said:

Sir,
I think we should add your affiliate links into the PDF for all the tools you’re recommending they use.
What do you think?
[name]

So, he’s actually looking out for me and my business. He actually wants me to succeed and make money.

The crazy thing is that after the first draft, I had thought “I should put affiliate links into this…but I don’t want to go find them…so nevermind.”

HE DID IT FOR ME!!!

Talk about replacing myself!

After Giving your GUYS my training, this is what you should expect from your GUYS too.

This is why outsourcing to the Philippines is soooo different than anywhere else in the world.

DISCLAIMER: The GUY who said this to me has been with me for 3 years. That’s why the title of this post has “(and time)” included in it. It takes both time and training for someone to understand your business as well as he understands mine.

Here’s what I’ve done for the past 24 hours:

• Checked my email
• Talked with my partner Dan
• Wrote a blog post
• Wrote 2 emails to be sent to my mailing lists
• Used jing to make an explanation video
• Played golf
• Chatted with a few of my GUYS in the Philippines
• Ate dinner, played with my kids, practiced more golf in my backyard, …
• Read a book (it was only 130 pages)
• Slept
• Ate, got ready, played with my kids, went to the LDS temple
• Had a meeting with someone who wanted help
• Played Golf
• And am now writing this blog post (it’s 11:56am)

Here’s what actually got done in the past 24 hours:

• Email got filtered, checked, and responded to
• 2 domains got bought
• A squeeze page, sales page, and website got put up
• An autoresponder series got put into aweber, along with sales emails getting inserted into them
• The 90 minute call I did a few weeks ago with ReplaceMyself.com members got partially transcribed
• 2 blog posts got done on my affiliate sites
• A new test version of one of my sites got created…I haven’t seen it yet, I just heard it’s done
• My golf game improved
• One of my GUYS learned a ton about the inner workings of wordpress while creating a new theme for me

All of these things were done by my GUYS in the Philippines. 100% without me (except for the golf and email).

Hiring GUYS in the Philippines is the way to go if you work from home and actually want to be productive in your business.

Hiring GUYS in the Philippines is NOT optional.

Since most of the people who read my blog spend a good amount of their time in front of the computer, I thought I’d share some of the plugins I use to boost my productivity.

This post is inspired because of my latest favorite: LastPass.

I’ve always looked for a great solution to storing usernames/passwords but haven’t found it. I’ve tried keepass, roboform, and the built-in firefox password manager, all with very little success (they didn’t work to my liking).

Now, with lastpass, it stores all the passwords from all of my computers (AND MY BLACKBERRY!!!!).
It also tells me when it has user/pass info for me, something other systems didn’t always do.

Yes, it stores my passwords online, and yes, I’m probably giving up a bit of security with it (although, they don’t seem to think so), but I’m fine with that from the peace of mind I get by knowing I’m always going to be able to get back into the site.

Here are my other favorites:

• Faviconize - I keep lots of tabs open all the time. Now, those tabs are smaller.
• Session manager - because I HATE when I accidentally lose the 15 tabs open in my browser.
• S3 Organizer - because it makes it super easy to put stuff onto S3. I don’t even have to open a new program!
• Delicious - because keeping my bookmarks online and synced is priceless
• LivePageRank - because I like to know what the PageRank is for sites, but I don’t need an entire google toolbar to tell me.

I’d love to hear what plugins you love that make you more productive in your business.

I have people ask me ALL THE TIME what my Guys do for me, and how effective it is to have them.

I recently had a great example, that I hope will illustrate why YOU need to have GUYS in the Philippines.

Keep in mind as you read this that my GUYS have been through my “mini net creation” training that’s available as a ReplaceMyself.com member.

Here’s how it should work:

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We recently launched a new product.
I sent an email to one of my GUYS asking him to put together a marketing/traffic plan for the site.
He sent me a plan. I asked for more detail on the “Mini-Net” he wants to create.
Here’s what he sent me.

Here are the 3 diagrams he sent me:
Figure 1

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Figure 2

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Figure 3

If you don’t understand what’s going on with the Mini-Nets and the diagrams, GREAT THAT’S THE POINT! I (You) don’t have to understand exactly what’s going on. As long as my GUY does, the work will get done, I’ll get traffic, I’ll get to the top of the search engines. Simple!

In fact, when he sent me this email, I replied to him saying “Great, go implement it.” without even looking at the diagrams first. I knew it would be good. I trust him. He’s had my training on how to do this.

This is how Outsourcing should work for you. If this isn’t what your experience is like, you need to be a member of ReplaceMyself.com. It’s designed to make you smarter, not harder.

At the end of this post you can download a little windows app that will significantly improve your ability to do online niche research.

However, before I give you that, I need to tell you how I got the app. This post is really about the experience you should have when outsourcing to the Philippines.

I recently wanted to run a bunch of keywords through the MSN Commercial Intent Tool. It tells you how likely a person is to buy something when they search for a particular keyword (it’s great for researching niches). With this knowledge, you can know ahead of time whether you should enter a niche or not, because you will know how likely people are to buy stuff in that niche.

I wanted to run about 10 million keywords through the tool.

So, I sent this task to a programmer of mine in the Philippines.

For over a month he worked on it with no success. I wasn’t too happy about that.

When I talked to him about it, it turned out it’s really difficult to get the data from the tool the way I asked him to.

I told him to “figure it out.”

So he did.

He went and learned C# (a programming language) and created a windows application to gather the data.

So, this guy is a PHP programmer, but in order to complete the task I had given him he went out and learned a new programming language and completed the task in the next week!

This is the kind of experience I have every day in outsourcing to the Philippines. In their culture, they want to do whatever it takes to make you happy. This is the kind of experience you should have.

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Over the past few weeks I’ve had numerous people ask me:

“You recommended 2 different programs for online business models. Which is better?”

Here are the two (both have a video interview):
Make $3 700 times a day
An Automated Online Business Model

Here is my answer:

BOTH

There were a few reasons why I posted (and recommended) both of those:

1. Both business models work
2. Both business models are EASILY outsourced (I’m currently implementing both of them through outsourcing)
3. I personally know the owners of both. They’re both super trustworthy.
4. Both business models are easy to understand, and, if you implement them, it’s hard to fail at them.

So which is better for you?
That depends on you and your skills and your goals.
This is where and why I tell people “you need to understand your business.”

Here’s a summary of both. You pick which one is better for YOU (I’m doing both).

1. An Automated Online Business Model
NPC

• You will build websites in niches with the goal of selling info products.
• It’s more involved than The Mini-Site Formula.
• Each site will make you $300-$3000/month.
• You’ll spend more time on each site.
• You’ll create some of your own info products.
• You’ll do seo, articles, videos, … to market your site.
• This is less of an affiliate business, and more of a “you own the product” business. That’s why I like it.
• It’s permanent, but will take longer to see your first income.

2. Make $3 700 times a day
The Mini-Site Formula

• You build websites in micro-niches with the goal of selling physical products as an affiliate.
• Each site has very little time commitment.
• Each site makes you $1-$5/day.
• You make money strictly as an affiliate (or with adsense).
• It’s a very scientific process.
• No copy, emails, auto responders, sales pages, clickbank, upsells involved.
• You market it with video (that’s what Joel does, I suggest video + articles).
• You’ll see your first income quickly, but it might not be permanent.

Now, it’s your turn to use your brain and pick which one appeals to you more.

Whatever you do, only 2 things matter:

1. Are you implementing it (if you don’t do this, nothing else matters)
2. Are you outsourcing it (if you don’t do this, it’s only a matter of time until you stop doing #1)