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The Benefits of Being Virtually There

Thu, 21 Dec 2007 20:33:28 GMT

posted by theproductguy

A Virtual Office is just not the right fit for every company and every management team. Often, companies, when approaching the topic and considering a Virtual Office establishment for themselves tend to look at one half of the associated characteristics. Most frequently, I speak with companies that are either looking at only the positive, hopeful outcomes without consideration of the negatives and other elements that are red flags for incompatibility with respect to their current circumstances. Then, there are the other companies that only see the negatives and reasons to not move forward without seeing how the positives, for them, may actually outweigh the less than ideal accompaniments.

For now, I wish to briefly touch upon the benefits that can be gained through the successful implementation of a Virtual Office.

As with many large undertakings it is important to make sure your set of expectations are properly aligned with the reality of what a Virtual Office can deliver, and remember to…

…Expect good things.

There are clear cost savings to be had by…

Not having a physical need for office space. Large savings can be had, especially in a metropolitan area (e.g. NYC) where cost per square foot of space can get very, very expensive.
Not being limited to any specific geographic location for recruitment. Being able to recruit from places where the skills and the PRICE (employee salaries) align ideally with your own can also add up in the company’s favor.

One of the primary drivers, on the business-side, for a Virtual Office is cost savings. Through a Virtual Office you do not have to limit your recruiting search to a single geographic area, but can reach out to people, where ever you find those with the target matching skill-set. The cost savings benefit can often be best understood when evaluated in contrast to the non-virtual alternative. For example, in a city, or large metropolitan region, the business will assuredly pay a premium to hire local talent, where the cost of living is highest. Through the leveraging of a Virtual Office, the business can hire individuals with the same skills (or better) than the local candidates at a fraction of the price. The savings can add up fast; especially when hiring for high-skilled jobs like developers, where the salary difference between regions can be as great as $30k or more! Of course there are new and different costs associated with setting up a Virtual Office, phones, home Internet connections, etc., but they have negligible impact on the savings that will be gained through the cost savings of the reduced salary expenses, as well as the elimination of commercial office space fees.

Time and availability take on a unique meaning and provide special value through…

Flexibility of work hours and schedule that, with the right people hired, lead to significantly positive morale and dedication to the company’s work and goals.
Increased work hours resulting from the employees ability to optimally configure their work environment, as well as the aforementioned enhanced employee morale.
Expanded availability for the occasions where the critical deadline needs to be met or a critical emergency needs to be immediately addressed — it is much more convenient for the employee of a Virtual Office to have everything at their fingertips and work an extra hour or walk into the next room to address the immediate challenge at hand.

Engagement. Keeping employees engaged and focused is a challenge in any office setting. A typical employee situation that I have experienced and observed across multiple companies is that you will find the Virtual Office employee is a good deal more engaged with their work. There are no concerns about commute time or appearance. The employees are both more available to the company and, equally important, to their family. The Virtual Office employee can setup their office environment to suit their needs and optimize their environment to empower themselves to produce their best work. In start-ups the type of focus and extra hours generated from the more intense engagement are invaluable.

When structured and run well, a well connected Virtual Office further facilitates the engagement and the ensuing team spirit that develops; lowering the bar for putting in extra hours, when needed, or being available for support or emergencies. More time, more engagement, more accessibility — great things for all companies, even more valuable when resources are lean as is common in a start-up environment.

Sounds great. Let’s get started!

Remember, the Virtual Office isn’t for everyone. I have only painted about half of the picture so far. Becoming aligned with the rosier expectations associated with this model of a Virtual Office is the easier half of the equation to evaluate.

Today, take away from this part of the conversation…

The Virtual Office is not for everyone, and might not be the best thing for ‘us,’ the company,
And, the positive expectations may align well with the desired goals, but the need exists to equally weigh and honestly assess the negatives and challenges associated with the successfully executed Virtual Office.

Those downsides, and further guidance in assessing whether or not a Virtual Office is for you I reserve for separate, future The Product Guy blog posts.

So, for now, read, understand, internalize, and come back for to learn more about the experiences that I can share regarding Virtual Offices, many of the common challenges and their solutions. To make sure you don’t miss those posts, and other posts by The Product Guy, you can subscribe to The Product Guy by following this link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/tpgblog

Enjoy!

Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy

Real Virtual Office Challenges

Sun, 10 Dec 2007 15:34:04 GMT

posted by theproductguy

Today, I want to inject some increased reality and a clearer picture of the challenges of creating and managing a successful Virtual Office before I paint too rosy a picture of the great gains that can result in the areas of cost and time, especially since it is more typical that a Virtual Office at the core of a company is the exception. It is equally important to understand the positive aspects of a Virtual Office, as well as its challenges.

…And take careful measure of the downsides.

Most notably, the undesirable component that company management compatibility needs to be critically assessed against and typically leads to the failed Virtual Office exercise involves the additional overhead that impacts every one of the Virtual Office processes. If the individual or management team is not honestly up to the challenge or unwilling or incapable of addressing the issues of overhead then DO NOT PROCEDE — this is the primary reason for incompatibility and failure of either or both the Virtual Office experiment and the company, itself.

Over-communicate and plan.

With many companies, and especially start-ups, workflow is often highly fluid and dynamic; there is often, at best, an idea of what is wanted, no plan, but a process of iterate, iterate, iterate. This is not a very compatible approach within a Virtual Office environment where there is extra time required per iteration, sending-waiting, also resulting in more difficult course corrections due to the distances and time between the parties. Yes, there are many tools and other aides to assist in minimizing this shortcoming, but they will only minimize it; nothing beats face-to-face, in-person, working together, pointing, cycling, doing.

To be successful the management and employees of a Virtual Office must actually go beyond the normal same-office expectation of communications - they must over-communicate. Solid communication and information flow have to be there to minimize the misunderstanding or assumption that, in a real office situation, could have been noticed typically by walking by or in casual chatter around the water cooler. In this area, there are great tools to help from IM, to video, to phone, to chatroom (a personal favorite of mine being campfire) and more to minimize communication breakdowns and keep the processes moving smoothly. But, again, when used perfectly they are only asymptotic to some productivity level near, and short of, that of a non-Virtual Office.

Part of the over-communication picture is the need for clear and concise planning. Again, as just mentioned, it is the goal to minimize the chance for misunderstanding or other communication breakdowns that could send a project on a misdirected spiral. When people are heads down for any duration of time you want to maximize their chance of success by providing the best planning and direction that the time available will allow. If the communications and information flow between the same individuals working side-by-side is strained, or just on par with the non-Virtual Office needs, then, those individuals, that company, does not have the right people and management in place for a successful Virtual Office at the core of their operations.

As part of the planning process additional steps, additional overhead, can be put in place to further minimize the negative impact a misunderstood project or directive can have on the business. For example, after a project has been reviewed and assigned, have the individuals responsible for the project create a work plan, timeline, etc., sufficient to the point where you are certain they are on the right path.

Cutting corners on communication, or just not having the communication skills required for a highly distributed office environment, leads to mistakes, misunderstandings, and more time and resource investment to correct the resultant business / project problems. The organized process of planning and communication and creating a well lubricated machine that keeps everything running like clockwork requires a unique skill-set belonging to the individual creating and managing the Virtual Office, as well as a company compatible with the additional time overhead required to allow the machine to function smoothly.

To do. To hear. To see.

In the same line of understanding as the need for over-communication, there is also a part of the communication that is handicapped over the normal course of activities, namely the visual aspects of communication. Most importantly, when communicating with the employees of the Virtual Office, it is much easier to understand their perspectives, level of understanding, comfort with the discussions, emerging HR problems, and much, much more by seeing and reading their body language when communicating. But, it is a Virtual Office, and seeing everyone all of the time is a rarity, even if you do use some video conferencing software. When managing in this situation the manager needs to be extra sensitive to voice tones and further pursue the over-communication in both a working and friendship building manner, just like a real office, to know and understand and keep as open a comfortable channel of dialog as can be possible. If something is not right with the employee, they are losing motivation, they are having a problem with a person or the work, there is something at home that will impact the work, you don’t typically see that person, you don’t have the luxury of easily noticing they are avoiding people or other visual changes of manner or dress — you need to over-communicate, maintain a healthy work and non-work dialog, ask questions, and stay engaged and interested in the well-being of the team — a much greater challenge all around in a Virtual Office, but that much more important with the other senses of sight and sound greatly restricted.

Just because you have a Virtual Office doesn’t mean that you don’t have a “normal” employee training and acclamation process and routine. By “normal,” I am referring to the over-communicative, extra-trained, learning and setup involved within a Virtual Office setting, more intense and thorough than the other “normal” that would be normal for a non-Virtual Office. In a Virtual Office, training on procedures and clear establishment of processes are all that much more important than in a non-Virtual Office. There is no opportunity for looking over someone’s shoulder and identifying and fixing mistakes. Everything will take much longer if procedures are not clear and the skills of the manager and the employee are not up to the challenge.

Speedy is as speedy does.

Clearly, with all of the overhead involved in running a Virtual Office there is a significant hit to the overall productivity of the company. If the Virtual Office is the right fit for the company and the management is up to and willing to take on the challenge, then all the overhead can be optimally reduced. Typically I have observed the time impact on work, of course depending on the work, can add anywhere from 5%-30% overhead — attributed to a well run Virtual Office machine.

Sounds like a lot of work. Why do it?

Virtual Offices work where both sets of expectations, the positive as well as the inherent challenges, are perfectly aligned.

Virtual Offices are not for everyone. The positives need to be weighed against the challenges. The team needs to clearly understand what can be achieved from a Virtual Office as well as have the right person in place to successfully tackle its primary challenges.

Virtual Offices are just not as prevalent as many _other_ experts think they could or even should be, and, hopefully, you now have a better understanding of ‘why.’

To make sure you don’t miss future posts about the Virtual Office, and other cool and informative topics, you can subscribe to The Product Guy by following this link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/tpgblog

Enjoy!

Jeremy Horn
The Product Guy

Sell your products or others?

Thu, 23 May 2008 22:06:00 GMT

posted by cyberbabe
Selling Your Own Products or Earning Commissions from Others? by Michelle Thomas

There is a difference between selling your own products online and selling affiliate products where you earn commissions for sales. Which is the best way forward for someone wanting to set up their own home business online? Here are some benefits and downfalls of each type of online selling which can help you decide which is the best way to make money on the internet.

Here is a comparison of the pros and cons of creating and selling your own products online or selling others and getting a percent of the sales as your commission

Selling your own products

You can sell whatever products you want in any niche you want. You can sell e books, software, scripts online which takes away the hassle of having to post the items to the buyer

You can start your own online shop selling arts and crafts products you make yourself, clothes, jewelry, books, household goods or anything you decide

The Benefits of Selling Something That is Entirely Yours

You can set your own price Have an online store or mall Create on and offline marketing materials Sell discount products Giveaway free products for promotional and advertising purposes Sell items you have made or created yourself Advertise your own business this way by adding extra promotional material like catalogues leaflets and savings coupons to the buyer's package

The Downfalls of Selling Your Own Products on and Offline

Relying on postal and courier services Trusting buyer's word they will pay Starting your own business and marketing everything yourself online Having to keep invoices, receipts and do all the posting and packing No online support or technical help Running your own website without much knowledge of the internet of HTML

The Pros of Selling Affiliate Products

All marketing and advertising material is provided free of charge Online technical support and often a free affiliate website An affiliate URL which take you directly to the merchant's website Bonus commissions, incentives and extra performance payouts Part of an online community Can build your own sales team to make you more money No post and packing charges or order forms to fill, the affiliate website does it all for you

The Cons of Online Affiliate Programs

You can lose sales if your affiliate link is hijacked You only get a percent of your sales Sometimes the affiliate program closes down suddenly and you lose referrals and money Some affiliate urls are not search engine friendly which means you have to do a lot of indirect advertising Can be hard to promote affiliate websites as your link will always redirect to the merchant's site The affiliate program may ban you and close your account if you do not keep to their terms and conditions Your referred members and sales team may decide to cancel their membership losing you revenue

If you look at each of the reasons for the 2 different types of online sales you can go through them and look at ways to overcome any difficulties. Internet Marketing Gurus have covered all these points and have found out easy ways to market any product online. The knowledge they have is easily available to the newbie online seller. It can be hard to sell products online but some marketing experts make $100 000's every single year just by creating their own products and selling them online or by selling for other merchants.

It is up to you to decide how you are going to make money online and start up your own home business. You can do either, sell your own products or someone else's but which ever one you decide to do it is a good idea to go over the ways in which you can market the products you are selling over the web first and find easy solutions to any problems you may have that could lead to a loss in sales.

There is a difference between selling your own products online and selling affiliate products where you earn commissions for sales. Which is the best way forward for someone wanting to set up their own home business online? Here are some benefits and downfalls of each type of online selling which can help you decide which is the best way to make money on the internet.

digital products, online selling, home business, make money online, affiliate programs, online stores, malls, internet marketing, revenue, commissions, sell products, web trade,

For more information on selling products online, affiliate programs you can join for free and lots of advertising and marketing tips and resources visit my blog Mailboxmoney. To see a blog which is used to promote affiliate products and how it works visit Cybershopping

Did you know you can use this article on your blogs or as unique content for your newsletters, ezines and mailing lists. Visit my profile for more articles you can use.

About the Author

My main interests are in music, dance, beauty, fashion and the arts. I like traveling, going out, clubbing, and lots more. Plus I work part time online trying to earn money from my blogs, selling affiliate products and other digital products

Welcome to our wikizine called "Eazy Home Business"

Sat, 29 Apr 2007 14:17:43 GMT

posted by dhong70
Wikizines are interactive magazines that anyone can create or edit - and this one is called "Eazy Home Business". Here you can find fresh voices and respond in real time. Some members write articles about recent news and trends related to the wikizine's topic, others recount relevant personal stories or share their favorite pictures and video clips. Got an interesting idea or story to share with other members of this wikizine? Well, then put on your journalist's cap and add your own article!

How To Find Products To Sell Online

Tue, 14 May 2008 18:35:54 GMT

posted by zamhaziq
Product Sourcing is a critical part of your Home-based Internet Business Success. If you don't know what people are BUYING online, you won't be successful in SELLING online. OneSource does a complete Market Research Analysis every time you search on a product. Owning OneSource literally means putting our entire Product Sourcing and Market Research staff to work for your business, full time, forever, for a single low one time price! OneSource is the only source you need to find: Drop Ship Wholesalers Light Bulk Wholesalers Volume Wholesalers Liquidation Wholesalers Instant Import Buys Built-in Instant Market Research OneSource INSTANTLY tells you: On a 0% to 100% Scale, how well each product you search for will sell. How many people are searching the Internet for your products. How many other people are selling your products. Who your competitors are, and what their Advertising says. What other variations of your product searches are selling well online. Which Search Engine Keywords are the most popular for the products you want to sell. OneSource is updated EVERY SINGLE BUSINESS DAY OF THE YEAR with new Wholesale Suppliers and Instant Wholesale Buys, by our full-time Research Team.