Tag: india

Online Advertising: Are You Leaving Money On The Table With Your International Traffic?

It was reported in the Wall Street Journal, Internet companies from blogs to large Amazon.com types are now drawing more of their web traffic from overseas. I know from personal experience that this blog’s traffic is more than 50% international. I’ve seen this trend rising the last couple of years (research data).

What exactly does this mean for companies that charge advertising? It means that when a foreign overseas visitor clicks on your site and your running banner ads that get you a monetary % of click thru’s, you are leaving money on the table. How? For example: European visitors clicks on your landing page and you (or the ad network platform you use) serve them a Verizon ad special that is only available in the United States. Is that ad compelling to the visitor? Do you think this International visitor is interested in clicking thru the US centric ad? No way!

Thousands upon thousands of ad revenue is lost and sitting right there on the table. The problem is that if your running a global media company and your serving up U.S. ads, your potential revenue is in danger. Most of the US ad network platforms that websites run, only serve up U.S. ads. What can you do to solve this issue? If your ad network is “in house” …..make sure you serve your international clients  visitor a country specific ad. it’s real easy to identify these visitors thru international domains, first-party cookies, and IP addresses. If it’s a U.S. visitor, serve up a U.S. ad. If you outsource to an online ad network that doesn’t have these capabilities, try hiring an international advertising platform company. There are a lot of them that are London based. Need an ad network platform on the Pacific Rim or India where Internet usage is sky rocketing with the arrival of DSL? Try ad companies such as Komli Media (India). Selling internet ads to local international markets is a tough issue right now. Larger companies with resources have sales teams set up outside the U.S. Companies such as MySpace and Facebook (that now get over 50% of traffic from overseas) are trying to ramp up their sales teams internationally. The majority of Facebook’s growth is international. Of the 75 million uniques it added in the last year, just 13 million (17%) were in the U.S., where MySpace is still twice Facebook’s size. Internet usage overseas is anywhere from a few years behind to ground zero. As they gain access to telephone lines (DSL) and cable, this customer base will grow exponentially. You have to prepare to exploit your platform to serve these international visitors. Get to them now before your competitor does.

Tips on Hiring a Virtual Administrative Assistant

Virtual Assistants or “VA’s” can offer remote support to anyone that does not have access to a group or company administrative assistant. I will present tips on how to hire a VA as well as where to find them. VA’s come in different varieties. You can get someone cheap (think India) to someone expensive with a lot of experience and skills. Depending on your needs and time horizon, it’s better to get an inexpensive VA for simple tasks. If your needs are immediate, and you don’t have time to bring a VA up to speed, it’s better to go with an expensive US-based VA that already has the skills you require now.

First off, where do you find a Virtual Assistant? There are many online resources and companies to choose from. More and more are popping up all over the world every day. US-based VA’s will run anywhere from $20-$100 per hour. US-based VA can be found here:

www.ivaa.org
www.ondemandvirtualservices.com
www.guru.com
www.elance.com (Also handles International)

Indian VA’s will run anywhere from $3.00-$18.00 per hour. India-based VA’s can be found here:

www.yourmaninindia.com

The benefits of a remote VA across the world is that they work while you sleep, and cheaper than a US-based VA’s. As with all VA’s, make sure you set a task rate (cost per task) or an hour cap for the tasks you assign. Otherwise, you can get into a real financial trouble if your VA is slow working and using your hourly budget fast. My choice would be to get a rate per task cost. Make sure to give your VA exact directions and exact task list so there is no misunderstandings. Assign each task in order of relevance or priority. An example of a home office business task list includes: Word processing, expense reports, travel, bookkeeping, sales reports, bill paying, PDF file conversion, custom mailings, database entry, meeting schedule, faxing, invoicing, even proofreading.

The great thing about hiring a VA is that there is no onsite employee, which means no liability, no worker’s comp insurance, and no payroll taxes to calculate. Everyone is an independent service provider. Lastly, hire a VA that is working within a company that specializes in virtual assistants so that if your VA is sick or out on vacation, there is a backup person to fill in their place. That is a key benefit to hiring a company that specializes in VA’s.