Posts from — May 2009

Okay so since it’s Follow Friday on twitter I decided to post a reminder of what will make me follow a person back on twitter.

1. Picture
I hate seeing that darn twitter icon. The only way I’ll follow someone without a pic is if they have a handle that’s interesting or if they are someone that I met on another network. So generally if you don’t have a picture, I won’t follow you back.

2. Spammers
I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting spammers. If the first tweet I see is you telling me how I can make $123,567 online with no work, I’m not following you back.

3. Porn
I personally have nothing against porn. I’m not here to tell you whether or not you should or shouldn’t look at it. Sometimes my stepkids peek over my shoulders while I tweet. If your picture is too provocative or if your handle is too suggestive, I won’t follow you back. (I decided to go back and edit this point for clarity.)

These guidelines might change over time but for now this is how I determine who I follow back.

Sometimes in business things don’t go the way you planned them. A family member gets sick or you may fall behind on a project. What do you do? Do you freak out and think the world is falling apart or do you figure out a way to make this mishap work in your favor? I hope you do the latter. In business, things often happen that we have no control over. It’s up to you as the small business owner to decide how you are going to react to these types of things.

I’ve been doing a telecall series about outsourcing over the past few weeks and I’ve been learning a lot from my guests. Here are some things to do before you partner with a virtual assistant.
Make friends with as many virtual assistants as possible. You can find vas all over the place. Just go to twitter search and type in virtual assistant and start following virtual assistants. Once you have befriended a few you can see what their life is like and how they can fit in with your business. Also if you talk to a few virtual assistants you’ll get a better idea of what the going rate is for the task you’re trying to achieve. Another thing you should do is have a list of things you feel comfortable handing off to a va ready before you partner with one. These are a few tips to help make partnering with a virtual assistant an easy thing to do.

More From learnsmallbusiness

• How to Create a Podcast
• What to do when you feel like you just can’t get it together
• What do you do when things don’t go according to plans?

learnsmallbusiness Recommends

• Learn How To Sell ClickBank Products  (Chad Nicely)
• What Can You Do With Craigslist?  (Chad Nicely)

Ask learnsmallbusiness To Recommend Your Posts

If you’ve been online looking for work at home gigs, I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of sites offering to pay money for you to look at their ads. Well this site is different. I’ve actually already received money for looking at youdata ads. It’s not a lot of money. You won’t retire off of the money you make viewing these ads. However, it’s more than you had before, so check it out!
http://www.deannatroupe.com/suggests/youdata.html (affiliate link)
It’s a very user friendly site and the sign up process is self explanatory. I like how easy it is to use. It also loads really fast. I’m big on sites being easy to use.