You should allot a certain portion of your day to email and to regular mail. For example, allot one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon to handling all your written communications. Unless you dedicate specific time slots to the handling of email and post, you will soon find yourself on the downward slope of decreased productivity as you constantly check and respond to email to put off whatever you should be doing.
In a nutshell:
In the end, the success of your home based online business is entirely and completely reliant upon you and the decisions that you make. Success is within your reach, if only you can stay focused on your goals. You must decide to reach for your goals, and then, you must have the discipline necessary to reach them.
For a whole range of free advise and training products to help you start your online business, visit: http://academyforonlinebusiness.com/

When you are dealing with family in the course of your workday, it is important to schedule your activities as much as possible. With small children, you must take time when you need to, but you should also work hard to make sure you dedicate a specific
number of hours to your workday.

With older children, it is much easier to tell them that you will be working between the hours of x and y. Then your children, and even your friends, must understand that certain hours of your day are devoted to the activities of your business.

For a whole range of free advise and training products to help you start your online business, visit: http://academyforonlinebusiness.com/

If you are selling an intangible or unknown product or service, how have you displayed your credibility? Have you shown testimonials or feedback from previous customers, or can you show case studies where you have made a real tangible difference to a former client?

If you are selling information, how have you established to them that you are the expert that they should listen to? Do you have any samples of the type of information you provide such as free downloads of tips?

How easy is it to contact you? Is there a telephone number for enquires? Have you got a proper mail address on your website or just a PO Box? Do you have a guarantee that will allow them to purchase a product or service without reservation?

Lastly, give them a compelling reason to buy from you now. Or if your product or service has a longer sales cycle, get them on your list by offering something in exchange for their name and email address.

For a whole range of free advise and training products to help you start your online business, visit: http://academyforonlinebusiness.com/

The most common reason for hiring a virtual assistant is that there is too much work to be done on the day-to-day running of the business that is taking you away from things that you should be doing. The best way to evaluate whether or not your business could benefit from using a virtual assistant or not, is to take a look at what you are doing all day. Keep a record of everything you are doing during your working day, every day for a week, and see what it tells you. If you are spending time on administrative correspondence and not your vision, then a virtual assistant may be a good answer. This is especially important if you have noticed that your business is beginning to grow or expand or you would like it to but you simply haven’t got enough hours in the day to make it happen.

Another factor to consider with a virtual assistant is the resources that you will need. If you don’t know how much work you will have, of if your workload is erratic, a virtual assistant is also better option because everything is more flexible. If you don’t have much work, and you have nothing to delegate, you can usually cancel your contract at fairly short notice and then unlike an employee you don’t need to pay them.

By hiring a virtual assistant, you will be helping yourself with both time and money. The simple thing to do is to evaluate your situation. If you could use some help, but are not ready for the larger step of taking on an employee, or if your home is your office and you simply don’t have the space for an assistant, hiring a virtual assistant is the best option. This will ensure that you will get the best professional administration support, while saving time and money in the long run.
For a whole range of free advise and training products to help you start your online business, visit: http://academyforonlinebusiness.com/

Paid advertising. Advertising online is very simple with tools such as Google AdWords. It allows you to appear at the top or side of the main search results for a fee. Be careful with your budget and again, make sure you get these visitors on your list to be really cost effective.

When you’ve implemented a range of these activites to build your list, look at which ones are producing the best results for your particular business. Then step up those activities and let go of some of the lower performing options.

For a whole range of free advise and training products to help you start your online business, visit: http://academyforonlinebusiness.com/

Interview some experts. If you can talk on the telephone, you can interview an expert in a similar field. You can offer it as a live teleseminar, or group call, or offer it afterwards as a recording. By asking your expert to also promote the interview to their mailing list, you will end up with many of their contacts subscribing to yours.

For a whole range of free advise and training products to help you start your online business, visit: http://academyforonlinebusiness.com/

Get involved in new media options such as audio and video. Audio and video are very powerful mediums, so don’t be afraid to make a short podcast or video welcoming your web site visitors and actually tell them to sign up for more information.

For a whole range of free advise and training products to help you start your online business, visit: http://academyforonlinebusiness.com/

Say thank you. At the end of your podcast don’t forget to thank any guest speakers and also your listeners. Tell them again how to contact you and about any products or services that may interest them.

One word of warning, podcasting is addictive. Once you start you’ll end up recording everything. So get started now and you’ll soon have a whole range of information products in the form of podcasts, that you can sell or give away free from your website.

For a whole range of free advise and training products to help you start your online business, visit: http://academyforonlinebusiness.com/

Inject some personality. Be yourself. Yes, you are producing a professional podcast, but your listeners will be looking to indentify with you too so relax and treat it as though you were talking to a handful of friends around a table. Don’t be afraid to inject a little self deprecating humour if that’s your natural disposition.

For a whole range of free advise and training products to help you start your online business, visit: http://academyforonlinebusiness.com/

Don’t try to cover too much. You can choose to cover one or two topics in depth, or a few more in less detail. But don’t try to go into lots of detail on lots of topics as you risk confusing your audience. If you have lots of information to get across, break the podcasts down into a series so your listeners have time to digest one lot of information, before moving on to the next.
For a whole range of free advise and training products to help you start your online business, visit: http://academyforonlinebusiness.com/