If you are visiting Noobpreneur.com on regular basis, I’m not sure you notice that I was actually leaving my web businesses behind and enjoy a five-day break, without any access to the Internet and laptop – not because I can’t get them, but because I CHOSE not to get them.
I was having a trip to Bali, Indonesia with my family for 5 days, without bringing my laptop and activate my mobile phone for work and business purposes. And yes, my websites are fully operational and well-promoted without any involvement on my side.
I don’t know how about you, but for me, 5-day vacation without worrying about my web business is a big achievement, considering that I don’t have any full-time staffs to help me out.
I enjoy this view without even thinking about my web business I left behind – even I have every chance to bring my business with me:
So, how did I do it?
Outsource and automate
What I actually did is outsourcing and automation. I hire someone to take care of my web business’ daily tasks and ask for help from others – and automate the whole process using web services.
Let’s take an actual, real-life example: Noobpreneur.com.
Here are the exact steps I do to make sure Noobpreneur.com runs like a well-oiled machine:
1. Ask for guest bloggers’ help
Anita Campbell is an inspiration to me – Her SmallBizTrends.com news blog runs without her direct involvement – all thanks to the authors contributing articles on regular basis. She has proven that we can build our business brands while helping others to gain exposure – a truly win-win situation for blog owners and authors.
So, since my Noobpreneur.com is not as big as SmallBizTrends.com yet, I reach out to guest bloggers to form a win-win “alliance”: Guest bloggers can have their article – with their links – published while my blog gets updated with quality articles. So, I join a guest blogging community.
I recommend you to join Ann Smarty’s MyBlogGuest.com. You can register your blog for free and start pitching guest authors right away to have their articles published on Noobpreneur.com.
2. Automate article posting
After you receive article recommendations, you should schedule your article posting. If your site is powered by WordPress, you can easily schedule blog posts ahead. You can also use web tools, such as SocialOomph, to aggregate your blogs in such a way that you can schedule article posting on multiple blogs from a single location.
3. Hire a SEO/link building/web marketing service provider
I do article promotion on regular basis, so I hire a service provider to do the articles marketing for me. I hire MicroPots that offers various IT services, including BPO (business process outsourcing) and the guys at MicroPots are doing a great job at an affordable price tag (thanks, Manan!) I recommend you MicroPots to help you in your web marketing endeavours.
4. Schedule and automate social media activities
You can automate your Twitter and Facebook posting using web tools, such as TwitterFeed.com and Networked Blogs Facebook app.
I also schedule my social media marketing campaign using SocialOomph. With the web tool I can schedule my tweets and Facebook shares ahead of time, at specific date and time.
5. That’s it – turn off your laptop and phone and enjoy your vacation!
A journey to find out what works better
I always believe that time is the biggest asset of all… when you lose money, you can always get it back; when you lose time, you can’t turn back time as life goes on.
That being said, my entrepreneurial journey involves finding out what will work better on regular basis. I have managed to travel for 5 full days without managing my web business. My next step would be to travel for 2 weeks without touching my laptop and mobile phones for work-related purposes.
‘Care to join my journey?
Ivan Widjaya
Vacationing by utilising business outsourcing and automation