Nathalie Fiset asked:




In Internet marketing, the most effective way to succeed on the aspect of productivity is to be able to make the most out of the time that is available. And to be able to do this, one should be able to devote all time and energy to the tasks on hand. Any other type of activities outside of that is considered a distraction. One of the most usual types of distraction for an internet marketer is unnecessary e-mails.

E-mails can be pretty powerful messaging tools once used properly. But once it becomes just-another-clog on the computer or once it becomes a burden, it is high time to see that this problem is addressed immediately. Here are some useful tips on how to manage e-mails (spare yourself from being tied to deleting the ones that are not needed):

1. The e-mail notifications should be turned off once you are set out to finish a certain task. Unless there is a really important e-mail that you have to read the very second that it is sent, it is best to just turn e-mail notifications off. Also, turn off any forms of chat while working on something very important.

2. Unsubscribe from any type of unnecessary mailing lists that you have enrolled in (most especially when you are off to a vacation). Imagine having to sort through hundreds of e-mails once you get back from that restful vacation (it’s as good as not resting at all!).

3. Set up an e-mail program which would take care of managing your e-mails. This all begins with putting up filters and eventually using them. For programs such as Outlook, it is easy to configure the rules and start sending all spam e-mails to the trash. This saves much, much time as you won’t have to do the sorting out and reading, and even deletion of the spam messages.

4. Do not waste 24 hours of the day in just reading and answering e-mails. Try to set a specific number of hours each day in dealing with e-mails. Never read or answer e-mails during the busiest and most productive hours of the day. This will ruin your chances of doing more business (and pocketing more bucks!).

5. If it’s possible, try getting an autoresponder which would automatically answer e-mails and tell the senders that you will get back to them and that you have already read their messages. This tool allows an internet marketer to send messages to as many clients as possible (without having to risk many others who also need to get an affirmation that their message did reach you).

6. Never mix up business e-mails with personal e-mails. It is advisable to get an e-mail address for the business and a separate one for personal messages. This will greatly help in sorting out messages that are meant just for the business and some mere ‘hellos’ from colleagues.

7. Set up folders for different functions. Have a separate folder for unanswered messages, e-mails that can wait longer before they are answered, or e-mails that require immediate action. For e-mail providers that do not have the ‘folder’ function, it is best to label your e-mail messages so you won’t be confused as to where they should belong.

8. Archive e-mails that do not need immediate attention but are needful anyway. This allows you ample time to get back to them at a later time when you are no longer preoccupied with some other tasks.

9. Sometimes, it just reaches the point when an individual is no longer able to keep up with the bulk of e-mails. When this happens, one has the option to just hire someone to do just this specific task (e-mail management). With this, your mind would be free to just concentrate on money-making schemes on the Internet. All that the ‘secretary’ would have to inform you are the ‘sorted e-mails’ which are relevant to the business (just make sure that the person who sorts the e-mails is trustworthy and very patient).

These are but mere guidelines on how to manage e-mails as a busy Internet marketer. It still helps to set your own rules and to stage your own schemes to supervise your business. Your own set of rules will always be the best set of rules that would suit you.

Jeanne

Andy Britnell asked:




I remember how intrigued I was when years ago, and long before I had heard of time management, I recognised the link between time and money, realising that we say that we ‘spend’ or ‘invest’ both time and money, and also talk about ‘saving’ time and money.

Moreover we usually find that in order to save time, we have to spend money, and vice versa. For example, to save time cooking, we might buy ready- prepared food. Our decision depends on our circumstances and priorities – someone else might well prefer to save some money and spend more time preparing and cooking a meal.

We make these choices all the time and often have no objective yardstick to show us how effective they are – unless our choices are so extreme that eventually we are totally overloaded with commitments, or on the other hand we run out of money! Constantly trying to keep a balance between spending and saving time and money demands a willingness to keep checking priorities.

This is particularly true of self-employed people starting or growing a business. It can be tempting to try and keep all costs as low as possible and do everything yourself. But this can be counter-productive when you realise just how many activities business start-up and business growth entail.

You need to think carefully about money and time management. If you can pay a specialist to do a job and thus free yourself up to do something else, that may be the better solution. Our investments in both time and money will ultimately pay off in the success of our business and the happiness of our lives. It makes sense to think carefully about the balance.

Derek

Jim Coyle asked:




Any time that you do something to better your business, it is going to take some time and most likely cost you money. However, the idea behind spending money and time to better your business is that it will be worth it. The time and money taken to make improvements should ultimately lead to a return on investment. This means that the profit will pay for what you put out and also pull in even more money. That is why in business consulting, Naperville experts, in Illinois, are being selected.

Businesses in Naperville and outside of it have found that consulting services offer an excellent value. Even if they are experiencing a downtrend during tough economic times, the investment can prove valuable in order to counteract the effects that a burdened economy is having on the business. Just know that this is something that does take time and money.

Time

Through consulting, Naperville advisors can work to solutions as long as may be needed. This takes time but also saves time. How is this possible? Well, think about the amount of time it would take you to evaluate every function within your business, find what is wrong with each function, come up with a plan to make each area function better, and then implement that plan throughout the entire business. This is a process that could take business owners years for the fact that you also have functions you must perform to keep the business running.

When looking to consulting, Naperville experts can be difficult to find. You have to find the best consultant for you, ask that consultant questions, talk to the consultant, and then implement the plan that the consultant draws up for you. But the truth is that the consultant is going to do most of the work for you. What would take you years will take a consultant a fraction of the time to complete. This means that you will see improvement faster. This faster improvement time can also result in faster profits.

Money

As you can imagine. Improving a business through the use of solid consulting, Naperville business advisors do cost money. You may pay on a contractual basis or you may pay on an as needed basis. You may even pay hourly. It depends on what kind of deal you are able to arrange. Nevertheless, the investment is going to be a wise and worthwhile one for the fact that your business will improve. These business improvements will then lead to profits.

The person you hire that is doing the consulting, Naperville or elsewhere, will come up with a plan for you to follow. When you follow that plan, you can achieve profits. The idea is for it to seem as if you never spent the money to begin with because your new profits will pay for the services that you took advantage of.

So are consulting services worth the time and money? Yes, they are. Most of the biggest corporations enlist the services of consultants to help them address new and old issues that develop within their businesses. That’s one of the reasons why they are successful.

Peter

Zach Thompson asked:




Ask yourself this simple question, where does a company lose most of its money? For a myriad of businesses the answer is precise INVENTORY CONTROL! A large majority of them don’t even realize the amount of money they are losing, since they don’t have a proper asset management system set in place. The main reasons that lack of inventory control results in monetary loss is there are poor records for what products are being used, who is using them, when they are being used, and where they are going or coming from. All this information is vital for precise inventory tracking, counting, and monitoring.

Losing cash for frivolous reasons is only half of the problem. Wasted time is the other, since there are only so many hours in a day companies are always looking for ways to become more labor efficient. The amount of wasted time looking for lost inventory (that is rarely recovered) and the amount of stress and hassle accompanying it is detrimental to maintaining a self-efficient workforce. Often multiple people are hired on salary solely for the purpose of counting inventory. Not only is that tens of thousands of dollars that could be put towards better uses, but it also slows down multiple business processes due to a lack of labor efficiency. This all wouldn’t be necessary if there was a way to efficiently and effectively regulate inventory.

Even having to manually scan every product’s bar code is incredibly time consuming when compared to the next era of inventory management. The future is WIRELESS inventory management! The power of wireless lies in its ability to provide VALUE to any organization. By effectively using RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology, any business will be able to immensely increase labor efficiency and drastically decrease inventory costs, which results in a high ROI (return on investment)!

Here is an example of how RFID can save any business TIME and MONEY! Heart catheterization labs at hospitals lose hundreds of thousands of dollars every year simply because they have poor proper inventory control measures in place. Instead of nurses focusing on sick patients (aka their job), they have to go into every cath lab at a hospital and manually count all the inventory in the rooms multiple times per week. WHAT A WASTE! Not only does this bring into account the human error of manually counting, but it is very labor inefficient since it wastes hours a day. Now imagine just one of these nurses being able to spend the total of one hour a day walking through all the cath labs and waving a “magic wand” around, which counts everything in the room and organizes it into a computerized database. This is the power of WYZE-SCAN(TM), which is a wireless inventory management system!

WYZE-SCAN(TM) works by simply adhering a smart RFID label to the inventory inside of the Cath Lab. The tags have a small antenna that is able to emit radio signals that carry small bits of information about the product it is attached to, such as the product’s name and expiration date. All one has to do to precisely count and track every product in the room is to wave around the wireless hand held scanner called the “magic wand.” The scanner picks up the radio signals of every product and does an inventory count with astounding precision in a fraction of the time it would take someone to hand count every item in the room. Reports can be generated for items that have expiration date codes, replenishment lists, and costs of procedures for each doctor and patient.

Clifford

trueblue88 asked:


I don’t actually have a set career at this point, but is project management a good skill to have, or is it a waste of time and money for the class?

Audrey