How To Manage Your Online Business From Anywhere In The World

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One of the things I love about Internet Marketing is the massive amount of flexibility it gives me in my life. I know I don’t always appreciate this, but when I talk to old school and university friends and hear them moaning about their boss at work, or their early mornings, I soon realise how lucky I am.

One of the benefits of this flexbility is that I have the freedom to work from anywhere I want, when I want. And with a little bit of help from a few online applications, I can even get away with not needing my laptop with me at all times (although it’s recommended if you really do want to sit on the beach sipping margaritas…).

If I don’t have my laptop, all I need to do is find an Internet cafe or Internet point and I can keep tabs on my business from anywhere in the world. To do this I use a few handy applications:

Google Mail (Gmail) - I now use Gmail to manage all of my email accounts, including those linked to my various websites.

It’s fairly simple to set this up, just click “Settings” in the top right of your screen once you’re in your Gmail account, Click the “accounts” tab and then click the “Add Mail Account” link in the section titled “Get mail from other accounts”. As long as your hosting provider supports POP3 you should be able to retrieve you email from up to 5 different accounts, as well as sending through these accounts, all while logged into Gmail.

I cheat a little with this process, as I use one email account on my hosting as a sort of dump email account which I forward all other email accounts through (you should be able to set this up within your hosting control panel). This allows me to retrieve the email from over 30 email accounts with minimum effort.

Using Gmail like this means whereever I am in the world I can always get access to my emails, without the need for outlook or my own computer.

DLGuard - DLGuard is a fantastic script/software which runs on my server to protect and manage all my downloads for my various digital products. From the DLGuard control panel I can monitor sales, conversions, and email secure download links to my clients. DLGuard also ensures all my products are automatically delivered to my customers instantly and I don’t have to do a thing! I can also adjust the prices of my products with minimum effort at the click of a button. It’s not the cheapest script, but it’s well worth the one-time payment and has saved me thousands of dollars in time which would have otherwise been spent delivering products and dealing with problems.

Google Docs - Google docs can be accessed through my Google Mail account, and this set of online applications allow me to write reports and ebooks whilst on the move without the need for a normal wordprocessor. All my work is stored securely in my Google account so when I get home I can continue working on anything with no fuss. I also use Google Docs to help manage any outsourcing clients as I can share documents and lists with outsourcing contacts to keep tabs on their progress.

Google Analytics - Another essential tool in every Internet Marketers aresenal should be Google Analytics which allows me to monitor all the stats for my websites. I can monitor where my visitors are coming from, how long they stayed on my site, and many other details which are useful in analysing and optimising my sites for more traffic and conversions.

AskJamesDyson Helpdesk - Having my own helpdesk site enables me to easily manage customer enquiries and problem, wherever I’m working from. I use the Trellis Desk script for my helpdesk and this gives me a range of features which are helpful in helping give my customers the best service possible. Using a helpdesk also allows me to cut down on spam problems which are associated with simply giving out an email address on my site.

Those are the main tools I use on a daily basis to manage my business, no matter wherever I find myself working from. If you are finding yourself restricted to one location or you’re worried about managing your IM business on the move, I hope this has given you some extra ideas on how to manage your business. And if you haven’t yet made the move to being your own boss - I hope this is something of a motivator to you.

Let me know what you think, and if you’re having any trouble with these apps give me a shout and I’ll get some videos up here to help you out.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 7:23 pm and is filed under James Dyson News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.