A strange phenomena has been spreading like a virus over the past few months. In the past four weeks alone, three of my clients have told me that their website designer or virtual assistant has “disappeared.” No return phone calls, unanswered emails. Gone, gone, gone.

Kidnapping? Hardly. When the economy gets tough, many website designers and virtual assistants (small business owners themselves) simply go out of business. Some get full-time jobs in corporations, some just shut their doors. If they use a lot of sub-contractors to fulfill project demands, they find that the sub-contractor pool is drying up, and they may become less responsive to your voicemails and emails.

This is a huge problem for small business owners, who rely upon their website designer or virtual assistant to maintain and upgrade their websites for them. There’s not much you can do if your website designer or VA goes out of business. But you can protect yourself and prepare yourself to move to a new website designer. You just need to have access to all your files before your website designer disappears.

When we design websites for our clients, we always give them the following information immediately after the site is complete. Print out this checklist to get control of your website for the future:

• Login information for the hosting company control panel (CP).
• FTP login information.
• Blog login information (this may be different than 1 and 2 above).
• Email address login information for each email account (you may have more than one email address for your domain, such as office@domain.com or mary@domain.com or info@domain.com).
• Other login information to auxiliary software, like membership software, forum software, content management systems, etc.
  Logins for Google Analytics and Google Adwords, if you use either of these services.
• A copy of all your website coding, graphic, audio, video and animation files, including the original source files for all your graphics and Flash files (typically Photoshop for graphics and Flash for animation), on CD or DVD.
• Written confirmation that YOU own the content of the website and have the right to transfer it, edit it, submit it to Federal Copyright Office, sell it, etc.
• For security purposes, if your website designer disappears, change ALL login IDs and passwords on your accounts. In addition, if you have given your website designer your credit card information, you may wish to cancel the card and have a new number re-issued.

I think we may see more of this happening in 2009. I recommend you get the above items from the person who maintains your website today so that you have full control of your website — and your internet marketing — for the future.

Once again, I’m PUSHING all of you to hire a VA (virtual assistant). I have been listening (yet again) to a teleseminar about managing your life as an entrepreneur and the person cannot emphasize enough about why we all need to hire out our lower level tasks & responsibilities so we can focus on our higher level ones…

And, I wanted to let you know about a new company (new to me):  http://cybertary.com/ I first learned about them because they found one of my articles on http://ezinearticles.com, asked if they could use it in one of their newsletters (and I now have several that they’ll be using in upcoming issues.  Also, they’ve asked me to do a webinar for their franchisees, which I, of course, will be doing.

So, check out their website…they have a free consultation, so what is there to lose?  And they also have some great free tips:  http://cybertary.com/public/Cybertary/free_tips.php.  You might want to take a look.

Just a suggestion.

Meggin | 8/20/08

An article in the paper the other day, quoting Tim Ferriss (the one who wrote the 4-Hour Work Week that members of MEMc received last fall, I believe) suggested two sites that I had not heard of yet, but may very well be learning more about, as another resource to have on hand:

www.AskSunday.com

www.GetFriday.com

I also just listened to a keynote speaker this morning who was a fighter pilot and uses the metaphor of flying in his speeches…and he talks about having a “wingman.”  Virtual assistants are your ‘wing-people.’

Just a thought on this holiday weekend.

Posted by Meggin | 7/6/08

Okay, I’m organizing my planner months in advance in order to carry out all the necessary things I need to do so I can accomplish my goals. Follow up calls to principals that I sent tips booklet letters and order forms to is a task that needs to be accomplished. I want to spend time every day doing this. As I was writing down this task in my planner I started thinking that maybe this would be a good time to start delegating more.

Delegating is a “secondary” goal that I’m keeping in the back of my mind. I think I remember you making a comment that you have Lisa do follow up calls for you. For this type of task, would it be best if I made the calls or should I find a virtual assistant to do this for me? I can see advantages of doing it either way.

Can you give me some examples of what type of language I should use when I make these calls? We’ve talked about this before but can you refresh my memory? What are some “phrases” I can practice before I make the calls?

Posted by Billy Simms (to the Help Desk and excerpted for the blog) | 1/10/08

Answer:

Good for you!!! For right now, I think if you can make the calls, that would be great…and then when you can find someone who is excellent and you can train that person to do the follow up calls…then start to have him/her do some, too. It’s got to be someone who has excellent communication skills and “gets” what it is that you do, too.

Try just making a few calls each day and see how that goes.

Here are some suggestions on the phrasing & language: “Hi, this is Billy Simms and I was just calling to check to make sure you had received the booklet on bullying that I sent last week. It’s called _____________ and would have come in a regular business sized envelope. I wanted you to have this with my compliments and I know how the holiday mail goes sometimes…so I just wanted to make sure you’d gotten it.”

Then, depending on the response, go from there. If no, you could ask, “would you like me to send you another one?”–but only if you see bullying as an issue at your school, that is. Or, “would you like me to fax over a couple of the pages so you can see the kinds of tips I offer…they are great for teachers and other people in your school who are helping to address any bullying problems that might crop up.” If yes, then you can ask if s/he has had time to read it and then let him/her know that you have quantity discounts if they’d like to order enough for their teachers and that you do workshops on these topics, etc. Find out if s/he has any questions, etc…. Keep it short unless the person keeps it going. It’s key to get past the secretary if you can.

Meggin’s note:  Billy came up with the idea to offer to send the e-version of his booklet and this has made a huge difference in getting through to the principals.  Hooray!    Having digital versions of your writing is so wonderful because it doesn’t “cost” you anything to send it.  I’ve got lots of my digital items listed on one of my new websites www.FromtheDeskofMegginMcIntosh.com.  And, BTW (by the way), I’d encourage you to get a domain name that is something like this….but with your name of course.