Work-at-Home - West at Home

Who are they? What do they do?

West at Home is a company that provides call center services by utilizing home based agents. Their high quality customer relations services have earned them an award in 2008 for the Contact Center Company of the Year.

They have 20 plus years of providing customer service under their belt and they continue to meet the demands of their contractors with the best support agents possible. They use cutting edge technology and they use the best training materials, so their contractors are never left unsatisfied with the performances of their agents.

What type of work would I be doing?

If you're hired for them, you would be providing customer relation services. Some of the tasks that could be involved with a position with them include:

• Obtaining and verifying customer information
• Resolving issues
• Explaining sales features
• Offering new products or services

Your job duties will depend on the position you're hired for and those duties will be given in more detail at that time.

How much can I earn? How would I be paid?

Each project is different. Some will be hourly, some per minute and some per call rates. West at Home, however, will determine if the total amount that you would be paid is greater or less than your state's minimum wage. You would be paid the higher rate at all times.

You would receive your pay via direct deposit or, if you prefer, a pay card option. Pay will be on a biweekly basis.

Along with your pay, West at Home offers their agents flexibility of scheduling, opportunity to work from their own home office and some medical and dental benefits from an outside provider should you qualify. West at Home doesn't offer vacation pay or insurance benefits though.

Do they offer training?

Yes, West at Home will have training for their new home based agents. You will also be paid for your training. You will receive training specific to the company you would be working for, so you won't be left high and dry and not knowing what you're supposed to do.

Their training sessions are completed online, so you would be able to attend them from your own home office.

Are there any requirements to apply for them?

Besides job commitment and professional work performance, West at Home does have some other requirements. They are listed on their FAQ page. They are looking for specific PC requirements from their home based agents.

How do I apply for them?

Their website contains their online application that you can easily fill out. They have a section on their website where you can check on the status of your application; otherwise they will contact you when they're ready.

If you have what they're looking for, you will be contacted for an interview with the company. If you pass the interview stage, you will then be notified of a position within their company.

If you accept a position with them, you will then be given all the necessary information you will need for your new position.

Export all your Google Docs Files with One Click

See how easy it is to export all your Google Docs files as a zip file in a single click using the Google Takeout service.

Do you want to put all your Google Docs files on a USB drive before you take that road trip? The Google Docs website does offer an easy option to help you download all your documents in one zip file but there’s another simpler alterative that you may want to give a try– it’s called Google Takeout.

Once you have logged in to Google Takeout with your Google Account, select the Google Docs service and hit the “Create Archive” button. It will create a zip file with all your Google Docs files and you can either keep the browser window open while the archive is being readied or download that file later from the Google Takeout website.

Google Takeout will export your Google Documents in standard Office file formats by default – Excel for spreadsheets or PowerPoint for Presentations – but you also have an option to export files in either PDF or OpenOffice formats.

Google Takeout is part of dataliberation.org, a Google project that wants to make it easy for you to import and export data out of various Google products. The same tool may also be used to export your Picasa photos and Contacts data out of Google Servers though, surprisingly, it doesn’t offer Gmail export yet.

Coming back to Google Docs, here’s a quick video that shows how easy it is to export your Google Docs files using Google Takeout.

Upload Office Files to Google Docs From The Right Click MenuUse Google Docs To Compare Two Text Files OnlineConvert Web Files to PDF with Google Docs ViewerZoho Will Help Backup All Your Google Docs Documents LocallyHow Guest Can Upload Files to Your Google DocsAmit Agarwal is a personal technology columnist at WSJ India, author and founder of Digital Inspiration, a widely-read tech and how-to blog. Send him an email at amit@labnol.org.

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How To Think Positively- 7 Tips For Success

As children we were all naturally positive thinkers, believing that anything was possible and we could achieve everything we wanted in life.

The stresses and strains of adult life tend to cloud our minds and many people get stuck into a rut of negativity.

We believe we don’t have the ability to do anything worthwhile; we live for the weekends and holidays, and spend our days in the office just passing time.

Regaining a positive attitude can change all that.  By learning to think positively, all your dreams and goals will suddenly seem attainable once more.

Making a success of your own business is much easier if you are able to get rid of your negativity and think positively.

How to think positively – 7 tips for success.

Thinking positively is not a temporary way to make a specific achievement; it is a total change in the way you think and act. Here are a few practical ways to introduce positive thinking into your every day life and business.

1. Develop a positive attitude

If you expect success you have a good chance of achieving it.  You should never be blind to the things that could go wrong, but finding a positive way to manage your risks will help you to believe that your project is going to do well.

2. Think and talk in positive terms

The language you use will have an enormous impact on your own subconscious as well as the people around you.  Use positive terms to gain confidence and convince yourself and other people that you will achieve your goals.

Negative and uncertain terms to avoid 

3. Surround yourself with positive people

Positive thoughts and expressions can be as contagious as negativity, although we are not usually so aware of it.  If other people around you are expecting success and happiness then this will improve your general outlook as well.

4. Substitute negative thoughts for positive ones.

When something has not gone as planned don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on it and worrying about it.  Do focus on the lessons you have learned and visualize how well it will go next time, using the experience you have gained.

As Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, once said;

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty”

5. Balance negative images with positive ones

We are bombarded with negative images all day without being aware of it.

Reading the paper, or watching the news will inevitable bring the world’s problems to your attention, and watching sad or violent films can fill our minds with negative thoughts.

Balance this onslaught of negativity by listening to music that makes you happy, watching inspirational films or reading a positive book that you really enjoy.

Balancing the negative images in your mind with positive ones will improve your overall outlook dramatically.

6. Be physically positive

Your posture can contribute greatly to your disposition. Walking tall and taking long strides, keeping your head up and making eye contact can all dispel those negative thoughts.

Some people find it helps to sing an upbeat song in their head as they are going about every day tasks.  This is a great way to put a swing in your step and a smile on your face.

You can go as far as imagining yourself in a positive situation.  I once had to approach a group of managers sitting around a table in an open plan office.  I was the new office junior and scared stiff.

Instead of shuffling up to them with my eyes down, I though to myself “You might be my superiors now but I will be your boss one day.”

This gave me the confidence to approach the group positively with a knowing smile on my face, and get exactly what I wanted.

Physical exercise can be another great way to increase your positive mental state.  Regularly walking, swimming, cycling or playing sport can help to lift negative thoughts and worries by increasing endorphins that promote happiness and wellbeing.

7. Find your happy trigger.

What makes you happy no matter what?  Maybe it is a song, a joke, a pet, or even simply being outside in the sunshine.  When the going gets tough, and it will, have a trigger to keep you thinking positively.

How To Use Google Analytics Goals And Funnels

How to Use Google Analytics Goals & Funnels

Every website has a main objective. To obtain the objective you set goals.

Those goals are broken into steps that have to be taken in order to reach the goal which gets you one step closer to fulfilling your objective.The process of going through each step is your funnel.

Goals allow you to see the conversion rate and monetary value of your traffic.

Funnels allow you to monitor how frequently your site visitors start the conversion process, complete it, abandon it and at what point they abandon so you can work on ways to improve your return on investment (ROI).

Some examples of goals might be tracking how many people completed your sales process and reached the thank you/download page.

It might be monitoring what percentage buyers take you up on your upsell offer and where in the process the rest abandon the offer.

For this demonstration, we will be using Google Analytics goals to measure how well our about page works at sending visitors to our services page.

You will need:

1. To have your goals (up to 20) and funnel figured
2. To know the URLs for each page in your funnel (up to 10)
3. To know the value of your goal (optional) – you’ll find an explanation further down.
4. An existing Google Analytics account with the tracking code installed on your website.

Step 1: Choose Your Profile & Navigate to Goals Setup Area

Log into your account and from the View Reports dropdown, select the site in which you want to set up your goals.

Select Goals from the left sidebar.

In the Goals Overview section, click the Set up Goals & Funnels link at the bottom.

Step 2: Set Up Goal(s)

In the goals section, you have the option to add up to four sets of conversion goals. You can then add up to 5 goals per “set”. Click Add Goal next to Goals (set 1) to get started.

You’ll have several places to fill in to get your goal set up. Let’s quickly go through each item…

Goal Name: Name your goal something you’ll quickly recognize

Active Goal: Make sure your goal is turned “On” so it will track. Turning it “Off” will stop the tracking but not delete the goal.

Goal Position: This allows you to control the order in which a goal appears in your report. It also lets you move a goal from one set to another without having to set up a completely new goal.

If this is the first goal you’re setting up, from the drop-down menu, select “Set 1, Goal 1”.

Goal Type: There are three types of goals; URL Destination, Time on Site and Pages/Views.

Once you select the goal type you want to set up, a “goals details” box will open, allowing you to enter more details about your goal.

Match Type: You have three options for how you want to match your goal…

• Exact Match – An exact match of every character in your URL – without exception According to Google, you’d use this when your URLs are easy to read and do not vary.

• Head Match - This matches the identical part of the URL string you specify. So you can specify only part of the URL and it will only match that part.

Google suggests you use this option if your website has dynamically generated content, use the Head Match filter and leave out the unique values.

• Regular Expression Match – With this option you can create wildcard matching. This could be useful when you’re tracking multiple items from within a folder such as download links.

For example, if you had multiple downloadable products in a folder called “downloads” that was housed in a folder called “members” you would enter /members/downloads/ in the regular expression field and it would track ALL of the files within that folder.

Case Sensitive: Are the URLs you entered above case sensitive? If so check this.

Goal Value: If your goal completion has a dollar value, enter it here.

Example: If your product sells for $100 and you know that 20% of the people who visit the page will buy, you could assign a $20 value to your goal.

If you’re going to add a Goal Funnel, click the plus sign. If you’re not, click Save Goal.

Step 3: Set up Funnel

We chose to do a URL Destination goal so here we will enter the URL to the first page of our conversion funnel.

This page should be a common page that all users working their way through your goal will land on – typically not your product page

Name the step so you can easily recognize it in the reports.

If this step is required to complete the conversion process, check the box.

Important! If you select this, any users reaching your goal page without going through this page will not be counted as conversions.

Repeat the process to set up the remaining steps in your funnel & click save when finished.

We only have one page for our funnel and one goal so we’re finished.

Once your finished setting up your goals and funnels, it’s time to wait. How long you wait depends on how busy your site is and how long you want to track everything.

Step 4: Checking Stats

When you’re ready to check your stats, log into your account, select the appropriate profile and then click Goals as you did in Step 1.

The first page you see will be your Goals Overview page. We set our goal & funnel up on March 28th so as you can see, there are no stats prior to that time.

From the above page, you can get many views of your stats.

Dates: In the upper right corner you’ll see the date span. You can select the drop-down arrow to change your date range. We changed ours to March 27th so we had a better view of just the dates being tracked.

You can also check stats by hours, days, weeks and months by clicking the icons directly below the date as shown below in the green box.

Goal Conversion Rate: Clicking the Goal Conversion Rate tab will allow you to change the view of your graph. You can view one at a time, compare two or compare one site to another (providing you have more than one site set up).

Advanced Segments: Clicking the “All Visits” above the date will allow you to choose what segments you want to view. You can also create new segments customized specifically for you.

Goal Verification: Clicking Goal Verification in the sidebar will bring up your main stats and show you the page URLs being tracked along with their individual stats.

Reverse Goals Path: Clicking Reverse Goals Path in the sidebar you’ll be able to see where your traffic came from and where they went to, to arrive at that destination.

Goal Funnel Visualization: Clicking Funnel Visualization in the sidebar will give you a visual look at your pages. Ours is not reading correctly because we only have on page in our funnel. You must have more than one in order for it to show correctly.