A long time ago, I listed myself in Guru as a writer. Being as busy as I am I have yet to bid on, nor take (obviously) any new jobs via their website. “Scott” on the other hand signed up as the seo/marketing type so we do have a great balance of what our combined “portfolio” is all about… content and seo (we’ve been doing it for others and ourselves for years now).

This post, however, is about an interesting email I received this morning from Guru. It’s a Promotional Newsletter with the subject line, “Save more green by going Green.”

What the heck does an online go-to spot have (other than being web-based) that’s green? The answer should be obvious…

… Talent!

Their email byline is “Freelancers can help you save money and help save the Earth.”

Now as badly as I’d like to “sell” Whole Hog Blogs to you, or even our word-of-mouth OIMConsulting (use the contact form over at My Wizard Ads if you need top-level marketing assistance for your brick and mortar business trying to make its presence known on the web since OIMConsulting is really word of mouth only), places like Guru and eLance also have a huge pool of talent to use. (Great run-on sentence there, sorry.)

Their “going green” message has to do with hiring Virtual Assistants, and their reasons why this is green include:

1. Reduced training costs
2. Less turnover in your brick & mortar business
3. Using less energy since you don’t supply office space
4. Less paperwork invoicing – they have an “escrow” payment

Everyone is talking about reducing their “carbon footprint” (but if you pay attention to Linda over at Forcedgreen and Barbara’s blog GoalForTheGreen, you’d understand it’s not so much carbon as perhaps methane giving us all fits and starts with global warming – follow them on this, they are the experts), and any time you outsource your advertising of course you’re doing your part to save the world – plus getting the job done right.

Five additional reasons why outsourcing is a great idea (paraphrased of course) are:

1. Gas consumption is reduced
2. Lessens the need to build new roads
3. Less energy consumption heating and cooling buildings
4. “Minimizing run-off and disturbance in natural habitats”
5. Reducing pollutants and greenhouse emissions.

(Frankly #4 has me slightly stumped, but I assume they mean you don’t have to add on that extra building to house more employees.)

Do NOT get me wrong! With unemployment this high, and our household a victim of these unfortunate times, too, I’m not taking all this “go green” stuff lightly.

By going green you’ll naturally cut down the costs of just running your own household.

By hiring green, you’re also doing your part to make this planet a healthy, even safer, place to live – not to mention cutting your business overhead costs thus increasing your bottom line.

Tags: brick and mortar, business, carbon footprint, Global warming, new jobs, office space, virtual assistants, whole hog, word of mouth

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 8:44 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.