If you have good administrative skills and secretarial skills, and would like to work at home, you might consider setting up business as a Virtual Assistant, or VA.

A VA is someone who works from home to provide administrative support to various business clients via the Internet, email, fax, and the telephone. In most cases the client and VA never actually meet in person; as long as both parties are connected to the Internet, where each happens to be located is “virtually” irrelevant.

As a Virtual Assistant you would be able to offer a range of services such as word processing, typing and correspondence tasks, data entry, transcription, proof-reading and editing services, online filing, email and voicemail, newsletter and brochure writing and handling, social media, website and blogging work, billing, database handling, book-keeping, party and event planning, Internet research… and anything else your clients might want to throw at you!

You would have to decide whether to offer a whole range of services or whether to specialize and concentrate on just one or two.

The Virtual Assistant industry is relatively new, but it is set to grow fast as more and more business managers come to see the advantages of outsourcing administrative tasks to online professionals.

The most obvious advantage is the cost savings for businesses. With the onset of recession you can expect companies to take this more and more into consideration, further stimulating the growth in demand for Virtual Assistants.

Cost savings go beyond the basic consideration of getting a particular job done more cheaply by outsourcing it. Unlike regular employees, VAs come with little “baggage” such as lateness, sickness, time-wasting, health and sickness, unions, pensions and employee legislation, plus the cost of maintaining an office in which they can work. All these factors suggest that more and more businesses will look with increasing interest on outsourcing their work to VAs.

So how much could you charge for your services? Anything between $10 and $80 per hour, depending on the service and your qualifications. Basic services such as word processing can start at around $10-$15 per hour, or you could choose to charge by the word, especially if you are a fast typist. If you offer book-keeping, document editing or composition services you should be able to charger higher rates and still offer your clients a saving when compared to the price of doing the job in-house.

As a VA working at home alone you may think that there is only so much that you can do, and therefore there must be a limit to the amount you can earn. However, that is not necessarily the case.

As your client base grows you could think about building your own team of VAs and subcontracting work to them for a commission. Many people would be only too pleased to have someone supply them with a means of income without having to go out and find it on their own account.

For those VAs in your team who want to build their own business, you can provide them with the set up services they need by affiliating with a web hosting provider and other necessary services and build an extra stream of residual income.

The basic tools to get started are a computer with an Internet connection, a telephone and a fax. A website where you can advertise your services and provide contact details would also be useful.

You can find out more about becoming a VA from http://www.iava.org.uk/

Tags:
Business Success,
Business Tools,
Home Business,
Online Business,
Online Profits

Source: Home Business

When it comes to selecting a freelancer or a team of freelancers, follow these several points so you actually get what you want.

1. Do they follow directions? When you create your bid requirements for elance.com or rentacoder.com, you can state you’d like a sample of their work. Are you hiring a writer? Ask for a 100-200 word sample on topic X. If they contact you and don’t even provide that, don’t hire them. You know they will not follow directions and not listen to what you want done.

2. Do they have negative feedback? The beauty of looking at sites such as elance.com or rentacoder.com is their feedback system. You are able to see what kind of projects the freelancers have completed in the past and whether or not they deliver in a timely fashion. This is your hard earned cash you are spending, so it makes sense to see what other people have experienced before in the past. You don’t need to waste time being someone’s guinea pig.

3. Consider the time zone differences. When you outsource your work to a team half way around the world, expect there to be some lag time in work completion and also communication.

4. Look at the profile. Take a quick look at the freelancer’s profile. Do they have a clean-cut picture of themselves? Do they fill out the biography section that should state what their qualifications are. This may give you a little more insight into whether or not this person will be able to meet your needs and the needs of your business.

5. Do they write proper English? If you have an article you want to outsource, does the person responding to you actually write proper English? Seriously. This is something your name will go on, so you want to make sure it sounds professional. At the same time, you really shouldn’t expect a journalist either unless you come prepared to the table with some money. Most writers will charge between $5 and $10 for an article.

6. Can they actually meet your deadline? Often times a freelancer will create a generic bid and basically send out the same message to a bunch of different jobs at the same time. Once they win an auction, things all of a sudden crop up. Take the time to send them a quick message and reiterate the importance of them meeting your deadline. They may have other jobs going on, but then they should take on more than they can handle in the first place.

Tags:
Business Success,
Business Tools,
Home Business,
Online Business,
Small Business

Source: Online Business

Having a home business is a tremendous accomplishment and will provide you with income as well as pride in yourself. Being able to stay at home and to forgo the daily commute to an office through congested traffic, is worth a lot in terms of stress relief.

Once you have settled into a niche that makes money online, there are many ways that a person can make their environment a little more efficient and more productive.

One such method is to take a look at where and how you work. Does your office produce a real working environment and a goal oriented space? That means, you should keep a desk that has the necessary papers and tools available within easy reach so that you do not have to waste time looking for things. Recommendations are: a blotter with dates, a stapler, a filing system with trays or with folders, pens, CD discs, a phone, a scanner and printer. You can have a mailing station set up on another table if you do a lot of mailing packages, tapes, or cds.

Have all the accessories you need such as mailing envelopes, tape, address labels, zip code directory, etc. available and within easy reach. Keep your main desk clean and use space so that there is a feeling of “productivity” when you sit at your computer. Do not have schedules of the kids and other things in your life imposing on your work environment. When you are at your desk, spend the time contemplating your work and what you want to accomplish for that time because it is so very easy to wake up and find you have spent two hours reading email and checking out links.

Making a check list the night before to keep on track of your next day’s activities, is a very good method to accomplishing more than you think possible. Crossing items off your list makes you feel like you have worked hard and gives you a good sense of pride. This helps propel you into your next activity and refresh you for the coming situations. Keeping the list in priority status also keeps you on track and gets the most accomplished for the day.

Having some diversions like soft music is also a good relief for the mind. Creating a background that keeps you in a good frame of mind makes for more productive work as well.

It is also a good idea to get up and stretch once in a while. Go to the refrigerator for a water or get an apple to eat while you contemplate the computer screen and your work. Remember, you are your own boss, so there is no one to tell you that you cannot eat at your desk! However, there is also no one to tell you that you should not spend working time playing games online, either, so you have to make yourself do what is on your schedule and your priority list to grow your business. It is just a matter of learning the appropriate methods to enable you to work in the manner that seems best and most efficient for you.

Once you are serious about your work and your workday, you will find a tremendous sense of confidence and pride and will know that your abilities are more than enough to fulfill your life’s dream and ambition.

Tags:
Business Success,
Business Tools,
Home Business,
Personal Success

Source: Home Business