For something to do the job nicely, care must be taken to make firm, workable options to execute it plus the same goes for web page designs. With a nicely believed out web page design, you will be able to produce a internet site that generates several streams of revenue for you personally. In fact, may well sites become online wasteland mainly because they are not nicely planned and don’t get just one visitor. Gradually, the webmaster will not be motivated to update it any longer and it turns into wasted cyberspace. Specialists will regularly claim the fact that uk search engine optimisation is an excellent place to begin.

The essential stage of preparing your internet site is optimizing it for revenue in case you need to gain any income from your internet site. Divide your internet site into major blocks, ordered by themes, and start building new pages and subsections in those blocks. For example, you may possibly have a “food” segment, an “accomodation” segment and an “entertainment” segment for any tourism internet site. You may then publish and publish related articles within the respective sections to entice a stream of visitors that arrives in search of further details. When you need to move up throughout search positions fast, look into uk search engine optimisation straight away!

Whenever you have a broader, better-defined scope of themes for your web page, it is possible to sell area on your pages to people considering advertising on your page. You may also earn from applications like Google’s Adsense and Yahoo! Search Marketing if people surf to those themed pages and click on the adverts. For this rather reason, the advertisement blocks on your pages need to be related to the content material, so a themed page matches that standards completely.

As World wide web turns into additional widespread, advertising on the web will bear additional results than on magazines or offline media. Hence, start tapping in on this profitable stream of profit right absent!

Every virtual assistant will need to assemble a team at some time in their career. When you gather a team around you, you open up a whole new world of opportunities. But, handling all those people will take more than your stellar brain. Balancing a variety of individuals with different areas of expertise and personalities can be more than simply a challenge…

Putting It Altogether

Make a fairly detailed list. Who is the most adept at a certain job? There are several ways you can do this. Let’s say that you want to hire someone to do article writing. If they are suitably qualified, they could take on the article writing needs for a number of different projects. Or you could attribute a certain VA to specialized areas that you work with, for example if you have a VA who is skilled at finances, allocate him or her to the appropriate client, while somebody who might be good at web design can work with clients who are looking for business development in that area.

What you want to do is spread out the work so that deadlines are getting met. Beware of burnout, which can come quickly if not careful. Take inventory of how many people you will likely need to cover your overflow.

Getting the Right Mindset

Why mindset? This will determine how you end up managing everybody. Micromanaging is not what you want or need. If you do that, you will only end up effectively doing it all yourself, anyway. Micromanaging is very bad for you. You’ll have to let your team of professionals operate on their own with minimal guidance ONCE you are comfortable with their skills.

You already know that each person will have a different way of working. The important thing is that they can deliver for you. You can give each person a probationary period to evaluate their work. Don’t try and do this when there’s a lot of pressure, so implement it early on. It’s not right to test them when the pressure is on in this way.

Project Tracking

A project management system lets you keep track of not only the projects but the subcontractors as well. You can have them upload their work at various stages so you can see how they are doing and report to your client. All required documents can be uploaded to the project area.

A system such as this is ideal if there are any questions, if you need to put more information in place or need to engage in team discussions. There are options for you. Basecamp is a system that allows you to create client lists, post projects and add users. Each of the virtual assistants who are contractors can have their own username and password for the system and limited access to only their projects.

SharePoint is another system. This system was created by Microsoft and functions in much the same way. Clients get access to some sites within the main area. They can view their work in progress and communicate questions or concerns right to you and the virtual assistance subcontractors.

Tracking your team is a matter of project management. If you want to rest easy, you need to know who is doing what and whether they are on time.

Who says that outsourcing is strictly for work? After all, as you are busy growing your business, there are many other things that you have to take care of, as well. Maybe it is possible to delegate these items to somebody else?

When work and home collide, it can become insane. You could be trying to edit articles at the same time as you are folding all your newly washed laundry. Or, you’ll be going over reports in your head while you cook dinner. Is this what you envisaged when you decided to become self-employed? You don’t have to put yourself through this, these days.

Again — Get Some Help

If you have found some virtual assistants to help you with your business, you already know what an advantage this can be. It’s time to apply this philosophy to your home. If you find people with the right abilities, you can outsource many of your home activities to them.

1. Childcare — one of the beauties of owning your own business, such as virtual assistance, is being able to spend a lot more time with your children. It’s possible that you could configure the makeup of your day, so that your children can stay home with you. As the business becomes more demanding, you’ll want to rethink that scenario. By taking on somebody, maybe part-time, looking after your kids can be a lot easier. You have options: a nanny in the home, a part-time babysitter from the neighborhood or a childcare center.

2. Housecleaning — this is a chore which we all like to avoid. Just because you work behind a computer, doesn’t mean that you don’t get tired as well. Mental tiredness is just as fatiguing as the physical version. After a day of managing clients and typing your fingers off, you won’t want to pick up one more thing whether its clothing or a dirty dish. Budget in to hire a maid service. This really is quite affordable and won’t break the bank. If you do a thorough cleaning of your home, a service can come in just to touch things up once a week or twice a month. See what a difference this will make. And to take advantage of this quickly, seriously consider taking on a virtual assistant, or even virtual assistants as part of a team to maximise your efforts in a very short span of time.

3. Bookkeeping – You’ll need to balance those books if you own a business. Everything might start to jumble together if you’re not careful. Waiting until tax time to handle them is an accident waiting to happen. Hire a freelance professional or another virtual assistance provider who specializes in bookkeeping to help you keep the business finances straight all along instead of at the last minute.

4. Your Business Needs – While you are building your business, administrative tasks seem to fall by the wayside. You’ll feel more at ease when you can find someone to do these things for you. Some of these tasks are just perfect for outsourcing:

• Website maintenance
• Writing content
• E-mail maintenance
• Sending out newsletters

What’s that? It’s the sound that you hear when you actually breathe easier as a consequence of finding somebody to help you as you grow your business, allowing you to actually enjoy some of the finer things in life, yes… other than working.

When I first began my business I wondered how much I should charge for my services. Now this was quite difficult for me, since the services I was offering, while I knew I could do them and do them well, I had never ‘actually’ done them online before. The virtual environment was all new to me and I was more used to working in an office and being paid a regular wage and I was afraid that I had an old-fashioned attitude to everything and thought that I ought to charge something very low to start off with; I wish I had thought this through better and considered the profit and looked at everything from a long-term perspective instead. All I could think of was new customers, right now… One side of me said that I had to be “competitive,” with prices fixed at a lower rate and this would mean that clients would just flock in. This was not the case at all, though.

Wow, Was I Stupid!

When I was finally able to launch my business, the price I set was ridiculously low for a VA based in Britain — in 2007 I was charging for administrative work just £10.50 per hour. This was much lower than any other VA around; in fact I think I had an old neighbour who was an ironing lady who got paid more than that.This must’ve been the lowest rate of any VA and I’m fairly sure that the old lady who lived next door who did ironing was getting more money than I was.

When he contacted me he was looking for a capital of Virtual Assistants, to help him with his business on an ongoing basis; he was a great guy and I have a lot of respect for him as one of my ongoing clients. We had a call together and he said he had calls arranged with other VA’s and that he would call me back when he had made his decision on who he was going to hire. He also asked me my rate – I told him and that was that.

Well, he did call me back, and when he did he very kindly told me that I was one of the best potential VA’s he had spoken to, and asked why my rate was so low… (I realise now he was probably thinking, “what’s the catch?” – or “what’s wrong with this girl!”) I explained that I wanted to remain competitive. To cut a long story short – he told me that the other VA he had chosen was charging £4.50 per hour more than me, and that if I was going to work with him, he would have to raise my rate to £15.00 per hour…

Well, you can imagine how I was feeling at this point — On the one hand, like Christmas had come, and on the other hand, like a Pratt. So, keep in mind that whether you’re considering virtual assistant certification now, or you’re thinking about hiring virtual assistants in future, or even if you’ve already had some sort of virtual assistance training, drop by for a visit and see for yourself what other like-minded people have to say within the extraordinary field of Virtual Assistance!

My advice when you’re considering choosing a rate for yourself, is to look within yourself – look at your skills, your work ethics, your commitment to your business and then decide what you are WORTH, not what you’re going to charge…

As I have been able to build up a nice and steady income with my virtual assistant business and my online business consultancy, I wanted to branch out in a new direction. I want to really start giving something back to my industry, Virtual Assistance.

The concern that I had is that I barely have enough time in the day already, running the company full time, managing the staff, and of course being a mum to my 1 and 2 year old… I had found some sort of a balance in my life, but doing the additional business development would of course tip the balance I had created.

I looked around for quite a while before finally making up my mind, but then decided that I was going to join Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind Course and Membership Mastermind Course. I have followed Yaro now for a very long time, because I am really drawn to his down-to-earth attitude to business, his zest for life and his ability to confidently make money online.

I joined having serious doubts that I could make the time for all the extra work, but I have always been up for a challenge. It turned out I was wrong, humans have an amazing ability to adapt to their situation and their circumstances. I certainly did.

So here are 5 Creative Ways in which I integrated the additional work for this new venture into my day:

1. Listen as much as possible.

Turn the music or the radio off and start listening to learning material while you work. This is good for when you are doing the more mundane “auto-pilot” tasks during the day.

This is funny, but when I take a bath in the evening, I take my iShuffle with me and clip it to my hair so I don’t mess it up, laying back, relaxing and listening to Yaro’s material, advice and interviews. Funnily enough I absorb information much better this way.

2. Do 10 minutes of exercise every morning.

Believe me, I am not really an exercise nut and I would far prefer to be laying out in the sun drinking a cocktail, but when I discovered how effective 10 minutes of Yoga (accompanied by a CD) can be, I became a lot more productive. Everything was much more positive at the beginning of the day, I was able to focus a lot more and lose weight as an additional bonus.

3. Take a note pad wherever you go.

You must have a note pad with you in every situation, or, of course, you can rely on your iPhone these days to quickly jot down any ideas or inspiration when it appears.

4. Do a research shopping list.

Before I started, I had to come up with a research shopping list of everything that I needed, as I had to gather audios, videos, downloads, links and websites and a whole bunch of other things in order to kickstart the process. This activity I delegated to one of my Virtual Assistants, to attend to all of the items on my shopping list. This saved me a lot of time, and I was able to simply work from only what I actually wanted and needed, and not have to sift through all the not useful/time wasting content I didn’t want.

5. Subscribe to feeds.

I needed to learn a lot about what was already happening out there, and with billions of websites, forums, blogs and kitchen sinks which I needed to know about and monitor daily, there was no way I could start doing the rounds every day checking to see any new activity. This is where RSS feeds are great, as when you find a place where there is interesting content, you simply subscribe and pick up this valuable material. Certainly, you need to focus on quality not quantity, but you have to add a means of sifting through the quantity to find the best. I set a time each day to quickly scan through all my feeds, picking out the ones with catchy headlines and pertinent information. Everything else is ditched. Information overload is a terrible thing – people can easily get sucked in by it and before you realise it, hours have passed by, so by doing this, I can save myself time and get the really valuable information I need, a bit like a magpie picking out the shiny things from the rubbish. This is just one of the methods which helped me to take a solo virtual assistant, to the elite standing of a global virtual assistance enterprise.

That’s about it! That’s how I took Yaro Starak (and lots of other people) in the bath with me, and how you can too.

No matter how well organized you are and how hard you work, sometimes things happen that you didn’t plan. You may need a quick infusion of cash for something fun, or to pay for an unexpected expense. One very popular option for generating some quick cash is by writing a few extra articles for others.

You may already write content for your website or blog, but no one is paying you up front for it. You hope that your sensational turns of phrase will inspire people to buy your products or recommendations, but sometimes there are not enough nibbles or even no bites at all.

Maybe it’s time for you to put all your talent to better use. By writing and submitting articles to Associated Content, you can earn money.

How to Get Started

If you are a website owner or have a business online, you may know a lot of relevant information anyway. You may already write and submit articles to article directories as a way of marketing your web business. Maybe you didn’t know something? Sites exist that will actually pay you for content like this, that is original and inspiring.

Let’s take a site like Associated Content for instance. When you sign up (for free) and set up your account, you become a content producer. Content producers write articles and are paid depending on how popular those articles become. Associated Content may be one of the better examples, but there are a number of other sites as well.

So, first, you start to gather article ideas. Have a look at this site to see what’s there. See what types of articles are published on the site that readers like and what subjects have been overdone. If you see articles that may be “too” popular, avoid these as you won’t get as high a pay rate.

If you want to see a steady stream of income from your efforts, focus on content that is both popular and evergreen. Evergreen content includes articles that appeal to just about anyone at any time: “How to Clean Your Oven” or “Choosing a Plumber.”

Another option is to get paid according to the number of times each page is viewed. Even after you have been paid for your article upfront, you can also get paid over and over again depending on the number of times people click and view your article. If you are socially connected on sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and others, you can post links and inform friends about what you are doing to increase your numbers. And to take advantage of this quickly, seriously consider taking on a solo virtual assistant, or even several virtual assistants to maximise your efforts in a very short span of time.

Attracting Higher Pay

If you’re in business, you know that you can always improve your planning. By adding a few things to your article efforts, you can reach out to more people. Why don’t you add some pictures? By adding some illustrations, especially if it is a picture of an item that you are reviewing, you will get more interest. It is quite common for them to come back for a second time and click through on your link. A virtual assistance specialist can help you get the word out fast, professionally.

Optimizing your articles with one or two keywords can help to rank that article higher in the search engines. Not only can friends and fellow content producers read your work, but other web surfers will find your information in Google, thereby increasing your articles’ page views – and therefore, your pay.

A common tip given to service providers who are growing their business is to outsource those things that you don’t like to do – like accounting or cleaning your house. While that’s good advice, it’s often not going to be what grows your business. Rather, you need to be looking around for people who have similar skills to yours.

Hiring Service Providers Like You

Hiring a bookkeeper will free up your time – but there are still only so many hours in your day and you can only multi-task so much before your work starts to degrade.

Subcontracting out your work to someone who does the same work you do is as close as you’ll get to cloning yourself. You have a very good idea of what you have to take on, of course, so you know what you should be looking for. This will help with communication and help insure consistent quality for your clients. More than that, you’ll be able to take on more work.

Let’s look at the example of an affiliate manager, who is normally able to field 200 or so questions, compile two new graphic creations and compose three promotional articles in any one week. If you can find a subcontractor who can do exactly the same thing, then you might be able to dedicate yourself to writing nine articles, making six graphics and just getting involved in answering 20 or so of those questions, per week. At the same time, your subcontractor is answering the rest of the questions and creating articles and graphics as well. Add another virtual assistant subcontractor to the mix and you can see how much more work you can get done.

Finding Somebody With Complementary Skills

Let’s consider what might happen if you took somebody on with complementary skills. For example, if you’re one of the virtual assistants who specializes in website management, you might hire a subcontractor who is really good at writing. Presto! She writes the content, you add it to the website and your client is tickled pink.

Why not consider finding somebody to help you with e-mail marketing, article distribution, other Web related issues and Internet marketing in general? When you have an expanded list of services to offer your clients, you will be ready to take on more and get paid more.

Hiring Process

Once you’ve decide what you are looking for in a subcontractor, you’ll need to find the right person. For example, you need to:

1. Ask colleagues for suggestions.
2. Go over the portfolios of potential hires.
3. Interviewing subcontractors
4. Asking for and following up with referrals
5. Evaluating how your personality works with the candidates
6. Determining the subcontractor’s work ethic

After you’ve decided you want to hire a virtual assistance provider, make sure you go through a trial period. Sometimes you don’t know how well someone will work out until you’ve actually worked with them.

The next phase is to sign a contract. This is very important as it will clarify exactly what each party needs to do. It’s also a very professional approach and asserts what will happen at the conclusion of the contract. You can find several sample contracts online – but always make sure you have an attorney who specializes in contracts review it for you. Following these guidelines will help you make the right choice when hiring a subcontractor.

Thought #1 Will My Child Have A Proper Education?

This is a major consideration and people look at it in very different ways. As my children are very young and I will go out of my way to ensure that they learn all about the alphabet, our numbers, colours and other important basics, I realise that I don’t need to have a formal education to be able to teach them all about these things.

When they get older I will avoid travelling to some of those exotic locales for lengthy periods and would be perfectly happy to find a good school for them in France, Italy or anywhere else in mainland Europe where I will locate for that time.

It doesn’t matter where you are going, you will normally come across some great English schools and it’s not necessary anymore to be truly concerned about your kids’ education. Even home schooling can get you by for a few months. As you can get a lot of the curriculum via the Internet today, you just need to ensure that you have explored all your options and are willing to make the right level of effort and commitment.

My 17-year-old brother is a typical teenager and even though I love him very much, he is constantly engaged in teenager style activities, such as hanging out with his mates, getting into trouble, going to parties, or playing computer games or interacting on Facebook. Whatever way we look at it, many kids these days in the western world are becoming increasingly bored with life, and I hope that my children will be able to have lots of new experiences and some education in different cultures and ways of life, as well as doing all the normal teenage stuff… I think that’s a bonus, don’t you?

Thought #2 Am I Being Overly Cautious Here?

Life is a gift and as far as we have any scientific proof, we only have one of them. It is very important to never live with regret, otherwise you will feel you have wasted it come the end…

No matter what, I never wanted to have a big “What If” hanging over my head, if things didn’t work out for me, I would much rather look back and think, “At least I did it.”

Being cautious is one thing, but wrapping yourself and your children up in cotton wool because you are worried what “could” happen or what “might” go wrong – is choosing the safe option, and perhaps even the easy option, which you may never break out of unless you take a “leap of faith” into the unknown.

The life of a digital nomad is certainly not easy all the time, but it’s definitely fun, cutting edge, somewhat risky and very exciting and I chose this path for myself. Being a digital nomad parent brings new challenges, but like I say – you only have one life, and for me, being able to see the world, and share that experience with my children is one of the best parts of it. So whether you’re considering how to be a virtual assistant now, or you’re thinking about how to be a virtual assistant in future, or even if you’ve already thoroughly evaluated how to be a virtual assistant, drop by for a visit and see for yourself what other like-minded people have to say within the extraordinary field of Virtual Assistance!

My honest advice to you if you are thinking about becoming a digital nomad, whether you have no children, are pregnant or have a family already, is not to think about it too hard, just to go ahead and jump in.

It’s not surprising that Twitter and a variety of other social networking sites are in the news all the time, considering that they work very well. Building links with Twitter is a fast, free way to grow your online business and create backlinks and traffic for your website. We talk about the best way to approach Twitter. These tips apply to both link building as well as good Twitter strategy in general.

• Growing your number of followers and building links with Twitter go hand in hand. It’s important for you to keep updating, as you build your following. Whenever somebody visits your Twitter profile, they need to see that there’s been recent activity, as if it has been quiet for weeks or months, they’re not likely to be interested in you.

• Make your tweets useful and interesting! Offer inspiration and useful information that people will want to retweet and you’ll gain new followers every day.

• Share your blog posts and articles with your Twitter followers. You can find plenty of plug-ins or applications that will automatically post your blog update or article. So long as you maintain value and credibility, your interesting posts and articles will keep your followers coming back again.

• If you want to stagger your tweets, check out Tweetlater to retweet 2 to 3 weeks after the initial post. With good quality material, a whole new raft of visitors can be attracted, with new links based on tweeted updates about your earlier posts.

• Offer helpful tips and lists that people want and need. Suggest that people retweet by adding “Pls RT” after your post. People will be delighted to, if it’s good.

• Use a service like Twittley to automatically send a tweet whenever you bookmark a page you like, or when someone votes for a page you submitted. This is a great, new service and you can establish your credibility and reputation there ahead of the competition.

• Tell your Twitter followers when you have new articles up that they could use as a reprint. Suggest that they link directly to the article, saving space on the server, or downloading them in full, together with the backlink to your site.

• Offer a guest blog post to your Twitter followers. Guest blogging is a quick and easy way to generate links to your site and it’s easy to reach several hundred, or thousand, prospective bloggers at once when you tweet your offer.

• Pay attention to what others tweet and see which items you link to. You will get a good idea of what appeals to people of like mind. Pick up some ideas from helpful blog posts or articles, videos, funny pictures, discounted items or freebies. Think about offering the same kind of item. If you’re having trouble finding the time to be an avid Tweeter, consider taking on a professional virtual assistant to help.

• Give backlinks to others. Twitter is a give-and-take community. You can’t just expect links from your followers. You have to give links to them as well. Be a post retweeter. Give encouragement. Laugh at their jokes with an LOL! or . If you are real, you will get further.

Key to any Twitter strategy is to build sound relationships your followers. Follow Friday is a good idea, so recommend others and spread some good cheer. Your Twitter friends will soon learn that you care about them, not just numbers, and they’ll be glad to link to your blog posts and articles you write. And to take advantage of this quickly, seriously consider taking on virtual assistants, or even a virtual assistance team to maximise your efforts in a very short span of time.

Any link building strategy requires effort, but the added traffic and importance of your website makes the effort worthwhile so give it a tweet and see how building links with Twitter works for you.

You could easily spend your life educating yourself on the finer points of video editing. This is something that people go to college for, for a long period of time to master. I’m assuming that you don’t have that kind of time to dedicate, so let’s cut right to the chase. The good news is that you can do a passable job of editing your video with the most basic of skills. The following are the most important things you’ll want to look at when editing your videos:

(Just remember that all these points assume that you have entry-level editing programs such as Windows Movie Maker or iMovie.) A possible solution, or perhaps – a perfect solution, is to hire a virtual assistant if you’re still having difficulty after this explanation.

1. The Audio. If you are putting together simple audio, you might be very choosy about what you allowed to stay and what you edited out. But don’t let this tempt you to over-edit. Review your video and only get rid of the worst stumbles or tongue-tied sentences.

2. The Start and Finish. When you do this all yourself, there will be a moment at the start and finish of the video when you will be seen to move toward the camera to turn it off or on. This just needs a simple editing process to remove these few seconds for you. Suddenly, you’ve gone from Blair Witch Project to Citizen Kane! Yay, you!

3. The Intro and the Extro. Think of your favorite sitcom or TV show. You certainly know when Law and Order is coming on, don’t you? (Just for the record, I can still hum the “CHiPS” theme song). You certainly don’t need a professional to create a jingle for you, but an introductory slide, your website and your topic will set it all up for your audience, nicely. If you want a good example of an intro slide, look at that interview with Lynn Terry that Nicole Dean completed. You don’t really need music!

There are some definite do’s and don’ts to video editing. Here are a few of the basics:

• Never over edit. By trying to eliminate every pregnant pause, the video will end up looking very choppy and poorly made. Instead, just eliminate the really bad parts where you mis-speak, or where there are unduly long pauses.

• Keep your mouth shut. That may sound funny, but a trick to video editing is to cut the video frame when your mouth is shut so you don’t end up with that wide-eyed, yawning, Big Mouth Billy Bass look.

• It can be a little rough around the edges. People want to know you’re a real person, not an over-processed corporate drone, especially when putting video on the internet. Keep it natural. If it is overly slick, it will scare away your viewers.

As we said at the beginning, video editing can be a very specialized and involved field and if you’re not careful it will become another one of those “paralysis by analysis” moments. Remind yourself that you’re after passable, not perfection, and move on! If you want to get it done, and get it done fast, hire some virtual assistants or a virtual assistance business sometime soon!

One final word of warning, be sure that you have a particular “feel” in mind before you start the project. Look for other examples online and determine the best characteristics. Are they all female spokespeople? Are they shot indoors? Are they humorous? Make a list so you can convey these points. Knowing what you’re looking for beforehand will make it easier to know when you’ve got it!

You may be intrigued by joint venture giveaways and wonder what it is all about. Most people who have participated in one probably talk about the unbelievable benefits. That is certainly good to know, but where do you find these events in order to take part?

Joint venture giveaways feature a number of JV partners. Everybody’s looking to build their list and they giveaway services and products to anybody who registers. These ventures can include big name Internet marketers as well as the novice marketer all in one place. For anybody who is serious about business growth, this is a really good idea.

Finding Joint Venture Partners

Many joint venture giveaways are invitation only events. One way to get invited is to find joint venture partners of your own. After all, if you know a number of important people in your niche, you have a much greater chance of being invited when the all-important person becomes aware of you.

The well-known marketplace ClickBank is a good place to find JV partners. Here, owners of affiliate programs are looking for joint venture partners and affiliates. This is a good place to list your product if you specialize in digital items. You can also see who else is selling within your niche but in a non-competitive way. Build up a good list of potential JV partners.

Networking Your Way to a JV Giveaway

Networking is a great place to start if you want to take part in a joint venture giveaway. Get to know other people in your niche through networking, forums and participating in existing joint venture giveaways. Make a note of the contributors and introduce yourself. Networking is different in online businesses for sure, but it is still a great way to get to where you want to be.

Enter the search term “joint venture giveaways” into Google. This will reveal some JV partners who are extending invitations to their project. Look at the rules carefully before you sign up. Once your name starts to get out there, you’ll find more invitations to contribute to joint venture giveaways in your mailbox! And to take advantage of this quickly, seriously consider taking on someone looking into how to be a virtual assistant, or even a team looking into how to be a virtual assistant business, to maximise your efforts in a very short span of time.

If your business or industry has a special event, anniversary or other reason to celebrate, consider organizing your own joint venture giveaway. Through your business associations, you can find other partners willing to lend their name and offer a free product for members to download. You now have additional credibility amongst other joint venture partners!

One thing for certain, if you want to participate or contribute to a joint venture giveaway you have to be visible! Network, form alliances and associations and get to know other individuals and leaders in your niche or industry. The more often you or your business is seen, and considered an authority, the more likely you are to receive those coveted JV giveaway invitations. Don’t forget, someone looking into how to be a virtual assistant – but who hasn’t quite made it into the mainstream yet, can help you with all the details, at a great price!

Do not underestimate joint venture giveaways, as they are one of the easier and less costly ways to really grow your business by building your list. Start preparing for success today!

Hello! Michelle here, from VA Live.TV. Today I want to discuss with you how you can set up your business to specifically deal with your target market even though you could be anywhere in the world. After all, this is the very problem that I faced when I first started out, when I chose to base everything out of the Middle East. So, I was out in Egypt and I predominantly decided that I wanted to deal with people in the UK because I’m British. Being based in Egypt meant that I did not have the luxury of setting up an establishment in the UK. So, in order to establish a presence of some kind I looked at Virtual Offices and similar ideas and found that they were really costly, especially the kind of all-in-one operation that you will find in England, which caters for call answering and handling your incoming mail, etc. It simply wasn’t going to work out for me, due to this expense. I thought about this for a while and tried to find a cost-effective way of doing what I needed to do. Consequently, I came up with a few ideas which I would like to impart to you today, to tell you how you can operate your virtual office from anywhere around the world. In any kind of online enterprise, if you’re not a VA yourself, you should seriously consider taking on a solo virtual assistant, or even virtual assistants as part of a team to maximise your efforts in a very short span of time.

To start off, you need a virtual number, or maybe should even consider a virtual call answering operation. So, you need to go to the country in which you’re looking to set yourself up; so, for example, if it’s England or America or anywhere like that, you go and you find a call-answering service that can deal with your calls just by the hour or by the call. In this way, you are only paying for the time that somebody’s actually handling your business. This is job number one. You might not be ready to expense a call answering service, so you should look for a Skype in-number, which you publicise to people to enable them to contact you. You can get one of these for whatever country you choose. If you happen to be travelling or not available, you just set it to voicemail and handle these individual messages as and when they arrive. So, depending on what you want to deal with or what you’re able to handle, you can either have a call answering service or a specific number in your target country, so people can dial that number just as if you were physically there.

The second thing that I think is a good idea to do is to buy a PO Box address or some sort of purchased address in your country. While it’s likely that people won’t actually send you mail, it’s possible and remember that you have to be able to have a mail service that enables them to do so and establishing an address around a P.O. Box solves all these issues. You can then have that PO Box diverted to a virtual assistance provider in that country locally so they’re able to scan the mail in and they’ll send it to you by email no matter where you are in the world.

So, you’ve already got your address and then you’ve got your phone number.

Another great idea that you should consider, which I find especially valuable when I’m travelling, which I do a lot, is a SIM card, which means that I don’t have to keep changing my telephone number and that my clients and staff are always aware of it. This is quite simple as all you do is put the SIM card into your mobile phone. This is a local telephone number to the UK. This enables my staff and all my clients to get in touch with me on a UK telephone number, regardless of where I am. In this way, it only represents a local call for the person phoning me and it’s also absolutely without cost for me as well, which is great. I can pretend as if I was in the UK from their point of view, while being pretty much anywhere. Right now, for example I’m in Spain. Originally I was in Egypt. I’ve been in France. Every time I move, my system, my business, stays static. I have a telephone number, an address, a SIM card for my mobile phone — all based in the United Kingdom.

These are all very important considerations whenever you have a virtual business which allows you to live anywhere, but have a presence as if you were living in your target country. I really hope those were useful tips. If you want to find out more about this, please visit my blog at virtualassistant-live.com. Thanks very much.

RESOURCE: http://www.sim4travel.com/

Today I’m going to talk to you and give you my own perspective on what I think is a Virtual Assistant. There are a large number of different opinions out there as to exactly what a Virtual Assistant is, so I wanted to tell you mine.

Okay, so I’m going on to my website here. It’s virtualmissfriday.com or virtualmissfriday.co.uk. Look at what I say on the front page, as follows: “A virtual assistant or VA works at your fingertips independently by via internet, utilising the latest technologies to provide immediate professional support, services and skills to busy entrepreneurs and business people. Partnering with the VA can reduce stress, protect cash flow, eliminate administrative hassles and enable business people to find the success they want to achieve.”

That’s a very businesslike way of describing a virtual assistant business. Now, from a personal perspective I have a different description of virtual assistants in mind and this is what it is. In short, a Virtual Assistant is someone who gives assistance online. This means that there are already a lot of people who are actually virtual assistants without realising that they are so. You might be a writer for a travel magazine, a freelance journalist of some kind, or somebody who writes for a number of different papers or magazines. You are assisting those magazines with their content so you technically could be a virtual assistant. Now, I’m not saying that you are a virtual assistant but at some form of virtual assistance. You might be writing on a freelance basis. You could be helping somebody with their social media efforts. If you provide the services online and you provide those services over the internet then I believe you are providing virtual assistance.

Not everybody agrees with me but that’s what I think, certainly for someone looking to come into my Virtual Assistant Program, which I’m going to be doing for the VA Apprentice. I’m not restricting it to somebody who has a basic administration background, or somebody who was a secretary, but casting the net wider. You can pretty much come from any kind of background. It’s about taking what you do and you want to do and the skills that you have and the passion that you have for certain things in your life and turning them into a business and taking them online. So, this is what my aim as a virtual assistant is to do, is to take the skills that you have, to take your experience, to take your current business if you have one, and basically turn that into a virtual business and then take it online.

You see, whichever way you look at it, whenever you provide something for another person you are providing assistance. Call it what you want, maybe a partnership. You might look at it as a colleague to colleague relationship. We can call it anything like that. But if you are providing something for somebody else, then you are assisting. If you’re doing it online, it’s virtual, virtual assistance. That is my interpretation anyway, especially as I look at my business which is made up of many disparate things. I do administration, all the general secretarial tasks that you find that traditional virtual assistants do but I also do web design and development, content management systems, word press, social media marketing, writing, you name it it’s on there. I make sure that I focus my interests on anything to do with building a presence online and building a web business and advise you to do the same. All of these areas and functions need to be mastered by you, if you are going to have a very successful and workable online business.

That’s my perspective, anyway, although you may well be different, of course. You might want to restrict yourself to just bookkeeping. Okay, but you can also be a virtual assistant because you can take your bookkeeping business online. I can show you how, really.

So, that’s basically what I think virtual assistance is and even if I was to get rid of a lot of my services and I was to say, “Right, you know, I’m going to scrap the admin. I’m going to scrap the social media marketing, etc. etc. and I’m just going to focus on web development.” If I’m still doing this online and assisting other people with their sites, guess what — I’m still a Virtual Assistant. Notice that I haven’t changed my name as such, even though I’m just focusing on one area.

Anyway, that is what I think a Virtual Assistant is. Anybody who is involved in giving assistance to somebody else online from a different location.

So, thank you very much for listening to that. I would really really like to hear your opinion on what you think a Virtual Assistant is. We are all different. We all have different opinions. That’s fantastic. Different opinions make the world go round!

Hiring subcontractors adds a new dimension to your business. Not only are your clients paying you, but you’re paying your subcontractors. This administrative work is additional of course, for you or your bookkeeper, but you will more than pay for this hassle due to the additional productivity gain. In order to make your system to work though, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.

Paying on a Project Basis or per Hour

Work out how you are going to charge your clients. Are you going to charge your client an hourly rate or a per-project rate? At the same time, ask your subcontractor how they will charge you for the work.

Second, you’ll need to find out how much your subcontractors charge for the work you need them to do. Armed with this information, you can work out how much you will quote for your services to manage these projects, edit everything and communicate with the customer. Then you will simply add these numbers together, with other appropriate fees and you will arrive at a figure that you can charge the client; it’s always a good idea, however, to add something in for contingencies.

In every eventuality, you need to be sure that you are making enough to cover what your virtual assistant subcontractor will charge you, your involved time and of course your overheads linked to that project. Once you have your numbers in place, you’ll also need to make sure you sign a contract with the client and with the subcontractor before anyone begins any work. This may well be the time to talk to your lawyer to see that you have everything covered.

Payments

When the project is done, many virtual assistants that are subcontractors will send an invoice right away. Other subcontractors invoice monthly or even weekly. You’ll need to speak with your subcontractor to find out what her policies are. In some circumstances, a subcontractor will allocate a certain number of hours or tasks over a particular time period, in return for a specific amount. She works until you have used up your hours. This is a good arrangement if your subcontractor is completing tasks that aren’t directly related to specific clients or projects.

Check with your subcontractor ahead of time about specific payment arrangements. PayPal is a very common way of handling online subcontractors. Other times, he or she may accept checks, or you may be able to complete a credit card transaction. With a smaller subcontractor, you will most likely be expected to pay your invoice immediately. Some larger operations though may allow you to pay your invoices 10 to 30 days after receipt. Just clarify the policies in each case.

What If the Client Doesn’t Pay?

When the subcontractor charges you for a project related to a certain client and the client won’t fork up, you might consider delaying the payment to the subcontractor. You must make sure that you cover this kind of eventuality with your virtual assistance subcontractor in the contract. But whether it’s covered or not, you are responsible as the project manager to make sure that those people who work on this particular project get paid, even if you don’t. It falls to you to make sure that the client actually pays up.

Take care of your subcontractors, pay them well and make sure you charge your clients enough and your business will be much more successful for it.

You undoubtedly drafted a business plan when you started off your operation. It no doubt mentioned something about future expansion. You need to revisit those plans and take action, now!

Don’t wait until it actually happens before thinking about expanding your business. If you take action at the right time, it will all happen a lot more easily and seamlessly. You will need to consider outsourcing.

Now you are ready for a VA team. No longer are you just a one-man or one-woman operation, as you have thankfully grown too large for this. If you are to consider expanding, you will need the help of others. Here are a few pointers on getting ready to move forward, today!

Team Selection

The team will be comprised mostly of other virtual assistants. Be careful who you select, however, as they need to have a good work ethic and be able to think just like you do. This requires a careful process of selection, similar to the process that your clients engaged in and will require an amount of research and interviewing to find the best people.

You may have already thought about what jobs you will outsource. Don’t get too complicated until you have found exactly how your team will work best together. Interviewing is only the first step. Remember that you have a number of more difficult or more delicate tasks that you may also want to outsource at a point in time. The people that you hire should have a number of different skills. The more skills that they have, the more useful they will turn out to be to you.

Starting off the Right Way

Work right from the very start. This includes contracts, agreements and instructions. Each new virtual assistant will need a contract with the job description, their remuneration and the payment schedule included. You must have agreements with your subcontracting virtual assistants which talk about noncompete clauses and confidentiality agreements. It’s important that you look after your client list and don’t let it walk out of the door!

If you write down all your instructions, the chances are you will avoid some of those crazy mistakes that might come along. Even though your subcontractors know how to say, write a report, they don’t know how you write reports for your clients. Pleasing your clients is the important part here. And to take advantage of this quickly, seriously consider taking on someone looking to become one one of the few excellent virtual assistants out there, or even a team looking to become a virtual assistance business, to maximise your efforts in a very short span of time, at a really great price!

Crossing all the Ts

One “T” in particular is taxes. This extends to both your situation and others who work for you. Hiring subcontractors is considered freelancing. This is another area that needs to be specified in any contracts with your team. Make sure that they know that they are responsible for their own insurance and calculating their own taxes, as a subcontractor. What you will provide (for US workers) is a 1099-MISC form for them that specify what you pay them so that they can use it to file their taxes.

The cost of subcontracting will figure into your hourly or per project rate for your clients. Be absolutely sure that you do not doublecross yourself by paying the subcontractors more than you are receiving as part of your contract.

Planning ahead for business growth will make you healthy, wealthy and wise.