By Liz Folger, Work-at-Home Mom Expert
So you want to start your own virtual assistant business.
Great! I assume you want to start your own VA business not only to own your own business, but also to make money. More and more businesses are outsourcing and paying VA’s, and there is no reason why you can’t be one of them.
You’ve got your business name, all the office equipment you need, and you’ve got the determination to make your business a success. So now the big question is, how do you go about finding clients?
What Type of Services Will You Provide?
We all have certain areas where our talents and interests lie. You have so many choices as to what areas you want to special in. There’s a good chance you already have experience in some of the specialty areas.Maybe you don’t even realize all of the areas
VA’s are working in.
Here’s just a small sampling of the services you could offer:
- Administration
- Writing services (technical or creative)
- Proofreading and editing, research (online or traditional)
- Scheduling
- Bill paying
- Simple website design
- Newsletter distribution
- Reminder services
- Event planning
- Concierge services
- Research
- Data processing/data management
- Desktop publishing
- Transcription services
- Mail and email services
- Telephone/fax services
- Internet services
- Bookkeeping
- Purchasing services
- Marketing services
- Personal services
Once you know the types of services you are going to offer, it’s time to find you some clients.
What to Charge
It isn’t too hard to figure out what to charge. Start by contacting local support service businesses in your area. Ask them if they can send you a price list. Get several of these to learn what everyone else is charging. You don’t want to charge too much and you don’t want to under price yourself so you look like you don’t do great work. Find the happy medium and go
with that amount. Prices are not set in stone. If you have to change your prices down the road, so be it.
Get Some Business Cards
If you want to look professional, make sure you get your business cards right away. You never know when you might meet someone who needs the services you’re offering. When that time comes, all you need to do is pull out your card and hand it to them. Never be without your business cards!
Here are some great sites where you can get business cards from free to as low as $10 for 250 cards.
(Click on FREE business cards)
http://www.overnightprints.com
New Customer Special. 250 Free Business Cards + 2 Free Upgrades. Get FREE Glossy Finish & FREE Backside upgrades with your order.
DCP Free_Business_Cards
(Try them out for free)
Tell Your Circle of Friends and Family About Your Business
Since you already have a relationship with your family and friends, don’t forget to tell them about your new VA business. While your brother might not need your services, there’s a good chance that he might know someone who does. You can start networking right away with those you already know.
Think about designing a letter or oversized postcard about your service and send it to everyone you know. Maybe even include a picture of yourself, the name of your business, the services you offer and ask that if they can’t use your service, to please recommend your business to others who might.If you send a letter, include a couple of your business cards for passing on to your possible clients.
Send Out Press Releases
A press release is a great way to start your business off with a bang. I want to mention here though that a press release is not
something you just send out when you open your business. I’ll talk more about this a little later.
Here are some great places to find press release tips and templates:
PRWeb – Get your news to consumers, journalists and bloggers.
http://www.press-release-writing.com/press-release-template.htm
http://www.marketingsource.com/pressrelease/releaseformat.html
- Where to send your press releases:
- Local Newspapers
- Local Business Publications
- Local Radio Talk Shows
- Local TV News Stations
Other reasons to send out a press release:
- You’re offering a new service
- Launching a website for your business
- You’ve won a high profile client account or contract
- You’ve had an unusual challenge or adversity and overcome it; especially when others thought it couldn’t be done.
- You participate in a fundraising event or you are to serve in a charitable organization.
- You’re offering or sponsoring a workshop, seminar, or conference
- If you’re changing the company name, location, web address, or product name
I’m The Answer to Your Problem
Convincing your future clients that they should hire you might seem a little scary at first. But once you build more clients, and they start telling you what a godsend you are, your confidence level is going to soar.
Here are some convincing ideas to consider…
Tell your future client why they need you. Maybe you work odd hours, or you have very reasonable rates. Go over the services you offer and why you are so good at what you do.
Explain to the client what skills you possess, your background, and your education.
You can help your client catch-up on a backlog of work that other employees aren’t able to get to.
You offer reduced costs and expenses for your client. They don’t have to pay you benefits or sick time.
You will help their business grow with your marketing techniques.
Thanks to the technology that is currently available, using your services will save the client money. Explain that you reduce
overhead. They only pay you for work completed. They aren’t paying someone if there is no work to do. Plus your client doesn’t have to pay for sick or holiday time, or for health benefits.
It won’t be long until you’re confidence, strong and bright, shines through. You won’t have any problems explaining to a future client that you are the right person for the job, or that you are the solution to their problems.
So What Are You Waiting For?
Making money in a virtual assistant business can be done. Full time VA’s are making about $38.000 a year. This year, why can’t that VA be you?
For more information about this business visit: Bizymoms.com
About promotional items.
The promotional items I’ve used in my business are small samples of the larger size products that I sell. I’ve used these promotional items in my business in several different ways.
- I’ve given out samples with orders.
- I’ve sent huge amounts of samples to gatherings and a group sponsoring sampler boxes.
- I’ve offered free pdf previews of books that I’ve written.
- And I’ve sold samples on ebay.
Looking back at the different ways I’ve tried, I feel that the free book previews (in pdf format), and also the samples I’ve sold on ebay have brought the best return on my efforts. That is because the people who were buying the samples, or downloading the preview, were actually interested in what I was selling, and wanted to try a small version before ordering a larger size.
I have not gotten a good response from sending samples to gatherings and sample boxes. That is probably because the people who were receiving my samples were looking for freebies, and were not really looking to purchase. I’ve also sent samples with orders. The results on that are mixed.
My personal opinion is that if possible, your promotional items should be related to the product or the service you are selling. If you can offer samples of what you sell, then do so because it will give your customers a taste of what you are offering. And when you give out promotional items, try to give them to people who express a genuine interest in you and your business so you aren’t wasting your time and money.
By O. Franklin.
How to Grow a Handcrafted Bath and Body Care Business
K Quinn on May 18, 2010 | Filed Under Marketing | Comments Off
Once creating a website became a feat most anyone could do, the demand for online content has been growing.
Just look at this. According to Technorati, 1.4 new blogs are created every second, of every day. That’s quite a bit of content needed to keep each blog fresh and updated. This does not include static websites which also need content.
No wonder Private Label Rights (PLR) articles have become a growing online business. PLR is like water to a dying plant for website publishers. It allows them to use the content in most any way they want — short of passing on the PLR to their own customers.
PLR Articles can:
- provide the basic research needed for a topic
- dismiss the plague of writer’s block
- be reformatted in endless ways, providing tons of content
- make content creation much faster, easier and cheaper
Interested? If you’re interested in getting into the PLR business yourself, a good way is to resell PLR content. That is, you purchase PLR content that comes with resell rights. This allows you to sell the PLR content to your customers.
This makes the PLR business much easier, because it eliminates the need to:
- find, hire and manage writers
- brainstorm topic ideas month after month
- monitor the quality of the content — that is if you choose a reliable PLR resource
How to Resell PLR
PLR selling is a lucrative online business, so you will face many competitors. But be creative, and you can easily stand out from the PLR selling crowd.
Of course, you could always resell the PLR content as is but why stop there?
Here are even better ideas:
- Convert the PLR articles to a different format such as…
- autoresponder messages
- special reports
- audio recordings
- videos
- slideshow presentations
- e-courses
- Pre-load the PLR content into a website/WP blog for constant updating
Many online marketers are in the business of flipping sites. That is, they buy underperforming sites cheaply, make them more profitable (like by adding better content) and then sell them for a huge profit.
You can do this easily with resell PLR content: Create a niche affiliate site, preload it with resell PLR articles, and then sell the site. This has a much higher perceived value than PLR articles!
The Importance of Quality
The thing with running a PLR business, any business is this: you will only survive if you consistently provide a high quality product, high-quality PLR. And provide this content at an affordable price. Your business and reputation are on the line.
One source I highly recommend is AllResellContent.com by Alice Seba and Mila Sidman. Alice and Mila have been in the PLR business since 2006 and have been making a good living from it. They’ve lasted this long only because they have been consistently providing high-quality PLR content.
And just now, they’re offering PLR content with resell rights. As a member of AllResellContent, every month, you will get 50 articles in five different topics. That’s enough PLR content to keep your customers happy month after month.
Click here to get your free sample of 10 PLR articles with resell rights.
This way you get a free sneak peek at the quality of articles you’ll get as a member of AllResellContent.
Do you ever feel like you’re ready to throw in the towel because building an online business just seems impossible?
I know how you feel!
I used to feel like that A LOT when I was getting started,and when you’re struggling, it’s that much harder to moveforward.
There are so many options, so much to learn, and it canget overwhelming very quickly.
But you know what?
It really doesn’t have to be like that. It’s simply a matter of cutting out the stuff that’s cluttering up your
path. Things like…
- Not knowing what to do first so you overload yourself with information trying to figure it out
- Not knowing which business ideas are the best and most profitable to pursue, so you waste money trying them all
- Not knowing who and what to trust so you back awayfrom everyone and go it alone
So at the end of the day, all you have to show for yourefforts is a bunch of nothing.
Frustrating, I know.
But like I said, you have to cut out all that clutterthat’s holding you back, so you can move ahead tobuilding the business you’ve always wanted.
Now obviously you could keep going as you are and spend alot of time in trial and error, research and mistakes.
Or you can simply follow the free step-by-step system created for you by Melissa Ingold, from Internet Marketing Sweetie.
Melissa will help you put one building block on the next until you reach the level of success you’ve always dreamed about.
- Your fundamental questions will be answered, and some rules will be spelled out before you move on to specific strategies like building a list of prospects, generating traffic from both free and paid opportunities, and developing partnerships with other online marketers that have you poised to take in a lot of money in a short period of time.
- She will give you a non-biased accounting of all of your options – All of the nitty gritty details – the elements most eBooks skip over because they assume you know this stuff already
- Along the way, she will share her own insight about which tools or products are available and trustworthy should you decide you want to delve into the topic in more detail.
And she’s offering a special bonus report to help get you started off on the right foot.
Get all the details and pick up your report here!
As always, to your success!
Do you realize that most local brick and mortar business owners feel lost and overwhelmed by the idea of marketing themselves on the internet? It’s true.
As a long time internet marketer, I have a good understanding of how the web works. I can create a website that attracts relevant traffic and makes a profit. I realized a few years ago that I could take this knowledge and apply it to serving a local market – offering my services as a website creator and marketer.
There’s no lack of providers out there offering to help the local business owner take their business online, but the sheer volume of options is confusing and the price point is often far outside of the small business budget. So when I opened my doors to provide affordable services from a local source, I found clients who were hungry for what I had to offer.
I used the knowledge I have about building a simple website to set up a Wordpress blog for a local consignment shop. We publish pictures of some of her new products and pipe the RSS Feed into a Facebook fan page. These are just some simple promotion strategies that come as easy as pie to you and me – but to her, it was like magic!
Imagine her delight when a lady walked into her shop with overflowing bags of great product to consign, saying ‘I found you on the internet and decided to bring my things in!’. The cool part? The lady drove almost an HOUR to get to her shop – passing many other similar stores along the way.
My client is now totally sold on the power of the internet to accomplish her marketing goals.
Before she met me, she was scared stiff to even think about doing something online. Most local small business are and that’s why they need YOU!
When you focus on a local business community, you have home field advantage. If you’re good at what you do and deliver real world results, word of mouth travels fast among these business owners who regular network together.
A phone call came in to my office a few weeks ago. So and so had mentioned me to so and so and now another so and so wanted to meet to discuss a project. I setup a time and looked forward to learning about their needs. I admit my jaw dropped a tiny bit when I learned the client was a famous food brand that has its home here in northern Michigan. (Of course I quickly hid my surprise and pretended that I consulted on major brands every day of the week.
When local people ask me what I do, I say that I do web design and consulting. If the conversation progresses, I go on to tell them about how I help businesses develop powerful, interactive websites with simple tools that help them attract more clients and customers.
It all sounds very professional, right? And of course it is – but the reality is that I work from my home, usually in my slippers. I rarely meet clients face to face and I choose my own work hours. I love what I do and thoroughly enjoy seeing how my skills benefit my clients.
If you have even some of the skills that I do: If you understand how search engines work, how to create a website with Wordpress, how to set up a simple mailing list, a Twitter account and a Facebook page; you could be running your own consulting business.
Even if you lack some of these skills, if you delegate well and enjoy serving as a project manager, you can outsource the work that falls outside of your expertise and still provide all of the necessary services to your clients.
The needs exists. Local business owners know they should be taking advantage of the internet. They just need you to show them how to make it happen.
Kelly McCausey shows you step by step how to create, launch and grow a local business consulting business at Become a Blog Consultant.
