Friday 31 January 2014

Consider These Options When Hiring an Assistant

Expanding a business can be a very exciting and challenging moment of your life. When you are planning to expand your business there are many opportunities that can arise which can bring in the success you’ve always been dreaming of. With the expansion plan you certainly need a new team of employees who will be working in your company and be sharing the burden of work. But the expansion process can be very expensive and you need to measure each step you take carefully because every penny you save, you get to invest in something important. The second employee in every company is an assistant who works as directed by the boss and since you are the boss, you need an assistant who can work on the tasks delegated by you.
Administrative Assistant

There are two options when you think of hiring an assistant. One, you can hire an assistant in your office and the second is you can hire a virtual personal assistant. They both will be working the same but in different styles and the costs you have to bear for either one of them varies widely. The assistant you will be hiring in your office will be treated as any normal employee under the state laws. You are to provide him a salary with the benefits that are binding by the laws. Since your assistant would be coming to your office to work where would he be seated? Now do you have an office big enough to accommodate him also? If not, then you need to go look for a bigger office and with a bigger office you know how your expenses will be increased there’s no need to elaborate them here.

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Now let’s consider the option of a virtual assistant. He will not be coming to your office on the first day or ever. So, if you do not have any extra space to accommodate another person no problem because he will be working remotely and has no concern how big or small office you have. Now about the remuneration, your virtual assistant is not treated as a normal employee by the state law hence you do not have to pay him as you would be paying to the assistant who comes in physically to your office. Every virtual personal assistant has his own fee against the services he will be providing. If you are on a low budget no problem, you can always find someone who would be willing to work on the rate affordable by you. Just consider these two facts and decide which one suits your needs, obviously you are the owner of your business and it is your choice to make the final call.

Thursday 30 January 2014

Save a Fortune with Virtual Assistant Services

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For hundreds and possibly thousands of business people around the world virtual assistants have made tasks a lot easier and manageable. Outsourcing has never been easier before and it has become organized too. Today people can easily reach an outsourcing company for their desired tasks and get the work done within hours. All it takes is to approach the company in the right way to get the perfect virtual assistant services for your business.

Providing the services of virtual assistance these companies have helped small business people to get a team of professionals without putting great pressure on their wallets. When a small business starts to grow, it needs a bigger team than just the business owner himself juggling all the tasks. The results of a single person can never match those provided by a team. Obviously two heads are better than one and when one person struggles with every task on his own, nothing is as organized as it could really be.

There are many ways a business person can come in contact with the outsourcing company. The giant web search engine provides the ease to connect a person searching for something with the right website. Once you enter the words virtual assistant services in the search bar you will get a lot of search results with all the links to the websites that are providing such services. Take a look at the maximum number of links you get from the results, see the services they offer and if the websites have the rates mentioned on them you will get a good idea immediately.


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Drop in an inquiry request on the websites which seem suitable to you and you soon you will get a call or an email from the owners or the concerned person from it. Discuss your requirements in detail, almost every service provider does have a room for tailored packages and you can easily fit in them. If you have enough work to keep them busy on a daily basis, then it is good to go for the monthly package because it will be cheaper. But if you want work to be done only when you forward them something, then ask for the pay as you go offer which will save you the trouble for paying for the days you not used the virtual assistant services. Any plan you choose is up to you and your business requirements, but it is obviously much cheaper and effective than having a person to sit in your office and cost you a fortune to hire.

Tuesday 28 January 2014

VA Services Help save Your Expenses

Starting a business is one of the toughest decisions you make in your life. A lot of people, although having the skills to own a business often back down from it because of all the responsibilities that fall on a business owner’s shoulders the moment the foundation stone of the business is laid. Now that you are past that phase of making the decision to start your own business, you actually are a business owner and you have managed to get it out of the grass root level too. Now you are thinking of expanding and the first though that has come to your mind is about hiring an assistant.

Now that you are seriously considering to hire an assistant for your business activities, you should get the virtual assistant services for a better response. Why should you? Why should you not? After all we live in an age where we use the internet more than we eat or sleep. So why keep your business activities away from the internet when it can provide you more benefit than anything else. Let’s start from here, if you get an assistant in your office, how much do you need to pay him or her? Obviously a lot more than just a hundred bucks, plus you will also need to provide him a space to wit where he will be working. And you will also be providing a computer to work upon, now accumulate the expenditure that has surfaced even before you have hired him.

Considering the rising prices of commodities and the basic necessities, you obviously can’t pay your assistant a hundred bucks or lets extend it to even five hundred bucks a month. Obviously your expense in this regard is exceeding the five hundred figure as you know about the tax rules and the basic amenities you should be providing him. Seriously, your expenses are exceeding your budget and this is the only reason why many small businesses fail to expand. They just can’t take the first step.

Now consider taking the virtual assistant services for your small business. What exactly do you have to invest in here? Nothing! Just get in contact with the company that fits your criteria and hand over the tasks to them. As you come in your office the next day, your inbox will be ready with all the work completed that you gave them to complete the other day. Now you not only got saved by all the investment, you also got to own a team of professionals who all are working for you at a lower salary than your assistant who made you sweat even by thinking of hiring him. So, make the right decision today and start saving.

Monday 27 January 2014

How to Get Yourself a VA

The need for an assistant is never outdated in business. No matter how small or big a business is, it needs at least two persons to manage the work effectively. While you being an owner need to focus on the important tasks, you can hand over the other tasks to the assistant. The tasks that you can hand over to the assistant include marketing (SEO) and administrative work such as data entry and maintaining the website. Hiring an assistant in the office is not a cheap option; there are too many things that are needed to be looked after and your operational costs increase involuntarily.

To manage the work and costs get the online personal assistant service. With the online service you can easily outsource your tasks at a cheaper and affordable price which is normally a fraction of the salary of an office assistant. The practice to hire people on the internet to work for you is not something new. This industry is alive for at least two decades now and in the modern age where cost controlling and cost cutting has become eminent the use of a virtual assistant has become even more important.

When the business is in the growing stages it is important to keep the operational costs as low as possible. Increasing the staff at a stage when the business can barely meet the expenses of the owner, hiring an extra person would mean a huge weight on the business. There are times when the business is down and in such a time giving out the salary to the assistant would mean cutting your own needs. The good times of a business are the growing times. One should never start overspending but should start building a cash reserve and invest wisely to reap greater profits.

In the attempt to generate a cash reserve or to spend less, often the business people try to juggle all the tasks themselves. What happens when you try to become the master of all trades? They all fail at the same time. So better not be greedy in business but be wise and hire a virtual assistant. It is all a part of the business game and one can find authentic services at affordable rates on the internet. Most of the VA service providers often give you the online personal assistant free for some hours or a day to test the work and decide if it suits your requirements. Once you have tried the free version and you are satisfied and confident to have found the right team, sign the contract and get yourself the assistant that you so direly needed without spending heftily.

Friday 24 January 2014

3 Reasons to Choose Virtual Administrative Assistant Companies

As your business grows you start looking for professionals who would help you share the burden of your business and also be productive for it. Once you start looking for assistants to hire there is one type of assistant you should never leave out and he is the virtual administrative assistant. Surely by now you might understand that a virtual assistant is the professional who completes the work delegated to him by his client in the required manner. But this assistant doesn’t show up at your office’s door and instead he sends all the completed work from his remote working place which can be an office or just from the home.

Here are some reasons why you would need a virtual assistant no matter how much work load you have.
  • Your VA can be from anywhere on the planet. There are no restrictions where you hire an assistant from who works virtually. Once you have made your mind to go for the hiring of the assistant virtually place and time does not matter. If you want your work to be completed in the night or after the normal office hours, you are sure to find a lot of people who can work for you in the desired timing.
  • You can now choose a lot more talent than would be possible if you hire a person in your locality. Talent can exist anywhere in the world and there is no guarantee that the person who lives next door to you would be as talented as the person living hundreds of miles away and cost to a lot cheaper to hire.
  • You can hire a team of remote workers to work for you in the cost of just a single in-house employee. Since remote workers charge less compared to regular workers, think how many people you could hire when a remote worker charges a fraction of the salary taken by the regular employee. This way your work can be done speedily without paying a lot of salaries. It is just easy on your wallet and beneficial for your business.

In case you have enough work to be done by more than one employee but have the salary to pay only one employee, you can contact the virtual administrative assistant companies to provide you a team of workers within the budget you have. Now that you have chose to work with a remote team, you can be sure to get all the work completed timely without delays and still save yourself from paying a lot of salaries but get everything done within a nominal fee.

Thursday 23 January 2014

Real Estate Virtual Assistants Do It All

Outsourcing tasks is the latest way to get work done quickly without investing too much. In this age where internet rules most of our activities and sources of information, it is necessary for the realtors to have their websites as useful as possible. By the term useful it means that they should have all the relevant content on it so that people who visit them in search of something should not only be a visitor but they should be a customer. A real estate website is a lot different than the other websites that float the internet. A real estate website needs to have all the available properties clearly mentioned and updated as soon as possible. The properties that are no longer available should be immediately taken down so that the customers never get to make a wrong choice.

Managing and maintaining a website is not an easy task and the realtors rarely have time to do all the laborious tasks on a daily basis by themselves. Hiring an assistant for it would seem like a bad idea because there is not always too much task to handle and the assistant would be sitting in the office without anything to do than just an hour’s work. Save your time and your money by hiring a real estate virtual assistant. Virtual assistants are skilled professionals who know what they are doing even though they are not present inside your office. There is no need to be afraid of hiring a virtual assistant for your real estate business because today you will not be the first one to hire; the practice has been going on for over a decade now.

The services of a real estate VA do not only include uploading a couple of images and removing some of the sold or unavailable listings. They are also capable to do complete SEO for your website which is extremely essential for the website to appear when people search for terms related to your work. Owning a website but having no visitors is just like owning a shop out in the desert where no customers are expected to come even by accident. But it is up to you to decide all the work you need to outsource to your real estate virtual assistant. If you only need him to take care of the listings on your website then its fine, no problem. But if you want the SEO work to be also done, then your VA can do it all.

Tuesday 21 January 2014

Benefits Of Professional Virtual Office Assistant Services

The virtual assistant or VA is a self employed or a service provided by an organization which caters the needs of clients online without differentiating if the client is a small business owner or a huge organization. Virtual assistants are highly skilled professionals who work outside the corporate traditional roles yet are present in the corporate world. All these professionals utilize the internet and the other emerging technologies to improve efficiency and boost productivity. The concept of a VA has gained popularity over a short span of time due to their effective virtual office assistant services in the business world.

There are many benefits of using the VA rather than establishing a complete office and hiring in-house staff. Some of the major benefits worth mentioning are:
  • Increase your productivity
  • Decrease operational costs
  • Spend less on maintenance
  • Tackle less employee complaints and remunerations
  • Pay only for the time you use VA services
  • No need to provide expensive employee benefits
  • No need for extra office space and expensive furniture

These are some of the benefits that have saved many small businesses from spending huge operational costs. As small business are mostly single owned businesses, they operate in small spaces where accommodating more employees is a problem. When the business starts growing there is a need for extra helping hands. In case the business owner plans extending the number of employees which usually starts from one (the business owner himself), expansion projects can be a huge investment project.

To escape from the huge investment project, the business owner gets the benefit to hire a team of virtual assistants and get the entire work done remotely. Businesses have their ups and downs. There are days when the business is too active that the employees do not have time even to scratch their backs. And there are days when there is not enough work to keep everyone busy. In such a case, when the employees are hired permanently, they have to be paid regularly even if there is not enough cash in the cash registers. On these days the business owner would have to pay from his pocket.

In the case of a hired virtual office assistant, the salary counts only for the days when his services are used. This means that when there is not enough work for the VA to work full time, he is paid only for the hours he has worked even if it is just one hour. Hence the business owner gets to save on expenses from start to the end.

Thursday 16 January 2014

Hiring a VA Is Decision to Be Proud Of

Have you ever tried using the online virtual assistant services for your business? If not then this is the right time to start using them to make it possible for your business to grow further. Why do you think I suggest you to start using them now? Because, it’s never too late to grow a team for your business and that is the real success recipe. One man show can only take the business to a certain level. It becomes impossible to grow further because a one person can only invest to a limit. One man cannot cover all the departments and cannot fulfill the requirements of a business on a daily basis. And when that one man is absent from work, there is no business for the entire day and the profits for the month are disturbed.

For the business that is growing and has come out from the seed stage and has just managed to get its head out of the earth and can see a whole new world out there it is important to keep operational costs under control. Most business people make the mistake of hiring an internal assistant and pay a heavy salary to him. This can be a troublesome because incase the business suffers a loss or the profits aren’t as high as usual, the business owner would have to pay the salary from his own pocket. Paying from your own expenses means that you are not only disturbing the business budget but you are also disturbing your personal budget.

Another reason to look for an online assistant is that you get the choice to choose from professionals all over the world. The internet has no boundaries and you can connect to professionals all over the world no matter where they live as long as they have internet to connect. If you are in the mood to hire a person who would be available after you go to home then you can choose an online virtual assistant who lives in a region where there is day. The best example is the time difference between the western world and the Asian peninsula. This way your business runs round the clock and there is no time when it goes offline.

Apart from these factors, another benefit of hiring the VA is that you do not have to provide him office space, stationery or any kind of equipment. He arranges it all on his own and provides you the work in perfect order within the given deadline. You get to enjoy the services of an assistant at the price divided by hundred you spend on your monthly fuel and food. The figure is eye opening and there is no reason why you should refuse the option of a VA and opt for an expensive assistant. Think over it and make a decision you would be proud of.

Tuesday 14 January 2014

Characteristics for Clients Working With VA

A lot of us already know what a virtual assistant is. There are hordes of articles, blogs and information available on the internet that will let you know about the Virtual Personal Assistant Duties. Apart from discussing here how a VA can be helpful to your business and you. One of the most popularly written articles is about how to choose the right virtual assistant for your business. These articles and blogs are very helpful if you want to learn about choosing the right VA, but very rarely have people written about the clients who hire virtual assistants. Let’s discuss about what the clients should keep in mind about their own activities when hiring a VA.

Professionalism

Virtual assistants are professionals who work for you according to the guidelines that you have given for your tasks. The only difference is that these VA’s do not come to your office to complete the work rather they work from their own place but work for you. Normally VA’s complain that the clients often ignore them and do not treat them professionally. There can be various issues that have caused the complaining, you are a client, and you are an employer who has hired one, two or even more VA’s. Consider your actions and decide if your actions depict professionalism or not.

Effective communication

Clients should adopt an effective way of communication. They should respond quickly to emails and should also use the efficient ways of communication such as Skype and other apps. With effective communication the task can be completed efficiently without mistakes. Often the clients send confusing guidelines and after spending hours of tedious work the VA receives a message that the work was no up to the standards and the client emphasizes that he meant something else. In this situation if the VA asks for confirmations on confusing terms and the client does not respond effectively, the time and work are all wasted.

Payments

Your virtual personal assistant is a human who has many needs of his own which is why he is working for you. Since you are his employer, it is important that you make the payments cleared on the decided time. Delaying the payment would only be a matter of driving away the VA from your work. When you delay in providing his needs then don’t expect him to prioritize your work over all other things.

Friday 10 January 2014

Choose the Best VA Service for Your Business

Businesses are keen to keep their operational costs to the lowest possible. The practice to outsource work has enabled small businesses to employ a team without paying the full price. When the business is in its initial stages it requires a lot of attention and hard work. The owner usually doesn’t have enough time to complete all the work on his own hence the need for an assistant becomes obvious. Hiring an assistant in the office would seem like an ideal choice but at the same time it would be a costly choice. The operational costs of the business would shoot upwards and it would reduce the profit margin of the business. 

Unless the business can be termed as well settled, it would be a mistake to increase operational costs. The chances of growth are reduced when the business has to pay a hefty amount for the operational costs because it keeps the cash registers half empty all the time. Hiring a virtual assistant would be a good choice because it will keep the costs to the minimum plus it will also keep the work going on. There are many virtual assistant services for small businesses available at affordable rates.

Finding a service provider is not a problem at all. One can easily search for the virtual assistants on the giant search engine Google. The search result will produce thousands of links to the service providers. Obviously you wouldn’t be looking at all the thousands of links that appear in the entire pages, but be sure you make a good analysis of the results that come up. Do not stick to the results that appear on the first page, skim down to the other pages as well, you know what’s best for you not Google it is just a helping tool.

Sometimes good sites may not appear on the first page and are available on the second page or so on. Since you would be spending money for the services, so, it is better if you make a maximum research before committing to someone. Drop in an inquiry if you need a customized package otherwise most sites already have their packages mentioned on their relevant pages. Choose the best virtual assistant services for your business. By the term ‘best’ it means the ones that will be treating your business with priority, when most small business owners take services from companies that are already catering huge firms, they rarely have time for the small business and it harms the business owner who is paying for the services but it pleading for his work to be completed. It doesn’t always pay to go after brands, choose what suits your business because that’s all that matters. 

Thursday 9 January 2014

Why We Need a Virtual Assistant

Outsourcing has become very popular since the internet and computers have reached every home all over the globe. There have emerged many different types of jobs and a variety of businesses in this advanced age of internet and technology. The new breed of employee that has emerged is the virtual assistant who has become very popular among the businesses which operate online. If you are not familiar with the term “virtual assistant” a question automatically comes to the mind, what do virtual administrative assistants do?

This is very important to know because a majority of business people who are veterans in the niche also are unaware of the VA and how can he be helpful for a business. To begin with, a VA is a human who works for an employer without going to the employer’s office. All the tasks are designated and described in an email and the VA reads the descriptions, understands them, asks questions by replying to the email in case the descriptions are not very clear and performs them on his own PC and delivers them back using the same channel or the channel described by the employer.

In the start, when the VA business or this niche was born, people used these assistants for simple data entry in excel sheets. These assistants were also used to type books reading from scanned pages of hand written materials so that the author wouldn’t have to waste his time to type all the words he has written using ink and paper. These tasks soon became advanced and seeped into administrative tasks as well. VA’s now are also used for client communication and many other purposes where the employer allows him access to the company email such as the customer support email where general queries are landed.

Currently the virtual administrative assistant duties have reached a whole new level and are not just limited to answering emails or scanning them. A virtual assistant provides many advanced tasks such as search engine optimization, social media optimization and management, web development and designing and online marketing tasks too. The contributions of a VA are many to keep businesses active and alive on the internet which is the result of the growth and expansion of the internet which was once a medium only to kill the spare time. These days a plethora of businesses rely on the internet and they exist mainly due to the availability of advanced internet and the presence of millions of customers online.

Wednesday 8 January 2014

What Does a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Do?

After the economic crunch, property trading has found a new boom and the realtors are busy in maturing deals with clients. They rarely find enough time to complete their administrative tasks and have thus turned to outsource them to the real estate virtual assistant. Why the real estate VA? The reasons are obvious. They get quality work done in the least possible prices.

Another reason to go virtual is the high rise in the online sale and purchases of properties. The internet has provided both customers and the sellers an effective meeting point. It does not matter how far or near you are from the seller, you can establish a connection. There is no need to go from one place to another hunting the things you need. It takes too much time and resources just to find the right thing when you are walking or driving from one road to another.

Internet provides an opportunity to view multiple choices at the same time. The browser allows you to open as many tabs as you can handle and you can make the comparisons right on your computer screen without leaving your chair. Another benefit customers have with the online purchasing system is that they can order or book the thing of their choice on the spot even if it from another country. While this is just about the commodities and electronic items, why keep the property channel aside?

Purchasing property is a huge deal as one has to invest his entire life savings in it. We all are not princes or kings to make as many property purchases as they come up on sale. An average person collects enough during his lifetime to purchase one or two properties. He needs information of every kind he can get and the internet is filled with information. Thus he turns towards the internet for information and when there are realtors available to provide him inside stories about the places he is looking for, having a web presence makes it worth the while.

A real estate virtual assistant can be a very helpful resource in building and maintaining the website. By keeping your website healthy and within reach of the audience, you VA can be one of your most prized marketing and administrative assistant. Reach out to all the customers out there who are searching for the right realtor on the internet. The internet is a huge source to drive in customers and there’s no denying to it.

Tuesday 7 January 2014

Many Options with VA Services

Online businesses are growing like mushrooms all over the web. There are thousands of online shops and online portals where people can buy the products of their choice with ease and convenience. It is up to the business owner to make sure that his customers get the best prices and the best products from his online shop so that they won’t be leaving for anywhere else.

The trend to make online purchases has boomed during the last decade. Internet has come within reach of the common man. We now not only use the internet for official purposes, but we use them at homes and now even on our mobile devices such as the tablet and smart phones. The use of such devices has increased the number of people online every second by billions.

Internet has been designed to make the human life less stressed and luxurious. The ease to make purchases on the internet has saved millions of people who fret to go shopping in the huge malls and not being able to decide what to purchase. Now these people can easily surf the online stores to make the purchases and without wasting their precious time and energy of moving from one shop to another.

The business owners of these online shopping portals are also at an advantage to start from a small investment. Since they do not need to purchase a physical store or land to launch their business, they can start from a small office and manage the process from there. But the task to run and manage an online business is never an easy task. Although the customers come online and make purchases right from their computers and mobile devices, it is run like a complete business that is present physically.

Any business that is needed to be run successfully requires an assistant to be with the owner. But hiring one to help in the office can be one of the most expensive choices you make. There is no need to explain the labor laws and the other state rules about the salaries you will be liable to give to your assistant here. But it would be more sensible to point out the possibility of using virtual office assistant services over the web which is cheap, affordable, reliable and the best option when you are in the mood to keep your expenses as low as possible.

Your VA would be performing his tasks from any corner of the world. It depends where he is situated, but as long as he fulfills your requirements and is up to the mark, there is nothing you have to worry about your assistant. With an assistant at hand you get all the time you need to focus on your business. One thing that is worth mentioning here, the virtual office assistant is a person who is highly skilled, knows the industry he is working in and can be of much use than an ordinary secretary who only knows where to put the files.

If you think you need some kind of suggestion or an open opinion about your business, do not hesitate to ask the virtual office assistant for his advice. If you are working with a VA who has many years of experience and has worked with many other business people, he will be able to help you easily. This way you can get a person to discuss the options regarding the business activities with someone who is knowledgeable and also knows something about your business. 

Monday 6 January 2014

Hiring VA Is the Best Deal You Ever Make

Every growing business needs a bigger team to manage the burdens of the tasks. When businesses are set up, they are mostly in a small scale and the profit ratio is too low that affording an assistant seems out of the question. Once the business stabilizes it is the time for the owner to think about relaxing a bit and easing the pressure of the entire business from his shoulders. It is not about sidelining the owner form the business responsibilities, but in fact it is the reward to the business owner for his untiring efforts which are the result that today he is in a position to think about hiring an assistant. But it should be clearly understood that hiring an assistant may seem to be a very good idea, but it can also be a costly move to hire an assistant in the office.

Making unnecessary spending is not a favorable thing for the business to grow and groom. Money plays a huge role in the business world because it is the only medium that can be used for further investment and to put food on the table. While hiring an assistant sees necessary, so is the matter about saving as much as possible. The best thing to do in this situation is to hire an online virtual assistant. But why hire an assistant who is virtual? Why not hire a cheap assistant who will be working in your office?

First of all bear in mind that an assistant who will be coming to your office daily is never cheap. You will have to pay the salary according to the laws which means that the salary will never be cheap. Next thing about the assistant who comes to your office would require a dedicated space to sit and a computer to work upon. This means that you need a bigger office if your current office cannot accommodate him. You will have to relocate which means you will have to make a lot of expenses.

Now compare the option of the online virtual assistant who can start work immediately without demanding any investment. He works from a remote place which is nothing of your concern. He might be sitting on a comfy chair, on the floor, in the hammock or be hanging in mid air, as long as he serves the purpose you have nothing more to ask from him. Arranging the machinery is his problem and you have to invest nothing more than just the fee that has been agreed for the services. So obviously you know where you are getting the best deal.