Posted by Anna Morina Mattingly on September 25, 19100 at 16:00:54:
I'm an entrepreneural grandmother. This is one
way to work at home. In case this doesn't turn out
How to become a Virtual Assistant (Secretary) on the internet
while catering to Small Business by Anna Mattingly
The more we do our own clerical work independently for our
small business, the more we see how great the need is for
virtual assistants who can cater to the small business community
on the web. We have also noticed at our employment site a
great surge in internet traffic indicating another need for stay
at home mother's and women in general to perform clerical
duties in their homes. And what's really interesting is that men
need this work as well today. Many who pass through our virtual
door simply want to start their own business or to be hired as an
administrative assistant of an existing business. But for years
we struggled with the answer of how to do this successfully.
Many said they tried to do this but just simply could not find
work.
Frustrating as it has been, we see a new frontier emerging.
The Information Highway, as some call it, or the internet has
created a home for new home business owner's. Over the
past 3-5 years many entrepreneurs have been developing and
establishing their own small businesses just as we did. We
see many store fronts that are bringing in daily income for
their owners which in turn is creating more and more
administrative work and a new opportunity for administrative
assistant's. Good news for the struggling stay at home
secretary. Although it will take a bit of ingenuity and hard
work to get started it's no longer impossible for women to
stay home and perform the same office and administrative
duties they used to perform traditionally in the office.
Since small business is still in it's infancy via the internet, a
new VA has the added job of enlightening small business
owners of their need for strong administrative support.
We've taken the liberty here of incorperating this process
into the few simple steps needed to get started.........
Obviously you have a connection to the internet if you are
reading this. If you have your small home office set up and
you have experience and you're ready to work at home
here's all you will need to do.
1. Decide which services you will provide
2. Decide what rates you will charge.
3. Find a nice home on the web for your new business. There are
plenty of nice places to open a "VR" business. A simple one page
website is more than sufficient.
for one example of a free virtual community that will assist you
with just about any need you have.
4. Set your business up. Basically you would just be advertising
yourself to the small business community on the web with your
website.
------Tell the small business owners why they need you. You
might want to mention how EXTREMELY reasonable your rates
are.
One paragraph on your website alerting the business person to
all he needs to do while running an cyber business and how you
can solve that problem. An example of this is advertising,
website maintenance, newsletter pre-preparation, etc
------Elaborate on ALL the skills you have. (entrepreneurs never
Office support, correspondence, internet research, typing or
writing their newsletter, database maintenance of customers and
leads, web design, sales literature design, etc.
------Give them your background and education. (Mention too
how much energy you have and how fast you type and advertise
also.)
------Provide a way for them to contact you. This is as simple as
ending your webpage advertisement with your name, an email
link, your address and your telephone number.
5. Advertise yourself in every way imaginable on the internet.
There are actual listings for virtual assistants where you can
You can buy materials from these sites to help you to develop
your business and these places may even help you with
setting up a website and advertising. Do a search at alta vista
search engine to find more databases like these.
When you are advertising on your own we suggest targeting
the places small business people visit. Mainly these are
comprised of small business forums, discussion lists and
newsgroups. Take part in the discussions and include a
signature similar to the one we added at the end of this article
(Never blatantly advertise in newsgroups, forums or a
discussion list). Here are the places you can look for "marketing
When your business is developed you can research
press releases and tell the world how you are helping
the small businessman via the internet.
This will help you a great deal with that
Why wait another day, the opportunity has presented itself. It's a
wide open arena and a great need. You could be one of the first to
create this new income generating line of work on the internet and
be up and running in no time. Many large staffing services may
not even realize this door of opportunity exists, get in now. As
business owners realize you are available more and more will come
to you for help. You could be creating a new family owned
business at home beginning right now. There is even plenty of
opportunity for an online "VA temporary agency" or two which
will cater to the online small business world. Food for thought.
Seize the moment!
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Anna Mattingly is a published writer and poet. She is the owner
of a website called Morina's Millennium Profits. It houses many
small business start up resources, as well as, a home employment
resource center. Get tons of tips on how to accomplish small