Virtual Assistant – THE Blog About Our Industry

About the Virtual Assistant industry for VAs and for clients

Monthly Archives: September 2010

Creating a Virtual Assistant business

If you’re a regular reader of my blog you would have seen last week the post about a VA who had infringed upon two of my trademarks (my business name and my catch phrase) on her website.  Her response had been she didn’t know and had engaged someone else to do her site for her.

Unfortunately ignorance is not bliss in this situation, as in many situations.  The reality is she owns her website and is responsible for what is put on the site and even the business name she elects to use.  In her ‘innocence’ she had breached the Trade Practices Act here in Australia.

If you are a new Virtual Assistant just setting up your VA practice there are many things to do to get started, and sometimes handing something over such as the creation of your website and even a decision on a business name (which is what happened in this case) can feel like a relief – until it all goes awry.

As the owner of your business you are responsible for every aspect of the business and all decisions should be made by you.  It might seem time consuming and overwhelming at times and there’s nothing to say you have to have a website and a business name straight away – those things can come over time, but when they do, you must have complete control over the process.  There are simple ways of ensuring an online profile until such time you decide upon a business name and have a website created.  Here are some:

Create a profile at LinkedIn.com and use that as your professional bio.  It is created under your name, not a business name and you can personalise the profile address just as I have:  http://au.linkedin.com/in/kathiethomas

Create a profile at Facebook and use that for your business connections.  You can personalise the address after you have a number of connections or simply purchase a domain and point it to your profile page as I have with www.kathiemthomas which leads to my Facebook page.

Register with VA networks that provide a profile page for you. Again, this can be under your name, it does not have to be under a business name.  Depending on the network you may have some control over how the page looks or you simply might just have your services listed.  See http://vadirectory.net/vadirectory/victoria/selby/ for an example.

In all cases you can use these page addresses as your webpage until such time you’re ready to get a website set up.  If you’re planning to provide website maintenance as a service then it’s important you do your own site so you understand what’s involved. Be prepared for a big learning curve. But if you don’t plan to do that, you can engage someone else to do it for you. And it might be a good idea to engage an experienced VA to do the site for you as they have good knowledge of the industry, especially if you have no real idea yourself.  An experienced VA can help guide you as to what is appropriate to put on your site and will definitely steer you away from copying content or other items from existing sites.  This is something that should be obvious but if you haven’t had much input to the site and you’ve just handed it to someone else to do, the chances are you could run into trouble.

If in doubt, ask questions at the VA forums and make sure you do your research.

Free advertising for VA website

Periodically there will be requests on the Virtual Assistant forums asking about free advertising. In fact you find requests for free almost everything.

I’m a believer of that old saying ‘you have to spend money to make money’ and the fact is if you’re in business, you should expect that you’re going to have a number of taxable expenses. It goes with the territory.  However, given that, there are a number of low cost or free options for a number of things in business and if you can save money, then that’s a good thing.

One VA recently posted this question at a forum:

Does anyone know of any free internet advertising services for my secretarial service?

Answers included the following:

http://www.ebayclassifieds.com is a great place to advertise and it’s free. I have ads running all the time in my local city.

Register your website with Google, Yahoo and other search engine.  Also, register with Google Places.   Blog and update it frequently and use Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter too.  Participate in online groups or forums where potential clients may be too.

My response was:

Do you have a website? If so, add it to your signature at the bottom of EVERY email you send out.

If you don’t – then get one.  Domain names don’t cost much these days and webhosting can be quite low too.  What you want (if you don’t know how to design a site) is WordPress – not wordpress.com as you can’t use that for commercial purposes but wordpress.org.  To use that you need your own paid hosting (not free hosting as it will carry adverts on it that detracts from your site).  You can get a domain name + webhosting for a full year for around $150UAD or less per year.  You’re in business so this is a taxable expense and one you should be considering.

Now, if you have a website already that’s great. Develop a signature block, add your phone number, web address and anything else you want to add.

Are you on LinkedIn.com?  That provides a facility for an online bio/outline of your experience and will give you a profile page web address you can also use – particularly if you don’t have, or don’t want, a website for now. That is free.  You can participate in forum discussions there that will bring you in front of potential clients.  It’s the participation that’s important as people won’t know you exist if you don’t speak up.

There are tons of forums at yahoogroups.com.  Look for forums that have your hobby listed, or topics of interest and join. For example I’ve joined authors groups as I’m interested in writing but that has also provided me opportunity to gain work with authors. Same for professional speakers and business coaches. I’ve joined local networks (local to where I live where I go and meet them face-to-face) and participated in online forums.

Networking is a really important and often overlooked form of marketing which is a very effective way of getting people to notice you.

Look for local networks close to your home where other business people meet and congregate and make sure you always have business cards with you.

Business cards are important offline and your signature block is your online business card.

When you participate at VA forums you can learn a lot about what others have done to successfully get the word out there about their businesses, whether free, low cost or at higher cost. They’ll let you know what has worked and what hasn’t worked.  It makes sense to learn from the experience of others.

Being a VA doesn’t mean ‘cheap’

I get amazed by the (thankfully small) number of people who contact me looking for, and I quote ‘

I could do with a good inexpensive VA. My experience with them has been poor.  Would appreciate your advice on this score.

My response to this person was:

Re ‘inexpensive’ VA.  Not sure what you mean by that exactly. I don’t have any on my lists who charge what the Asians charge but I do have Virtual Assistants in 11 countries, all English speaking and writing and depending on their cost of living, their rates can differ considerably.

I’m sorry your past experience has been poor – it is really important for us to have a clear idea of what type of work you want done so we can ensure you get a good match for that need.

If you’d like to email me and let me know what you are looking for, then I can facilitate looking for the right VA or VAs.

Her response back to me was to ask if I had anyone from India on my list. Obviously she’s looking for someone who charges $5 or less.

All I could do was reiterate that my team come from a mainly corporate background, are highly skilled and need to charge rates that relate to their cost of living, i.e. they are not going to charge only $4 or $5 an hour when they live in a country that won’t support that kind of very low income.  I’m positive she does not live in a similar country and would not survive on those rates herself. Why does that mean we have to accept such low rates.  Does she consider our work to be so lowly?  And yet she has obviously had a bad or poor experience on the VAs she’s engaged previously.  Isn’t there a connection there somewhere?

Trading off someone else’s business name is bad form

Why is it that new Virtual Assistants (and I guess new anything in any industry) think they can run their business using someone else’s business name and catch phrase? Worse for them – both are trademarked.  This particular VA is running a business in Queensland Australia.  I doubt very much that they haven’t heard of my business. I’m even in listed in their Yellow Pages.

I hope the owner of the site I’m referring to reads my blog. This is extremely bad form and shows you have little imagination for creating something of your own.

You’ve already received an email from me advising you are infringing on two registered Trademarks and you will also be receiving an official Cease and Desist letter.  Better for you if you just remove them off your site, change your domain name and start afresh.  I’ve already had one of my clients ring you looking for me and was very confused by your response to her on the phone.  She was able to find me and didn’t waste time in telling me about her experience with you. Not a good start for a new business, is it?

For those of you just setting up, creating a website, business name, etc, it is very important that while you glean information and learn from other websites and businesses, you make sure you are not infringing on trademarks and existing registered business names and you find a new name for yourself. Even operating under your own personal name is fine and no-one can claim you are copying them.  Unfortunately these things do get noticed and people soon report back to those you’re copying – it gives everyone involved a bad impression of your business and your business operations, no matter how good you might be.  I’ll be watching.

Addendum to this post: The owner of the site has finally responded to my emails. She has been away and advises that someone else had done the site for her.  She has promised to get it taken down on the weekend by that person.   My solicitor says this:  Excuses can be genuine but wrong nevertheless. I’ve asked him to withhold action till after the weekend.

Note: This is an important thing for any VA who gets someone else to set up a website for them.  I’ve seen and heard similar things in the past.  An unsuspecting Virtual Assistant engages the assistance of someone else to create a website for them. Later down the track they are informed that the content on their site is a direct copy of another site or that they have infringed a trademark, as has happened in my case.   Whether or not you engage someone else to create a site for you, YOU are responsible for the content of that site and as such, should ensure that it is content you have prepared or had involvement in preparing.  If you are found guilty of having copyrighted or trademarked information on your site that doesn’t belong to you, then ultimately you are the one that ends up paying the price.  Excuses just don’t cut it.

Being a Virtual Assistant

Interesting discussion at one of the forums I belong to related to the term of title ‘Virtual Assistant’. Some found it hard to explain to people what they do, some wanted the title changed and others were happy to stay with it.

The title isn’t just a title though, it’s a whole industry.  And it’s an industry that birthed in the mid 90s, and is here to stay, still evolving as technology changes, still getting noticed by those out there who have need of our services.

It’s like any industry or service (or product) really. People don’t know you exist till they recognise a need and come looking to find you.

Personally I like the title ‘Virtual Assistant’. There was a time when I didn’t in the early days – it seemed to come hot on the tails of ‘virtual reality’ and I wanted people to know I am ‘real’ and not ‘pretend’.  However I feel it very adequately describes what I do on a daily basis. I Assist my clients on a Virtual basis.

It has nothing to do with being sub-servient, or people not understanding. Our role is to educate the public what a Virtual Assistant is and what we do – just as it’s the role of lawyers, financial planners, mortgage brokers, etc to educate the public on what they do.  There are misconceptions everywhere.

I don’t mind people having that ‘startled-stuck-in-the-headlights’ look. It simply opens doors and provides me the opportunity to explain in more detail what it is I do on a daily basis.  I like that people say ‘what does that mean?’ or ‘what is a Virtual Assistant?’  And the quickest and easiest way to explain it is to ask if they understand how a corporate boss and his PA can work together although in separate rooms or buildings or states or countries when the ‘boss’ may be away on a business trip.  They communicate via phone, email, fax, etc.  Most people say ‘yes’ to that and I then respond ‘well, I work in the same way, except instead of one boss, I have several clients’ and I do all the work in my own office and not theirs. And my particular skill set means I support them with databases, websites, social media, etc.  Other VAs have other service offerings, but all are computer based and operate via the internet in most cases. Simple concept really.