Virtual Assistant – THE Blog About Our Industry

About the Virtual Assistant industry for VAs and for clients

Category Archives: Technology

Are you an Aussie VA that runs events?

Came across a great site this week, when helping a client organise an event he was promoting. He wanted to take bookings online and make it as painless as possible. He’d been told of a couple of sites by associates and I tried one of them out for him yesterday when sending out a broadcast email.  Very easy to use and set up, you can customise the page after setting up the initial information.

The site is called Trybooking.com and this morning I logged back in to see if he’d gotten any bookings.  He had!  He probably receives notification at his email address but you can create a pdf or printed report when you log in.  The site allows you to allocate how many seats are available and even seating positions, so if you have a theatre to book out, or a room with numbered seating, this site is ideal for it.  It will handle your payments for you, or you can simply have a ‘free’ event – which my client is running.

How much does it all cost? Very little. This page gives you the info.

The site collects all the information for you and makes it easy for those booking for your event.

So, if you’re an Aussie VA running an event, no matter what size, for yourself or a client, this site is definitely worth using. Think I’ll be using this for future events – wish I’d known before promoting AVAC this year!

Phone access for clients

I’ve chosen not to use my mobile (cell) phone for my VA business. Why? Because I’m in my office 95% of the time anyway and they can get me via the landline and email – why do I need them calling on my mobile phone too?

I use the mobile phone for personal use only, i.e. family, friends, emergencies.  If I’m out of my office I can’t be doing work for clients anyway, as the majority of what I do is done on a computer.

And yet, it seems I’m in a minority and I think it shocks some clients when they ask for my mobile number and I won’t give it to them.  I know what will happen if I do. They’ll start using it to ring me all the time – instead of my landline number.

If I need to be hearing from them when I’m away from my office then I’ll simply divert my landline to my mobile phone to receive their calls. But chances are, that if I’m going to be away from my office for sometime (like several days or more) then I’m more likely to divert my landline to one of my VA team members to handle calls in my absence.

So, do you use your mobile phone for business, or are you like me, and reserve it for family and friends only?  Let’s face it, there’s little opportunity to be ‘disconnected’ from the office with all of today’s technologies.  I like to be able to switch off now and then – it’s good for the mind, body and soul.

As a new VA, I can’t afford a website

I’ve been corresponding with a couple of new Virtual Assistants over the past couple of weeks. They found me via different VA forums and started emailing me for advice.

One said she couldn’t afford a website yet and was asking me what she could do to promote her business online. This is my response to her:

“What makes you think you can’t afford a website?  The reality is you could get webhosting and a domain for a year for a very minimal amount of money (I provide this service and I know that other VA organisations do too).  And if the webhost provides WordPress (which is free software) you could have a site up in a couple of hours. There are tons of free templates out there, you don’t have to know web coding – the program works very much like Word in lots of ways and you can publish online straight away.  It would also mean you would have a domain address that is yours to keep, people could look you up and learn about what you do and you can update it anytime you want. www.wordpress.org has a free support forum and many of the VA discussion groups can help answer questions too.

I’m much more experienced with WordPress now but was a beginner around 6 or 7 years ago and I love the program.  I’ve learnt enough html to tweak the coding and make changes if I want to – but you don’t have to at all. You don’t have to have a business name – you could buy yourname.com if it was available or even yourname-va.com or similar.  I’m sure you’d come up with a few possibilities if you thought of it.”

So, if you’ve been struggling with the idea of whether you can afford a website or not, I hope the above helps dispel that problem for you.

Starting off the new year

If you’re like me, you may have been spending the past week still on a holiday break, knowing full well that work was just around the corner.  So, now it’s time to really take stock of what is ahead, or perhaps outstanding, to get the year started off right.  Here are a few hints and tips on things that VAs, clients and other business owners can do, to start the new year off right.

Your Outlook file. How big is it? Mine was nearly 2.5gb in size – too big!  At the beginning of each year, I usually rename outlook.pst to outlook20xx.pst for the previous year and then re-open Outlook. When it can’t find the old pst file it automatically creates a new one.  Then I go about importing my contact folders, drafts folder, and any other folders that are important to me. For my inbox, I elect to import everything for the past week (or month, whatever suits you) into the same folders as the previous file, so my preferred structure is reset up and I’m operating again.  After that I reset up my rules wizard as often that’s gotten into a mess too. Don’t forget your appointments too – make sure anything you’ve entered over the past month for the future is included too. My Outlook program is now ready for the new year.

What other things can you do?

Check all the folders on your computer.  Are there folders no longer relevant?  Perhaps for clients you no longer service, or groups you no longer participate in?  Archive, file or delete what is no longer required.

Does your computer need an overhaul? It’s gotten slow, or has software on it no longer relevant? If you don’t have the ability to do this yourself, book it in for a service with a reliable service provider.

Check the (c) notices on your websites and blogs to make sure they reflect the new year.

Basically, you want to clear out the clutter you have on your computer (and your desk) so you can start afresh for the New Year and be ready to jump to action without being held up by old messes and old things.

 

Special offers for Virtual Assistants and their clients

You may remember my mention recently of a ‘sick scam‘ where an affiliate was processing orders using stolen credit cards on my shopping cart on this site.  Not a nice thing to happen and I’m still getting things sorted and processing refunds as people contact me. I can say the bank hasn’t been as helpful as I would have hoped, given that I’m not the perpetrator but a victim too, but that’s another story.

At any rate, I’m working hard to recoup lost funds, cover refunds and pay additional fees so have decided to set up a couple of special offers to help speed things up for me.  And that means you, my reader, get to benefit and anyone else you’d like to tell about it.

If you, or someone you know, would like to become a Virtual Assistant, they can participate in the 10 week VA Trainer course, and become a member of our VA Directory at a reduced rate.

Or, perhaps you, or someone you know, are needing a website with webhosting and control of the site yourself? I can provide you with a year’s webhosting and WordPress installation with site set up at a reduced rate. Contact me for more details.

Keep a watch on my blog for further offers.

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