Virtual Assistants have become the target of many scammers and we are aware of it. Seasoned VAs work to help newer VAs open their eyes to this fact when they join VA forums and networks (just one good reason for not going it alone and making sure you join at least one active forum). However there are so many scams out there that appear real and real jobs that appear to be scams that we need to keep alert all the time and learn to discern reality from falsehood. We need to learn to ask … [Read more...]
How a Virtual Assistant can save you time
I've been publishing a weekly series of client case studies - clients who have utilised the professional services of members of my team, some for a short time, some for a much longer period of time. I hope that this will provide readers the opportunity to: Determine services of their own they can provide if they are a VA, or Services that VAs can provide you, if you're a prospective client. These clients have come from a variety of fields and there are still many we haven't covered. The … [Read more...]
How this Virtual Assistant began blogging
I was asked to investigate blogging for a client early 2005 but I didn't really understand what it was about. So I set up my first blog at Blogger for my VA business to explore it. I had to put in a calendar reminder weekly to force myself to do it and I often had no idea what to write about - I would pick out a word from a jar of cards I had just for a topic. Later that year I decided to set up a family one instead of my annual Christmas newsletter. I put up photos, wrote about my family but … [Read more...]
Friday Finds
Didn't get my normal interview up this week - just waiting on more to come through. But if you're a VA with a client who would like to participate, or perhaps you are a client who uses a VA and would like to participate, please do get in touch with me via the contact form on this blog. Thank you also to everyone who sent me their messages of condolences (over 40 of them) and comments on my family site this week after the loss of our beloved 16 year old cat, Beauie. He's been a faithful and … [Read more...]
At last, things are back to normal…
Don't you just hate it when technology just won't work? As you may be aware I've had my challenges these past few weeks. A cpanel crash meant having to shift all my websites and blogs, and that of my clients to another server. Minor hiccups have meant that we (web guy and me) need to find a fix for UTF-8 on some blogs as the charset isn't showing correctly although other blogs appear to be fine, but hopefully we'll get that sorted soon. Everything else appears to be working fine now. And … [Read more...]
Blogging is healthy
My hubby gets Scientific American and he photocopied an article for me from their June edition. The full article isn't available online but some of it is and I thought I'd share it with you. Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. … [Read more...]
Friday Reflection
This week has been a rather challenging one for me. Many of my clients and contacts will know that one of my servers had challenges 3 weeks ago and this past weekend everything was shifted to another server. Most of the challenges now seem ironed out and to my knowledge, only one or two clients, are still getting sorted - my web guy Andrew, has been a great help during this time. I was out of the office for a couple of days speaking at an EA/PA event in Perth. Consequently it meant that there … [Read more...]
Has anyone worked with a Virtual Assistant? part 7
Another in our Client Case Studies, Linda has our own Terence Kierans from WA supporting her. I feel it a real privilege that these clients are willing to share their stories about using Virtual Assistant services to support their businesses. It is my hope as you read through these stories that you can see how VAs can assist you if in business, or if you are a VA, the type of services you could provide to develop a successful VA practice. My name is Linda Simmon and I am a certified … [Read more...]
What program should I use for a website?
Many VAs on forums are found to be asking about what programs they should be using to develop websites. As beginners they frequently don't have the funding to pay someone to do it for them, but also they feel that they should be learning about things like that themselves so they can advise clients about what's available, even if they don't end up providing that service. I often recommend Wordpress these days. It provides a great CMS (Content Management System) type website with static pages … [Read more...]
