Stephanie Watson - Virtual Assistant

Recently someone posted on a popular work at home message board that they wanted to hire a website designer but they did not want to pay anything up front, they only wanted to pay when the work was done to their satisfaction. The person felt this way because apparently they had given money to more than one person up front and not received any services.

This disturbed me for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is that I personally will not provide any sort of services for anyone without being paid up front. I do not think it is fair that I should be punished for some other dishonest and unscrupulous person’s actions.

As a Virtual Assistant I am still relying on hourly work to earn a living,  and there are only so many hours in the day. I need to be sure that I will earn the amount of money that I need to feed my family. This means for me I must book a minimum of 20 billable hours per week. The only way to be sure that I have booked enough hours is to have been paid, up front.

I am an honest person so it disturbed me that this person had bad experiences giving money to people in advance and not getting work done.  Problems like this could ruin my ability to work from home, or cause me to drastically up my hourly fee to make up for people who don’t pay.

The second reason this really bothered me is because I wondered if this person had a contract with the Web Designer. I always have at least 50% in hand plus a signed contract before I do anything.  Even with first time long term retainer clients in my VA business I require a contract. Sure, people break contracts too, but it is less likely when you have a written contract. In addition you have a way to take someone to small claims court to have some justice administered when you have a contract.

In my other life I also own a Blog Design Company with my husband.

We always charge 50 percent up front for all design services and many times we do not end up receiving the last 50 percent even though the person claims to be very happy with the design. Due this issue, we have taken to only creating designs on our own hosting provider and never transferring ownership of the blog until we receive final payment. This way we can just turn it off if they do not pay. I hate doing that, and we give them many chances, but eventually, I have to buy milk.

I hope that it is not as hard as that blog poster stated to “hire good help”, maybe he wasn’t looking in the right places, or was expecting to much for the amount he was willing to pay, but I do know this: If you hire me you will get what you pay for, or you’ll get your money back.

Direct Sales Reps know that in order to maximize their sales they need to tell more people about what they offer. But a Direct Sales Rep is only one person, with only so many hours in the day.

When you go through your company offered training a Direct Sales Rep often learns about duplicating your efforts by signing up other reps and that is all fine and dandy but who has time to sell a product, sign up reps , and manage a team? Soon, your business that is supposed to lead you to ultimate freedom is draining your time. The money is great, but you want a vacation, you want more time in your day.

The answer is right in front of you. Hire a Virtual Assistant. A good virtual assistant can do a variety of things for you so that you can do whatever it is in your organization that you do best, whether it is recruiting or selling product.

Some tasks to delegate to your VA:

Post Card writing and mailing ( since they say these should be hand written why should you get a hand cramp?)

Website/Blog Creation and Maintenance

Client Thank You notes

Scheduling and Follow Ups

Ghost Writing

Newsletter Creation and Maintenance

Auto Responder Creation and Maintenance

Customer Service email and calls

Database Management

PR and Marketing

Team Meeting Planning, Scheduling and so much more.

I’m sure these ideas sparked some more ideas in your mind about what you would like your virtual assistant to do. Ideally you will find a Virtual Assistant who has worked in a Direct Sales Business previously so that they understand the general idea. However, someone with skills that you do not have, are more important in this matter  – because you need someone to help you cast a wider net – thus duplicating your efforts by essentially cloning yourself, but with additional skills.

Most Virtual Assistants will offer a trial period to see if you like working with her. I suggest you get together a list of things that you want done before hiring someone.

The initial work involved in hiring your Virtual Assistant will be more than worth it if you can form a long term relationship with your Virtual Assistant, so take your time.

You won’t regret it.

Even if you aren’t into technology, and don’t know a plug in from a widget you can still be a very successful Internet Business Owner. You can do what the big wigs do – Outsource.

Outsource anything that you do not know how to do, or don’t do quickly and well. Let go of the frustration and just let someone else do it. Think of yourself as a project manager. You come up with the ideas, then supervise and delegate tasks to the professionals.

You don’t have to find just one Virtual Assistant to do all tasks. You can hire separate Independent Contractors to do various tasks. Lets look at a possible Project to manage.

A New Info Product.

So you have a great idea for a new information product, you can write it in your sleep, but you don’t know what to do with it when you’re done. What do you do?

You can hire several people to help with this project such as:

An Editor – Someone to make sure your grammar and spelling is correct and that your end product looks readable and is in proper format for distribution.

A Copy Writer – Someone who can read the E-book and write up the perfect copy to properly motivate readers to purchase your product.

A Graphic Designer – Someone to create Graphics for your product. You need an E-book cover maybe graphics for inside the document to make it look extra professional. Some banner and buttons for advertising the product for you and your affiliates.

A Web – Blog Designer – Someone who can set up your blog or website (with Wordpress ™ that can be one and the same. This person can set it up and keep it up to date, and /or teach you how to do it.

An Affiliate Marketing Manager – Someone to find and manage all your affiliates. This person will be able to encourage and motivate what is essentially your sales team. This person can usually also set up the technology, keep the technology working, and answer any tech questions about software related to affiliate marketing.

A Social Media Marketing Manager – Someone who will set up all your social media and keep it running and updated, such as facebook, myspace, linkedin, twitter, digg, blogs, and more.

A ghost writer – someone who can write articles about your niche thereby effectively promoting your product(s).

Generalist – Someone who does all the other tasks needed to run your business to include answering customer service emails, send out press releases, simple blog postings  and more.

Honestly I could go on and on about how much a Virtual Assistant can do and this is just for one product. No one VA can do all tasks, (well maybe there is someone out there who can) but anyone that you hire to do the tasks above are essentially virtual assistants even if they have another title.

Virtual Assistants are professionals who are very valuable members of your team. Imagine how much faster you can get your products to those who need them if you could multiply yourself.

By hiring a VA – you can do it.