A new resource for the Virtual Assistant industry. I’m putting together something along the lines of SpeakerNetNews. If you’ve ever seen it, it is a newsletter sent out weekly to the public speaking community worldwide and speakers get to suggest items, tips, products, services that they’ve found useful in their business and want to share what they’ve found with others. The newsletter is not meant for promotional activities, i.e. big-noting the speakers and telling of their success … [Read more...]
Prospective Client Gets Rejected II
Further to my previous post, I was pleased to see that Valerie visited here and added comment. She advised that she did research transcription companies before looking further afield. She just hadn't indicated that in her article and it might have helped those of us who commented on her article to see a more complete picture before commenting. It is important to note here that transcription companies don't necessarily mean Virtual Assistants and vice versa, although Valerie had mentioned both … [Read more...]
Prospective Client Gets Rejected
Interesting article in The Sydney Morning Herald last week about writer Valerie Khoo getting rejected when trying to get some transcription work done. She'd contacted the Indian company mentioned in Tim Ferriss' book about the 4-hour week, only to find they were too busy to do the work for her and would need to outsource it.  After shopping around via Guru.com and getting quotes from a few countries, including her own (Australia) she settled on a transcriptionist in the US. Many VAs have … [Read more...]
Real Virtual Work
I live in Australia and manage a team of Virtual Assistants (VAs) that are in 16 countries altogether, so quite a widespread team. I've recently been doing a survey of my team with respect to the job requests that come into our team via my office, or via one of the team members. One thing that is noticed with many of the job requests that are placed - so many of our prospective clients still perceive the need for a VA to be located close by so they can physically meet them - and often the type … [Read more...]
Do you have a product or service for the VA Industry? Then read on…
Over the past few months I've had a number of approaches from people who have developed a product or service that they want to promote to the Virtual Assistant industry. Sometimes it's clear to me that they don't understand the VA industry at all and after discussing their product or service and our industry, they go away again - back to the drawing board. Other times they come at it with a focus from their country only - they forget our industry is global not nationally focused. If you're … [Read more...]
Brenner Research on VA Industry
Many of you will know that Brenner's have done industry reports on the VA industry. Their most recent one has left out vital information relating to a good portion of the VA industry - those located in Australia, New Zealand and other countries. If you've not previously participated in the survey this year then I encourage you to please take a few minutes and fill out this survey - there are a total of 10 questions, some with multiple choice answers. Click Here to take survey … [Read more...]
Blog Carnival of Virtual Assistants
Welcome to the 3rd edition of the Carnival of Virtual Assistants. This month we’ve had some great submissions. I am delighted to be your host for this particular session! Do you know your computer software? Just how much should a Virtual Assistant know and understand their computer and software? I believe it is really important that we make an effort to know and understand as much as possible about the care of our computers to keep them running at an optimum. If we were dependent on our … [Read more...]
Are You Real?
I had a young woman ring me the other day. She sounded a little nervous on the phone but the reason for that soon became obvious. You see, she'd signed up for a typing job at home on the web sometime back, paid out money and then nothing happened. She lost her money and felt 'burnt' and was nervous about trying again. However, she'd been researching the Virtual Assistant industry and was very keen to work at home with a genuine role, and anxious not to get caught by something bogus. So, she … [Read more...]
Virtual Assistant or Virtual Worker?
As the VA industry evolves and more people become aware of this excellent way of working, it is only natural that there are going to be companies developing who have a staff of virtual workers. We've been seeing this in India for sometime but now it's expanding to other parts of the world, with at least one that I know of in the US and I became aware of another in the Philippines recently. I'm sure there are others too. And that's not to mention the agencies that tap into the VA market - there … [Read more...]
