One of the things I do as a VA is manage websites for clients and I've built many too. I started to do this out of necessity for myself back in 1996 when it was hard to find a web designer and I've learnt along the way. Having transitioned from MS Publisher (yes, seriously!), to MS FrontPage to Dreamweaver and eventually WordPress (2006) there is still much to learn. I doubt I'll ever know it all but I know enough to get websites up and running in reasonably short time and teach my clients how … [Read more...]
Can your prospective clients contact you?
Have you viewed your business card and website with your prospective clients' eyes lately? Over the past year I've noticed a trend in business cards having minimal details. Websites are often the same. A name, perhaps a business name, an email address (or, on their website a contact form) and a mobile phone number. That's it. Often the email address is not a domain address, i.e. they're using their ISP email, gmail, hotmail or similar. When considering whether I want to do business with … [Read more...]
Website histories
Sometimes it's necessary (or worthwhile) to go and check the history of a domain to find out how long a business has been online, or in operation. It's hard to tell the age of a site because technology and our age require that information is regularly updated. And if you want to verify some facts, a good way to do it would be to verify the age of the site or the domain. Plus you can have a giggle about how awful some sites were many years ago. For example, if you were to check how long my … [Read more...]
How easy do you make it for your customers?
My husband is a ham radio operator. He was perusing websites recently looking for some equipment to further his hobby. He was looking at sites here in Australia as well as overseas. He found one based in Sydney that had what he wanted BUT, they had no shopping cart set up for their long list of accessories and once you were on the list, there was no link to get back to the site itself. The list was in a PDF format. Some Australian businesses are complaining about customers shopping overseas … [Read more...]
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, … [Read more...]
Looking for a mail list option to run on my server
I currently run my site on Wordpress with Wishlist installed to manage members of my network. I want to bring onto my site a suitable mail list option for my members to use, instead of an external service. This is what I perceive is needed: Messages to be archived so that members can view past messages at any time they login Messages can be sent from any member to entire list via email (as in yahoogroups) Multiple lists able to be set up for smaller groups (as can be done in … [Read more...]
I’m a new Virtual Assistant, do I need a website?
This was a question posted at a VA forum very recently and it is something often asked by those entering our industry. She wanted to know if creating a flyer for now would do as she didn't want to spend money on a website till she had work coming in. What did I advise them? If you're not going to have a website then I encourage you to join one or more of the VA networks that provide an online listing for you so you have a presence online and you can use that as your web page address for … [Read more...]
Start With What You Know
I was speaking to a prospective VA on the phone the other day. She had been researching the Virtual Assistant industry and my name kept popping up everywhere she looked. She is also an avid reader of my blog (hi Helen!). During the course of the conversation she said the same thing I often hear 'newbies' say and that is, they want to learn a number of things before they start their businesses. I decided to explore this further with her. Whilst it is true that VAs need to have a certain … [Read more...]