I was an eBay power seller until I moved from my little country town of Steelville, MO to Ellisville in St. Louis County in November of 2011.

I packed my most precious valuables and the things I absolutely had to have and downsized from a big, old 5 bedroom house to a sweet but small 2 bedroom apartment.

The movies and books and memorabilia from my retired store which were the things I was selling so well on eBay got left “for later”. Sadly, in June of 2012, my old house was burned to the ground by arson and I had never gotten around to making the trip to get these items.

For 2 years prior to moving, I had been listing and selling the great content I took home with me from retiring my brick and mortar store. I had an eBay store with over 2,000 items at one time. As I reduced my stock I eventually closed the eBay store to save the fee because you can literally list thousands of items on eBay without having to have “a store”.

It is more work to sell on eBay and get and retain power seller status than you might think. It literally took hours to list each item, find the image or images I wanted and to write descriptions to help them appeal and sell. Yes, there are ready-made templates on eBay IF the item is listed already, but I wanted mine to be more original and stand out from the crowd, and though a rare occurrence, there ARE mistakes in those cookie cutter descriptions and if you are not careful, you will have a misleading listing and this can cost you time, reputation and also money if you have to give a refund because the item was not what you stated it was.

Gotta toot my own horn a bit here, I have 100% positive feedback I have maintained for over 6 years on Jan’s eBay page. This is 1663 perfect transactions – both as a seller and a buyer

Anyway, enough rambling! I can take your list of items along with pictures that you supply or those I can research and find and not only set you up in your own eBay store or listings but can maintain it all for you. If it is something as easy as movies or books, I can even use wikopedia or google and get informative descriptions to add to that area for you and make your offers stand out from the others.

Or I can just simply list your items and use the standard images that are on eBay for that purpose. This is a time consuming task that may be keeping your from selling on eBay yourself and being able to outsource the things you do not want to do or do not have time to do can make all the difference in moving forward to getting rid of things you no longer want or need and getting some income from it.

If this sounds like something you would like to check into more, just drop me a line at jantallent at gmail.com and we can chat about the possibilities.

Remember, I am a Virtual Assistant who LOVES to do editing and proofreading assignments along with research, blog posts, article submissions and social media maintenance!

Why not Schedule a Project now?

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The first challenge to getting new clients is getting them to trust you with their businesses and their money. It’s not an easy challenge to overcome. That’s why the technique I’m going to share with you in this article WORKS and works well. What I’m suggesting is … working for FREE (do I hear a big gasp of horror from the audience?).

Why work for free? Well, it makes sense. Many virtual assistance companies offer a free consultation where the client can ask questions and you can explain your process. You need to stand out from the crowd and win the business.

Here are two reasons why offering a free sample of your services works:

It eliminates the risk factor. Business is risky from all sides of the fence. It’s risky for you and it’s risky for the person doing the hiring. He or she will be trusting you to work for his or her business and get results. They’ll be taking their valuable time and money to invest in your services and they want to choose wisely. You help them not waste their time by proving yourself before they ever pay a penny.

It builds the relationship. Working well together is all about having a good relationship. It’s really hard to do great work for someone who doesn’t like you and vice-versa. If you offer a little sample of your work you can create an instant relationship and they will usually like you already! That’s a great start.

Before I get the fifth degree from some die-hard virtual assistants, I’ll admit that this technique of getting new clients is risky. You just need to be smart about what you’re doing and you’ll eliminate a large part of the risk.

You’ve probably heard the saying “Why buy the milk when you can get the cow for free?” Yes, some unscrupulous marketers may go around getting freebies and never be willing to pay, so that’s why it’s your responsibility to do your research and hand-pick the clients you want to work with.

That’s right. Don’t just take any ol’ Billy-Bob who comes to hire your services. Make sure she is the kind of person you want to work with, will most probably love to work with and who you can create a rewarding relationship with. When I used this technique for my own business I went to online marketers who I already had a relationship with and whose business models I greatly admired. This allowed me to know exactly who I was going to be working for. It also gave me the added bonus of learning what they did in their own businesses to make them great successes!

If you’re thinking giving a sample of your work away for free might be a good idea for you, here’s a bit of a game plan:

 Offer a small sample of your work; one or two hours would be good.
 Offer the work with no-strings attached; they’ll hire you if you’re needed.
 Only offer to people who are interested in hiring and who need the help (research).
 Do an amazing job.
 Ask for referrals and/or testimonials in exchange for your free work.

Finally, this isn’t a technique to do all the time. It’s one you will use for a hand-picked group of highly sought after employers. Try it once and see what happens. You really only need one good high-profile client who loves your work to get great referrals for a long time coming.

I have done this both with great success and the expected wasted effort, you might say.

I love to proofread and edit so did this for several web sites with just the promise to have the caption “Edited by Jan Tallent” with a link to my VA site. So far, of the 5 or 6 I did this for, only one has kept her word but we do live and learn AND I know that I did it.

Plus, to be honest, I turned 2 of them down later for paid jobs because the trust factor was destroyed when they did not keep their end of the bargain and that is the biggest thing with me – my word and yours 

Wishing you all of the best in your client-getting goals.

Remember, I am a Virtual Assistant who LOVES to do editing and proofreading
assignments along with research, blog posts, article submissions
and social media maintenance!

Why not Schedule a Project now?

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I recently did two press releases for my client Ann Evanston, AKA The Warrior-Preneur. I was very excited to try my hand at doing these as I had, frankly, never done any before!

The first was announcing Ann’s being named one of the TOP six Marketing Consultants by about.com ! The second was the announcement that Social Networking Coaching Club is now offering Certification and Licensing for Coaches! Not only did I get to write these press releases, I also
get to manage Social Networking Coaching Club as one of my duties as Ann’s assistant.

Here are some of the tips I have picked up about copywriting and writing press releases:

Copywriting is a special technique that allows you to promote companies, individuals
or some special events. Copywriting is one of the most significant elements of advertising.
It should be considered the tool that helps your company promote itself.

Your returning clients already know the quality of the products and service that you provide and reliability of your business, however, most people will find or “discover” your site by the terms they put into search engine boxes.

How is copywriting performed? Whatever company you have and products and services
you provide, you should stick to several important rules. Despite the fact that copywriting has changed during the last decade due to the wide use of the internet, some fundamental rules still apply.

Copywriting might look simple but it should comprise several indispensable elements.

First, it must have an intriguing and appealing headline that induces your visitor to explore your text further. It must contain a subheading where main features of the heading are restated. The most important part of the copywriting copy is certainly the body. This reveals the major points of your text. It should be easy-to-read, logically structured and coherent.
It should contain a number of paragraphs that should restate the major idea of the content.

Ideal copywriting content should emphasize the advantages of the company, its uniqueness and clearly state why visitors should purchase at your company. One should remember that there are plenty of other companies and web sites that might sell identical products and services. In order to be successful you should stand out from the crowd.

This applies in offline and online copywriting. If the technique is performed professionally,
it leads to the increase of traffic on your web site. When writing the copy, remember that
one of the most important elements of the copywriting content is persuasion. One should persuade your visitors to take further actions and purchase some products or services at your company.

If the principles of persuasion, action, desire and motivation are applied in your copywriting copy, one can be sure that it will bring the results.

I hope this post has helped to plainly define what copywriting is and how it is applied.
I checked the pricing structures for press releases and other announcement tasks
and found they seemed to be prohibitive for the average business owner so have made my own Press Release Service at what I feel are excellent rates and also guarantee that they will satisfy the client and the job is not considered complete until the client is happy!

Remember, I am a Virtual Assistant who LOVES to do editing, proofreading
and transcription assignments along with research, blog posts, article submissions
and social media maintenance!

Why not Schedule a Project now?

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