Wondering whether you can afford one more employee? Why not consider a Virtual Assistant for those duties you need performed?

With the help from a writer I invited to share with my readers,

Let’s compare cost differences between the two…

Here you are the entrepreneur with a business that is nicely taking off with the grace of an eagle … Your dream is now a reality. Your agenda is now overflowing with meetings, you are working 50 hours PLUS per week, paperwork is piling up, and you’re about to lose your mind!

The amount of work you have at hand is not only keeping you up at night, but also prevent you from playing golf with the boys next weekend or getting your nails done with the girls. So congratulations, you have just posted your new “help wanted” ad for a full time administrative position.

So, what are your options? Well, you can hire full time help, outsource your work to a Virtual Assistant, or keep doing the administrative work yourself!

Making the decision to hire full/part time help is the traditional way, but does it mean that this is your best choice? Do you really know what you are paying for?

Based on surveys done by Salary.com and America Online, the average base salary for an administrative assistant in the United States is $39,795.00 per year, or $19.13 calculated on an 8 hour per workday.

Again, from these surveys, workers admit to wasting an average of 1.15 hours per workday, which adds up to $5,720 per year, per worker in wasted salary dollars. You could have re-invested that money into your business!

In other words, if you hire an assistant at $39,795.00 per year, you can expect to loose $5,720 per year on wasted time!

Your second option is outsourcing your administrative work to a Virtual Assistant.
Now, what is a Virtual assistant, and how can she or he help you?

First and foremost, a virtual assistant is NOT an employee, but rather a self-employed professional that offers administrative support services from her or his own home office.

A virtual assistant is a full time partner that has a vested interest in the growth of your business and will work in collaboration with you towards the success of your company!

When you outsource to a virtual assistant you only pay for the work contracted out and not for idle time frittered away at your expense! How much will that cost you? Rates usually vary between $20.00 and $45.00 per hour, depending on the expertise required and the project at hand.

In addition, because you are outsourcing your work, you are saving on the following: payments made to Medicare, workers comp, administrative costs, recruitment, base salary, benefits, office space and furnishings, equipment, etc.

On the other hand, if you would still rather do the administrative work yourself, let us examine if your rate of return is really worth it.

You contract your services at a price of $150.00 per hour, and, in this past week, you have spent 5 hours of your precious time doing routine work at the office.
In other words, you just lost $750.00 doing the work by yourself.

Now, if you would outsource your work to a Virtual Assistant, let’s say at a medium price of $35.00 per hour, your cost would be $175.00 and you would realize a savings of $575.00.

All and all the decision seems simple to me. Which would you rather do? Hire full time help, and pay for wasted time and equipment? Keep on doing the work yourself and lose money and marketing time for your business, or maybe take the proven and affordable route of outsourcing your work and hiring a Virtual Assistant.

Remember a Virtual Assistant is a professional that will work with you… A Virtual Assistant is a collaborative partner, and his or her success is measured by your success!

thanks for letting me use this article, Alba Figueroa
inpro-va.com

So, what CAN a Virtual Assistant do for YOU? Your Virtual Assistant can do any number of office tasks which can be sent to her or him via emails, uploaded to a web host, downloaded from your site / blog / webinar or other means and do it all from her or his home office.

Some of the duties that I can perform for you are:

Proofreading your document, book, report, sales message, email communication, web site or blog or any other item that you need checked for grammar and spelling and word usage errors.

Editing those errors and changing the word or phrase or spelling, etc. as needed to make your written item as perfect as possible.

Transcription which is a typed up document of your webinar, interview or any other spoken / audio file.

( with MY transcription service, you get FREE proofreading and editing thrown in! )

Data Back-Up so that in case of computer info loss due to crash, virus or other catastrophe or because you just want to have all of your important data stored on cd’s, dvd’s and/or stored on another computer, your important and valuable downloads, reports, files, etc. will be safely stored elsewhere for you.

Customer Support which can be your own help desk type set up or customer service, run by a virtual staff.

Social Networking Help to help you manage your growing social networks with maintenance and updates plus doing searches with your criteria on who and what you want to be networking with and for.

Blogging Maintenance for updating, proofreading and editing and other tasks to do with your blog and then making sure it is seen and the updates are announced in various mediums.

And various assorted duties that can be worked out between us by my asking you to email me to Schedule a Project or let me know what you are looking for in a Virtual Assistant.

Why not check out my rates and feel free to read my testimonials from happy clients and I am sure we can work something out!

To your success!

Jan Tallent
Tallent Agency Virtual Assistance

Working from home has many advantages and also a sort of familiarity
that can become a downright pitfall in some instances. It is easy
and sometimes quickly discovered that away from an office your
productivity is not as high as you thought it would be. Working from
a home office can easily become a productivity killer when a business
owner doesn’t stay on top of things. However, don’t fret!

This can be changed with a few simple steps to get your business
organized, making productivity easier.

First of all, realize what you do is run a business.

Your business needs a permanent place to live.

It could be your dining room, a corner of your den or the entire den.
Some people set up shop in their garage or kitchen. Wherever you decide that your home office will reside, recognize that it is your work space and nothing else can share that spot.

Yes, that includes the laundry you forgot to fold last night, too.

Moving on, now that you have an office space, set some guidelines
for how you will run your business. These guidelines don’t run to
the particulars of your chosen industry but more to organization
for better operation of the enterprise. In plain terms, if everything
is in its place, you won’t waste time looking for it.

A filing system will be your best friend.

This includes a filing cabinet for important papers.
Every correspondence doesn’t have to exist in paper form.
Contractual agreements with clients and copies of past invoices
can be filed, but emails don’t need to be. Save yourself some time,
money and fresh air by not printing every client email that comes
to your inbox.

An electronic filing system keeps emails, project specs and proposals
organized by client without adding to the paperwork you already have
to handle. Electronic files are easy to organize and can be zipped
to clients in an instant if need be.

You won’t even have to use snail mail.

Also, keep an in and out box on your desk (we almost forgot about the desk).

Incoming mail is organized as soon as it hits the desk.
Junk mail is shredded, orders are filed in a box to be
filled and other mail is sorted according to purpose.

Dealing with mail first thing prevents anything from getting overlooked.

Along the same lines, create a priority box.

This is the box that will be checked first thing in the morning
and last thing before you leave your home office. In the morning,
the box contains all of the items that need attention that day.
In the evening, organize the contents to be ready for the next morning.

This makes it much easier to have your daily work tasks set
when you get to the “office” each morning. No more wasted time
planning your day while an hour or two of it is vanishing.

Low productivity in a home office arises mainly from disorganization.
We often aren’t sure what we want to work on or what is most important, so it takes a little while to get that together. If you are organized from the beginning and keep your priorities current, you won’t spend your time deciding what to do next – you’ll already know.

Good bye time wasters, hello productivity!

Jan Tallent
Tallent Agency Virtual Assistance

Jan Tallent is the owner of Tallent Agency Virtual Assistance for 11 years, a marketing and small business online newsletter for going on 10 years, an internet marketer for my own digital products PLUS tangible products and an avid social networker . I also have an eBay store so stay pretty busy 10 to 12 hours per day, mostly on my computer and the net.

I am concentrating my VA biz on proofreading , editing and transcriptions as these are my favorite assignments to take on and where my strengths lie. If you are in need of these or any of my other Virtual Assistance services, send me a message and we can Talk about and schedule your project or projects .

Businesses are all about the client and the product . There are files for clients and files for products. With so much paperwork, it is hard to keep everything organized. Businesses, especially smaller ones, need a virtual assistant database manager .

It would be nice for business owners if they could just talk about and sell their products or services all day long. Unfortunately there is more to it than that. Nowadays, businesses live and die on statistical analysis and other reports. In order to generate these reports you need the data to back them up.

Poorly organized data can weaken a company. For instance, how would a business ever know how their products are doing in certain areas of the country? What about customer feedback ?

The Market

Businesses capture data in order to grow. They would never discover their strong areas, weak areas or whether marketing campaigns were a success. Information is king in the business world.

To that end, it is important to manage data in an organized fashion. Customer names and information need to be logged, reports need to be generated about product demographic, customer surveys and profits to name just a few important areas.

Database management is another area that small business owners often don’t have time to look after. It takes time to organize this information and that takes away from the business of promoting and creating new products . It is a catch-22 that a virtual assistant can help with.

Do you have expertise in the area of setting up databases in different formats? You can assist online and offline businesses. Each business keeps records of customer names, demographic data, product inventory , monthly revenue and other vital information.

Virtual assistants, who specialize in database setup and management, provide such services as:

• Database design and maintenance
• Data entry of customer names and information
• Create data spreadsheets from compiled records
• Process new data
• Create reports for clients
• Create graphs and other visuals
• Tech support for clients using new databases

Databases allow your client’s employees to retrieve information that they need to do their jobs. With a little training by you, everyone can learn to access the databases that you create. The business of information gathering is streamlined for greater efficiency.

The basic infrastructure of the company’s records is in your hands. A small business can go from a desk full of loose papers with information to a well-organized database that can be updated in a few keystrokes thanks to you. Any information that the client needs right away, you can access with ease.

Businesses thrive on information and as a virtual assistant database manager; you are a major part of that winning equation. If you like working with data and are good at organization, this might be the niche for you.

Jan Tallent
Tallent Agency Virtual Assistance

p.s.

Due to excessive spam abuse, email providers and ISPs have gotten tough on blocking spam. But in their zeal to weed out spam, your support emails to your customers are being blocked! That’s why you need a customer support system hosted on your own web server.