Hard to believe that January is already GONE and tomorrow starts February of this fresh, new year! I have no idea where the time went to and everyone I talk to agrees, it just FLEW~!

I know a lot of bloggers, online business owners and others who I am involved or connected with who seriously need at least one more hand or even one more head. Why not give the “gift of time” to someone you know that has so much to do they feel they will never catch up?

Or, even give the gift of time to … YOU! All of the experts advise to outsource the busy-work or tasks you do not want to do or that drain your time so that you can be free to concentrate on what you love doing the most and/or are best at. This is a wonderful way to test the waters, as they say, with having your own Virtual Assistant .

Take my help, for example … Love to write blog posts but hate the actual posting? I can easily do that for you and love doing this. Until I have a designation on the site for that purpose, you can just use the Schedule a Product option and tell me what you want me to do for you.

I see a lot of really informative, beautiful and entertaining blogs and web sites but they are full of typos and spelling & grammar errors – this is my favorite task of all so you can hire me to proofread and edit your pages so that you can showcase your work in its best possible light.

If you offer seminars, blog talk radio or other shows, do webinars, etc. it is a great idea to have those audio recordings transcribed and yes, I do perform this service . Plus, as an added bonus, your file is triple proofread / edited before I consider the assignment to be finished!

This option is often over-looked by web masters, coaches, performers, etc. because they offer a down-loadable mp3 or other file for people to listen TO, but I can tell you from not only some of the shows I have transcribed but also those I have just attempted to listen to, a lot of times it is hard to hear every word, especially with talkers who talk over each other, run on sentences that should be cut into paragraphs, start one story and then interrupt his or her own flow by going in another direction entirely and so much more that you might not realize unless YOU were trying to type it all up for a file people can read!

The other way I can help you save some time for the fun things you want to be able to do is with assistance with your Social Networking maintenance. I can search for others in your chosen niche for you TO connect with, weed out those you would not care to associate with, send hello, welcome and thank you messages to those you want to connect or interact with, etc. and free YOU up to just do the fun part; the interactions and conversations. This is another service that is not yet designated on this site but can be scheduled with just a message to me.

I plan to offer help setting up Face Book and Face Book Fan Pages soon – I am still learning my way around them myself but as I learn, I will be glad to share that expertise as well as help you set up and maintain a Twitter account and/or a professional networking presence on LinkedIn .

If you are needing help with any of the above mentioned Social Networks, just let me know and we can work things out – I have insisted on keeping my name and reputation clean and honest for over 11 years on the net so you can rest assured your passwords and log in information are safe with me and if in doubt, feel free to contact any of my wonderful clients who will be glad to vouch for me.

If hours of assistance is out of your budget, or if you are just curious about how much time a helper really can be, I have reasonable and highly competitive rates and you can try “just an hour” or just one project. I do offer discounted rates on bigger or long-going projects, so this might be the option you prefer. I am easy to work with and love what I do and think I can safely say it shows with the service I give my clients and the tasks I perform for them.

Have a wonderful, love-filled, Happy Valentine’s Day and I am “wishing” you the Gift of Time for this holiday and every other day.

Remember, I am a Virtual Assistant who LOVES to do editing, proofreading and transcription assignments!

Jan Tallent
Tallent Agency Virtual Assistance

573-775-4520 jan@tallentagency.com

I have sadly neglected this blog due to being busy, busy, busy and then on top of that, being SICK for about nine weeks with a cold / flu type thing that I did not think was ever going to go away! Now I am back to “normal”, for me, anyway, LOL, and will try to do better with keeping my blog updated. Welcome to this fresh, new year with a chance for new beginnings, new friends and associates and new business!

This has nothing to do with my Virtual Assistance business except for the fact that my focus is ON this business and I have lost my eight year addiction to selling digital products, but I have decided to retire SoftwareWarrioress.com so that I can totally devote my time and energies TO my Virtual Assistance business and my marketing ezine, Rim Digest , which will be celebrating its 10th anniversary with me as its editor on February 10.

I plan to sell the domain name of 8 years, SoftwareWarrioress.com and over 50 Gig of resell digitals plus the web site and pages, etc. This way I can devote myself to my true loves, which are the services I provide as a Virtual Assistant, my wonderful clients and future ones and my ezine. I let myself get stretched in too many directions and this is my goal for 2010 – to get and remain totally focused.

To be perfectly honest, I LOVE Proofreading and Editing and doing Transcriptions and feel I do my best work when it is something I enjoy and excel at.

I am also an avid social networker, especially with Twitter and love helping others with their social networking needs. By retiring the digital sales super store business, I can devote myself to these things.

I do not, however, plan to sell three of my most beloved digital products with this sale. I plan to keep the following three, as they are totally mine, were made for ME and are my 3 best sellers:

First off is the Health Products site with a HUGE inventory of products with resell rights on three levels, Helluva Health Site , which was made for me by my best friend, Sharon McPherson, who is also the owner/operator of Templates Themes and Graphics AND the creator of this blog site and Tallent Agency Virtual Assistance site.

This has been my biggest seller of ALL time next to advertising in my ezine.

Next is the Christmas Bonanza package , which was also made for me by Sharon.

Lastly, the oldest product I plan to hang on to is my Marketing Warrioress Quick and Easy Recipes which was written and made BY ME!

These three items are available to buy but NOT a part of the SoftwareWarrioress.com retirement sale package.

I still love digital products and think they are the neatest things to hit the internet after almost 13 years of my being online BUT they need dedicated time and energy to sell and maintain and I just do not have the “fire” to devote to them any longer.

If anyone is interested in stepping into an already established business, you can email me from any of the pages at the site and I will be glad to talk to you about the possibilities.

Again, Happy New Year and thank you so much for visiting my blog in 2010!

One niche that virtual assistants are pursuing is that of a web designer. More and more brick and mortar businesses are taking their products to the Internet. Without the savvy to create the base for their online presence, they will need your help.

What is a web designer? A web designer is someone who works to set up websites for other businesses. If you have knowledge in this area and are talented to boot, you can take your virtual assisting business in that direction.

The Market

The Internet is the next great frontier. Millions upon millions of people use the Internet everyday to look for information, conduct business and buy merchandise or services. The way into this world is through your online presence. It is the way that people learn about you and your business.

Web designing has a tremendous learning curve. Most people don’t know anything about HTML or RSS except that they are letters. It can be intimidating for someone who wants to build a website (for an existing business or as an Internet business) to do so and not make mistakes.

Mistakes can cost you business. Pages that won’t load or graphics that are too loud can turn visitors away before they can see what the business has to offer. Many businesses would avoid this part if they could.

The area of web design is ripe for the picking for any virtual assistant with experience. Website designers who can take the ideas of the business owner and turn them into reality are and will continue to be in demand.

Virtual assistant website designers perform tasks like:

* Web site or Blog setup and Maintenance

* Monitoring forum discussions

* Page setup

* Search engine optimization of pages

* Uploading files, videos, audio and podcasts

* Troubleshoot problems

* Edit blog posts and page updates

Visitors look for different things in a website. Placing ads at the top of the page are more eye-catching. Dedicating each web page to a different product allows more information about the product to be readily available. Well-informed visitors are more likely to buy the product that way.

These are just a few of the tasks you may be called upon to perform. Believe it or not, just taking care of the website duties is a weight off of the mind of business owners both small and large who want to concentrate on the business side of things and not pulling their hair out trying to manage graphics or blog posts.

The good news is that any one of these areas can further be defined as a sub-niche. Within web design you can concentrate on website maintenance or simply the initial setup. Both are much needed services. Any virtual assistant, who likes the technical side of the Internet, will see her passion fulfilled as a website designer.

Jan Tallent
Tallent Agency Virtual Assistance

p.s.

If you are wanting to break into the internet business world, I have some ready to run digital bizzes that can help you “get your feet wet”, as they say. Visit my Digital Superstore to find some very inexpensive and EASY instant businesses. Most come with the web pages and all content, graphics and digital products in one easy to run and set up bundle!