Give the Gift of a Virtual Assistant

Recently a client of mine "gave me" as a gift to a charity that helps children in Africa. I thought this was an amazing thing to do.

Are you tired of giving gifts that just sit around collecting dust? Do you want to give a gift that really helps someone out? Do you have a friend or family member that needs help with their busy life or business? Why not "buy" them a virtual assistant as your gift this holiday? You could purchase one hour from us for only $25.00 to get them started or you could give them 5 hours for only $112.50.

If you know of an organization that needs some extra help, you could give some hours to them in the name of your family or friends. This way you know that your investment in the organization is going to good use and will have the satisfaction of helping those in need.

I am sure that whoever you give a virtual assistant to will thank you for this gift that will "keep on giving".

Can't Believe It's Been So Long!

I looked at my blog for the first time in quite a while and realized that I hadn't posted in months.

It has been a busy summer. Not only has my virtual assistant practice been busy, but my wife and I have opened a drop-in centre for local youth (http://thepostdrop-in.blogspot.com). With all of this and home-schooling, I haven't had the time to post.

I am making a resolution to post at least once a week, so keep coming back.

Page 1 on Google - "Virtual Assistant Services"

I have finally made it to the first page of Google. If you search for "virtual assistant services" my website is at the bottom of the first page. This has taken a year of hard work, but it is worth it.

How did I do it? I didn't pay anyone to help me, but I did put out numerous press releases and quite a few articles. I added my site to many directories and joined a bunch of social networking sites. I used keyword and website optimization software to help me decide how my site should be designed and what words were the best to draw people to my site.

It does take a lot of work, but you can do it to. If you need some help, hire a VA to give you a hand.

Virtual Assistant Anniversary Sale

ANNIVERSARY SALE!

New clients receive 1 hour FREE with every 5 hours paid!

Valid until May 6th, 2008

Regular Rates:

Due to the high Canadian Dollar our basic rate is now only $25.00(CAD) per hour (+5%GST for Canadian Clients)

Billed in 15 minute increments.

• Starter Package -5 hours - $112.50 (10% Savings!)
• Entrepreneur Package - 10 hour - $225.00 (10% Savings!)
• Small Business Package - 15 hour - $318.75 (15% Savings!)
• Solo Professional Package - 20 hour - $400.00 (20% Savings!) Best Value!

• We offer a 15% discount for non-profit organizations, home school families and organizations!
We accept cheques, cash, bank drafts, and money orders. We also accept credit cards through Paypal.

• Billing is done in 15 minute increments.

• A deposit of usually 25% is required prior to the start of a project.

• Payment is due upon receipt of an invoice.

• There will be a $25.00 service charge for any NSF cheques.

• Clients will be billed for incidental expenses incurred on their behalf. These include, but are not limited to – photocopying, postage, stationery supplies, shipping, long distance phone charges, etc.

Virtual Assistants Featured in Newspaper

Today's local newspaper, The Guardian, had a full page feature article on virtual assistants featuring me and another local VA. It also featured one of my clients. It was a great article.

If you would like to read it you can go to: www.righthandmanva.com/GuardianArticleVirtualAssistant.pdf
or you can got to the newspaper online at: http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/index.cfm?sid=108741&sc=100

Don't Love Your Work - Love Your Virtual Assistant

Do you love your work? Do you love it more than your family, friends, relationships? Do you love spending more time with it than doing the things you really love? If not find a virtual assistant to love.

A good virtual assistant will help you not only help you "break-up" with your work, but will help you come up with solutions to keep you from falling in love with it again.

This Valentine's Day, sit down and make a list of all the work you are doing that you don't have to do and that is taking away all your free time. After you have written it all down, take some time to decide how much of it you can get someone else to do. Once you have done this, send me an email and let me know how I can partner with you to help you break away from your work.

After you have broken up with your work, you will fall in love with your virtual assistant. Your work will love the attention as well. I will love your work the way it should be loved.

What New Services Can a Virtual Assistant Offer?

I have been thinking lately about the new kinds of services that a virtual assistant could offer their clients. I have come up with five:

1) Travel - Are you already contacting travel agents for your clients and making travel arrangements for them? You could be the one getting the commission for those travel plans. There are companies you can join to become a travel agent. I chose Pro Travel Network. It is the only one to legally offer travel agent status in Canada.

2) Podcasts - Why not offer the set up and even recording of podcasts for your clients. If you have a good voice, strong writing skills, and a mic, you are all set. It's another great way to get the word out about your clients' products or services. http://www.podomatic.com http://www.odeo.com

3) Suidoo Lenses - Now I must admit that I do not understand Squidoo yet. It seems to be a new and great way to share ideas and information. It might be just right for some of your clients. See if you can get a handle on it and begin offering assistance in setting up lenses for your clients. http://www.squidoo.com

4) Shopping Carts - If you are not offering shopping cart set up and maintenance, you may be missing out on a lot of business. One VA I spoke with recently has a booming shopping cart business. If a client is selling thins online, they probably need a shopping cart. http://www.1shoppingcart.com

5) Blogging - Do your clients have blogs? If not offer to set one up for them. If they want, you could even "ghost-write" their posts for them. If they want to post themselves, remind them to send you post daily or weekly and the rest of the time you could post links to other blog posts that are relevant to your client's business.
http://www.wordpress.com http://www.blogger.com

These are just a few ideas to get you thinking outside the virtual assistant box. What kind of services can you come up with that maybe aren't offered yet or are offered but can be tapped into. Always be thinking and offering your clients help before they even know they need it.

Vritual Assistants With Bad Grammar

I came across this post when Googling "virtual assistants". Even though they are giving away 10 hours for free, you might want to consider the language barrier. If you operate your business in English, hire an english speaking VA, if your business operates in Spanish, hire a Spanish speaking VA. It is too easy for things to get lost in translation and this can cost you time and money trying to sort out. I don't want to pick on any particular company so I have taken out their name. The grammar is probably so bad in this post because it appears to be written in another language and then translated poorly into English.

"Many might be wondering how much would it cost them to hire the services of a Virtual Assistant as compared to hiring a conventional Personal Assistant, Admin Assistant or Secretary. We at ***** Services came up with Very Affordable Plans to be able to cater to all Busy Men for them to Outsource their Tasks to us for as low as USD$17/hour. These tasks could be as simple as data entry, task management, virtual secretary tasks and personal/administrative assistant tasks and complex tasks such as Website Design, Development, Internet Marketing and a lot more.
Most of you might also be thinking why you should entrust those tasks to us? ***** Services has the BEST Professional Backups in the field of Virtual Assistance today. Our Virtual Assistants are all College Degree Holders, Loyal and they are trained by Outstanding Professionals from various industry fields. Among these are; Management Consultants, Lawyers, Doctors, Accountants/Bookkeepers, Information Technology, Sales/Marketing & Customer Service Professionals. This simply means that in whatever field that you might be involved with, our Virtual Assistants are able to cater to almost any tasks that you would like to relegate to them.
Our facility houses Virtual Assistants working in shifts all day and at 24 hours, 7 days a week. These Virtual Assistants are Bachelors Degree holders and are fluent in speaking, writing correspondences or any articles using the International Medium which is of course, the English language. All of them are professionals working in a professional environment in our Offsite Office. They are all trained in various fields by Professional Trainors mentioned above. We anticipated the need of our customers and we at ***** prepared beforehand to meet their demands.
Right now, we have a FREE Ten (10) Hour Trial Promo for All Those Busy People out there who needs assistance in their tasks. Try Us Out and Enjoy Having Loyal Virtual Assistants working for you and live like a Royalty. Ain’t it nice to live like Kings and Queens? Leave Your Worries to Us!"

For the extra few dollars you would be spending to hire an English speaking virtual assistant from Canada, the US, Great Britain, Australia, etc. you would save in the end because tasks would not have to be done over due to grammatical errors.

New Poll Shows the Need for Virtual Assistants

A recent poll conducted by Harris Interactive, one of the largest and fastest-growing market research firms in the world, revealed some interesting facts about how people view virtual assistants.

It turns out that 64% of American adults would gladly outsource a whole range of tasks to someone else. When asked if hiring a virtual assistant would give them more time or reduce stress in their lives, more than 70% said that it would. An even higher number (75%) believe that personal assistants aren’t just for celebrities.

When asked what types of tasks they would have a virtual assistant do for them, the survey found a long list of things that people would rather have others do for them. Topping the list, 33% would rather not research and organize their own travel and vacation arrangements. Coming in a close second, 28% of the survey participants said that organizing and paying bills was something they would rather not do themselves. The survey found that men find this task more dreadful than women at 31% versus 25%.

There was a tie for the third most hated task. Answering calls and taking messages along with writing and mailing thank you, holiday, and birthday cards came in at 26%. It also turned out that younger adults, age 18-34, were 85% more likely to hire a virtual assistant to help them with these unwanted tasks.

The survey found American adults also feel strongly (73%) that hiring a virtual assistant would definitely be beneficial. 55% fell they would have more time for important tasks and errands if they had a virtual assistant while 34% percent feel they would perform better in their work, and 52% stated they would have more time to spend with family and friends or time to exercise or vacation time.

This particular survey also noted that almost three quarters (72%) of respondents would not feel comfortable hiring a virtual assistant from overseas. People also don’t feel comfortable in sharing their valuable information such as credit card information (67%).

And who would be more likely to hire a virtual assistant – a man or a woman? The survey found that men (77%) see the benefits of hiring a virtual assistant before women (69%). The total number of people surveyed was 1,005 with 503 respondents being women and 502 being men.

From the results of this survey, it seems that the virtual assistant will continue to grow. As the American adult gets busier, the need for virtual assistant services will become more evident. As the young adults move into busier lifestyles they will be more likely to look to a VA to help them succeed.

Virtual Assistant and Client Resources

I have made a lot of changes at the Right-Hand-Man Virtual Assistant Services website.

I have changed the giveaway for signing up to the newsletter to "Web 2.0 Revealed". This e-book will give you a ton of resources that will not only teach you all about Web 2.0 sites and how you can include them in your business plans but to also show you techniques and tools that will automate this entire process.

The "7 Keys for RFPs" e-books are now for sale for $5.00 on our new RESOURCES page. This page has a bunch of great resources for virtual assistants and their clients. You can also purchase my new e-book, "Essential Article Marketing Secrets" which includes a listing of 999 directories where you can submit your articles. You can also purchase "Article Submitter", a program that will help you automate your article submission process.

There is also more software and e-books. There is even a 5 week course called "How to Attract a Flood of Clients to Your Practice - Effortlessly".

So if you are looking for some new software or informative e-books, either for yourself or for a client, check out the new Resources page. Don't forget to sign up for our Newsletter while you are there.

http://righthandmanva.com/resources.html

Keeping Your Resolutions with a Virtual Assistant

The New Year has come and you have made your resolutions. Now you have to try and keep them.

Whatever your resolutions are, a virtual assistant can help you keep them. If you have resolved to spend more time with friends and family, get a VA to help you do the little things that eat up your valuable time. If you resolved to become more successful in your business endeavours, hire a VA to give you the time to build your business while they handle the stuff you don't want to do.

Some of the most common resolutions are to quit smoking, eat better, exercise more and spend less. A virtual assistant can even help you with these. A VA can help you with finding the best deals, scheduling your time, reminding you to do things and not to do things, and researching the best options to help you change your life.

So make those resolutions you didn't think you could keep, then get a virtual assistant to help you keep them.

Holiday Sale and New Virtual Assistant Rates!

HOLIDAY SALE
Pay for 5 hours and get 2 FREE!
Pay for 10 hours and get 4 FREE!
Pay for 15 or more hours and get 6 FREE!
(Offer valid until January 2, 2008)

Due to the high Canadian Dollar our basic rate is now only
$25.00(CAD) per hour.
(+6%GST for Canadian Clients)
Billed in 15 minute increments.

• 5 hour Package - $112.50 (10% Savings!)
• 10 hour Package - $225.00 (10% Savings!)
• 15 hour Package - $318.75 (15% Savings!)
• 20 hour Package - $400.00 (20% Savings!)

• We offer a 15% discount for non-profit organizations, home school families and organizations!
We accept cheques, cash, bank drafts,
and money orders.
We also accept credit cards through Paypal

We are #1 On Yahoo!

I couldn't figure out why I was getting so many referrals from Yahoo so I did a Yahoo search for "virtual assistant services" and the Right-Hand-Man Virtual Assistant Services website came in first!

I know that less people use Yahoo than Google, but it is still a great feeling to be #1. My goal is to be first on all the search engines, eventually. I think that we all need to work towards this goal.

If you need help with your search engine optimization (SEO) and internet marketing, why not contact us and we can put together a plan for you.