You've escaped the cubicle or corner office to start your own business, and it's going great -- you're focused on what you've always wanted to do, you have plenty of work and new clients are knocking at your door. It's great . . When you escaped, you didn't bring your administrative assistant with you. Now you're doing her work as well as your own. At midnight, you're scheduling flights and meetings, typing proposals and filling in spreadsheets. In addition to cutting into your sleep, these administrative tasks are tying up your time and keeping you from the work that'll keep you in business. You'd like to have more control over your schedule -- to be there when the kids get home from school. Maybe you want to live on the beach or in the mountains. Possibly you're trying to find a way to work from a new location after your husband's job transfer.
Or, you'd simply like more variety in the work you do. Whether you're the overworked entrepreneur or the office worker longing for more control over your time, the solution may be a virtual office assistant. By taking on vital administrative tasks, these off-site workers can give an entrepreneur time to focus on doing the work he does best and bringing in new business. And becoming a virtual assistant lets a worker exchange the 9-to-5 grind for a virtual office, a home-based business with much more flexibility and variety. But what does a virtual office assistant actually do? How much can you expect to be paid, and where can you get training and then clients? Keep reading to find out, starting with more about a virtual assistant's responsibilities. Businesses may commit to paying a monthly retainer for 10 or 20 hours of the virtual assistant's time, or they may buy hourly blocks of time, leaving the assistant free to work for more than one client at a time.
The virtual assistant generally sets the fee, based on the complexity of the work and the turnaround time on specific projects. Depending on the industry, payment may be set up differently. One real estate agent, for instance, pays his virtual office assistant a commission based on the number of closings each month rather than a salary. By specializing in services they offer or the businesses they support, experienced virtual office assistants can often demand higher fees of up to $100 an hour. Succeeding as a virtual assistant takes skill, contacts and personal organization. You have to be able to set your own work schedule, based on client needs and stick to it. And you need to be able to produce high-quality work on your own. You'll also need current technology, including a reliable computer, Internet connection, phone with voice mail or answering machine, fax machine or computer faxing capabilities, business and communications software and antivirus software. You'll need to be proficient at using this software, along with e-mail, the Internet and instant messaging. If you're ready to make the move to a virtual office, go to the next page to learn about training. There are people and groups to help you. Although you can become a virtual assistant without any training, organizations and schools offer training and job placement to help you succeed. They also can give you opportunities to network with peers and potential clients, and even a virtual convention to attend without leaving home. The biggest part of your training occurred on the job before you decided to go out on your own. Working in an office, you learned the administrative skills and picked up industry knowledge that'll help you succeed as an office assistant in the virtual world.
Cloud storage is a growing tech trend. Making use of cloud computing technology, cloud storage services give you password-protected access to online storage space. But what is iCloud? It's Apple's cloud storage product. Cloud is designed to work seamlessly with all your Apple devices connected to the Internet. For example, you can upload photos from your iPhone and access them from your MacBook, upload music from your MacBook to listen to from your iPod Touch or upload an important document from your Mac desktop to access from your iPad when you're on the go. MobileMe was iCloud's long-standing predecessor, offering synchronization services for an annual subscription fee. MobileMe's primary purpose was to keep certain files synchronized between multiple devices. This included e-mail, contacts, calendars, browser bookmarks, photo galleries, and Apple iWeb and iDisk services. Though MobileMe was tailor-made for Apple products, it also gave users the option to synchronize data from non-Apple computers. Apple revamped MobileMe and merged its offerings into the iCloud service.
|