Virtual Assistant – start a ‘Business Babysitting Service’

Many small business owners dread holidays. What will happen if a client needs help and support, who will answer the phone, check their mails, keep their clients happy? The fact that they need a holiday, that it will refresh them, is something that is forgotten.

Having worked with many of my clients for years we have always offered holiday cover to them. One of them described it as ‘Business Babysitting’ which seemed to us the perfect title.

If you want to offer this service, the basics are:

Answering the phone, handling e-mails and faxes and dealing with clients directly. Your client can enjoy their holiday with complete peace of mind knowing you are in charge.

If you are wondering how to charge for this, this is what we did:

A weekly standing charge for the duration of the holiday if you are expected to be in the office at all times to take their calls, (a week being any 7 day period).

A per item charge if there is no telephone answering to cope with but just other administrative tasks. Also ancillary charges such as phone calls, postage etc are charged at cost.

How one article and a bit of advice pulled in $2000

$2000 from one article - and I have the testimonial to prove it...

Writing clear informative articles is a well known and underused method of marketing your website. It can also work for direct marketing from the article.

I am known for my ‘off the cuff’ marketing techniques. If a colleague says she has very little work I normally come up with a gem of an idea. It goes along the lines of ‘Why don’t you write an article?’ One of my colleagues got so fed up with this constant reply she did. The result was a $2000 contract direct from the first article.

She is now writing articles on a regular basis, getting work in on a regular basis and so grateful that she gave me a testimonial – but better than that she is now a Platinum writer for Ezinearticles.

To me this is not shameless advertising, this is explaining what you do and how you do it in a simple and well written way. If your work depends on something being completed correctly, what better than to write an article. A search by client who is ‘lost’ in the technicalities, finding an article which explains what they do and how they do it in plain English will probably get you that client as they know you have the knowledge.