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I prefer Facebook. It's easier to have a conversation than other social networks. Unless it's a forum but forums tend to be very specific and harder to find.

What service industry? Are you talking writers, graphic designers, webdevelopers, product creators, food industry, where do they live, etc.? Without knowing your target market hard to give you a color. Do a search on website color psychology and you'll have all kinds of information come up to help you. https://neilpatel.com/blog/psychology-of-color-and-conversions/ https://www.websitebuilderexpert.com/designing-websites/how-to-choose-color-for-your-website/

I agree, what a wonderful niche for you and yep, very lucrative!

Hello everyone and thanks Tawnya for putting on an AMAZING summit this week #VAVS18. I am learning so much and my brain is on overload! I have been a VA for 4+ years but only had 1 -2 clients doing data admin, email management and Web app/ mobile app testing. Now the main contract is ending and I am needing to sink or swim (and pay the rent next month)! My to-do list = 1) Create branding 2) Domain name 3) Website 4) Business Cards 5) Content creation 6) Email list creation/funnelling 7) Networking to find clients I learned how to produce podcasts back in 2016 and launched my own podcast in 2017. I produced over 60 episodes but ended up closing it down due to a number of reasons including the niche being a challenge - interviewing women who had difficult life stories and many had #MeToo stories as well. I really miss podcasting and would love to earn a living creating podcasts for other people and selling courses to help teach others all the ins and outs of podcasting. Since I don't have any previous podcast episodes I can share on a portfolio page, I am going to either create a sample podcast with 1-2 episodes or start a new podcast which would be a blast! I could interview other VA's and get the word out about how awesome being a VA is. If any of you have experience with podcasting, I would love to chat. - Wendy

Welcome to the forum! Podcasts are huge and really think it could be a lucrative niche for you.

Hi Paul, welcome to VAnetworking!

A VA only has about tops 120 billable hours in an average month. So it could vary how many clients they have like six 20 hour retainers so 6 clients or more/less depending what hourly retainer package they choose from you.

Fiverr just isn't a place for VAs to find quality high paying clients. It's where everyone goes to get a cheap service fix. If you want high paying quality clients I recommend joining organizations that bring those types of jobs to their job boards like ours at VAinsiders.com

I'd agree with Danielle, just use your personal one for Linkedin and get known that way. Linkedin is all about business anyhow not personal friendships. You won't find your parents on linkedin talking about what they had for dinner right?

Hello, AJWoods! My name is Cathy Strine, owner and operator of All Things Administrative, LLC. I incorporated just over three years ago and for awhile I did work with a VA who did my bookkeeping. She was awesome and saved me lots of time and headaches! I reclaimed that task when one of my larger retainer clients reduced her workload. I've got my bookkeeping under control now but I've often thought of contracting with a VA for various other duties. So my question to you is- what is it you like to do? From your limited situation, with what tasks are you willing to help other Virtual Assistants? Looking forward to hearing from you- Cathy Strine, VA All Things Administrative, LLC

You can use your personal one for your business acting as yourself. They do have business pages but I'd just recommend using the personal one to meet connections. https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/linkedin-pages

Gothceltgirl, I completely agree. Right now I have a free website and do plan to upgrade to a paid one as soon as possible, and as soon as I can. But the free Wordpress, I can't even stand. Everyone talks so highly of the paid version so I do plan to check it out as one of my options when transferring to paid but until then, I'm happy with my free one. I tried Site Builder but felt like I couldn't customize it as much as I wanted to, but that was a while back. I wonder if they have changed the options.

Wow - more than 60 episodes on such an emotionally difficult subject! That's quite an accomplishment! What got you interested in podcasting? How did you begin learning enough to start your own podcast? (General information is fine. Save the detailed guidance for your future courses - I might take one!)

I say "I" now on my website. I used to use "we". Do you plan to expand your business and have a team? If so you might want to write your copy based on that so you don't have to change it later.

I use first person because there's only me.

I actually have a few.. teaching others to earn a side income - https://www.youtube.com/user/FieldRep101TV (mainly through field inspections & mystery shopping) my marketing agency - http://bit.ly/bushpilot-youtube creative entrepreneurship (lately shifting to film / tv discussions) - https://www.youtube.com/user/jycmba/videos food / travel lifestyle - http://bit.ly/tango-food-travel ..and I started coaching ESL (English as a Second Language) clients - http://bit.ly/esl-masterminds-subscribe

I'm pretty happy with Audaciy but if I absolutely wanted to use a Mac product, it'd be Garageband which is a basic software packaged with their systems anyway.

It's really going to depend on who your target market is. What colors are they attracted to? So first off, who is your target market? If educators than yellows, if financial people then green. As far as complimentary colors, same goes. It's all dependent on who your target market is and what colors speak to them.

Hello everyone! My name is Tempest, I live in Phoenix Arizona and I am so exciting to be launching my VA business. I have 30+ office experience and I am ready and looking forward to utilizing my skills to support local small businesses so they can succeed. I take pride in a job well done and I believe I can accomplish anything when I put my mind to it. Speaking of accomplish anything...my website will be ready and live soon. Ha ha! I have been married for 25 years and I have a 23 year old son and an 18 year old daughter, who is graduating this May. Yikes! If you have an empty-nest or about to, you might understand the roller coaster of emotions. With the graduation looming and a part-time job, a husband, 2 kids (lets face it, you never stop worrying even when they move out), 3 dogs (1 of which is a puppy) and 1 cat, you'd think I wouldn't have time to start a new venture but I have been dreaming about this for so long and I know now is the time. When I have spare time I love going to the movies, TV (gotta love DVR), novels, word puzzles and spending time on my porch playing with my dogs, or hunting scorpions (with a six-foot pole of course, I'm not crazy!). I look forward to what the future holds and would love to connect with other VA's to share thoughts. Take care!

Just Google "Virtual Assistant services" or "Virtual Assistant Price" and you should find lots of sites showing their service pages

Great advice by Amber! Maybe people will share their services pages here for you to see what others are doing. Here's my daughter Danielle's service page and how she set up hers.

I think keep the descriptions simple, don't give them too many options or things to think about. Provide a pay pal buy button under each service description and a call to action like 'download my FREE working with a VA ebook' or "You may also like my book editing services <<click here>>" the link would then lead to the next service description. Do this for all your service options on your home page. Which would have an icon or image for each with short description that opens to a new page with the service details, buy button, freebie ebook and call to action or upsell for another service. >image/ icon >title e.g. transcription services >short dot point description of service >PayPal buy button >link to download ebook >link to another service offering hope that helps amber

Site Builder is where my website is. And I really love it. So, while I can't use the images from there some place else, it suits me for now. The customization is amazing for free. I've got exactly what I need. I've done a lot of comparison. And some of the cheapest sites have poor customer service, some of the more high-end ones are too expensive, and I just can't stand WordPress. I know lots of people find it useful & simple. But I can't customize it the way that I want, not with the free version. So I've found what makes me comfortable. I need to be able to manage, maintain, and also not be frustrated w/the design. I can't be productive if I'm sitting for an hour trying to figure out how to get things to look the way I want them to. I don't like tons of time spent "troubleshooting". It's a serious drain on my energy.

I would do some internet research and see what others are writing. Don't copy other's wording (people know who copy as they use Copyscape to find out so don't do that) but do learn from how others are writing their service descriptions. Keep your wording short and to the point. Be concise as online readers don't have time to waste reading long copy. State the benefit of a service (what's in it for them) like we take care of your bookkeeping tasks so you can work on making more product to sell (or whatever)

I think this is a great start and would just add as you have listed. At the bottom, you could put something to the effect of... if you don't see the exact service listed you require just ask us as we can help or lead you in the right direction. (something like that). As well you might want to say something like we can set up packages / retainers to suit any business budget/need, just contact us for more info.

Hi Cyndie, These are high quality jobs priced in range of approx $25-65/hr depending on the niche. We typically get 8-17 RFPs per week on average. Typically 12% of our members will read the job posts then 3% of that will apply to them. With only 500 members there isn't a ton of competition for the jobs. Let's do the math: 12% of 500 members read the RFP post = 45 members 3% of 60 people apply for the job = 1-2 people will have interest and actually apply for the position My point is there is not much competition for the jobs. Many of our members already have full client bases and others are members for the extra training and coaching/accountability that the VAinsiders Club offers.

Some great free tools I like are: Project Management: ClickUp, Trello and Asana. Clickup being my #1 as it combines the best of both Asana and Trello. Graphics: Canva - the free version is great for social media graphics and a ton of other things. Productivity: Google Drive and Dropbox Email Marketing: Mailchimp (up to 2000 subscribers), Mailerlite (up to 1000 subscribers) There's lots more, but that's a start. Hope that helps!

As a virtual assistant, when I say that I will be providing database management service, what service do clients expect from me? I searched online and found some of these services under database setup & management- 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 What other services come under database management? What kind of data do I have to organize? In what format should I be setting up a company's database? Is there any software/CRM to be used for this purpose? Please provide me some insight on how to actually do this task.

You may be asked to combine existing disparate sources of data into a single database, i.e., one CSV file and one Excel file. List hygiene is part of database management (no one likes dirty data). You can use Excel, but Access is much better suited to database management. I have just started using LibreOffice which is a free suite and includes a module similar in function to Access. Hope this helps. Sheri

You can use the EFA rates as a guideline. These are averages but you can use them as a starting point for your particular services. The rates were from a poll the EFA did to establish a standard. I use the hourly rates they give as that guide to quote flat rates for clients. It's more cost effective for them, and if you know what you can do in an hour, then you can adjust accordingly. It also helps establish your base pricing so you don't sell yourself short while providing a way to stay within a client's budget. Hope this helps.