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In The News… Back to Archive
Virtual Assistants Earn Money In Your Sleep - Yes Really!
Hands up who has heard of passive income? If you're not familiar with it, passive income is that lovely thing that happens when you earn cold hard cash from someone elses efforts. It's so important it's written in huge letters on my white board to remind me of this little gem every time I cast my eyes right to remind myself what I am actually meant to be doing! OK, so this sounds great in principle but how does it work, is it ethical and how can I earn some money for doing practically nothing?
The idea behind passive income as that you earn a commission or referral fee for passing on customers or enquiries to a third party. The third party then pays you a percentage or set fee for each sale. If you are connecting your prospects or clients with service providers that they are looking for and you are confident in, it's not only ethical it's extreamly helpful to everyone concerned. If your customers are looking for an accountant or a website designer for example, and you know really good ones, you wouldn't think twice about recommending them. If the third party concerned is happy to thank you for that referral by way of a commission payment or referral fee then why not? Your client is paying no more for the service or product from the supplier, but the supplier has had to spend nothing on marketing for this particular business so is happy to reward you for it instead.
If you have completed our Start Your Virtual Assistant Business online course, you will already be familiar with several ways you can earn passive income, but as from today there is another brand new and very exciting one.
How many of the visitors to your web site are actaully other would-be virtual assistants looking for information or even a job? How much time do you spend weeding out and deflecting these 'enquiries' rather than concentrating your efforts on pursuing real enquiries from real prospects? If you want to stop them from wasting your time, then why not send them somewhere they can find out everything they need to know? At the VA Success Group, these people are our potential customers and we are happy to pay you for sending them to us. We are now offering the only affiliate scheme for Virtual Assistant training in the UK. Simply sign up for the scheme and you can earn 25% for every course we sell as a result of someone coming to us via your web site, newsletter or blog. Everything is tracked automatically and you can log in at any time to see how many courses have been sold as a result of your links and how much money you've earned. It costs nothing to sign up so you can't lose.
Sign up and start making money while you sleep now: http://www.vasuccessgroup.co.uk/affiliate.htm
Copyright 2009 by Justine Curtis
About the author
Justine Curtis is the director of her own successful virtual assistant business My Virtual Assistant http://www.my-va.com and founder of The UK Association of Virtual Assistants (UKAVA) which offers free resources and information to its subscribers – sign up at http://www.ukava.co.uk. Justine is the author of Setting Yourself Up As A Virtual Assistant and is delighted to be able to pass on the benefits of her vast experience of the VA role to aspiring and progressive virtual PAs as a co-founder of the VA Success Group. If you are thinking about starting a virtual assistant business, visit http://vasuccessgroup.co.uk
In The Spotlight
UK Association of Virtual Assistants Launches New Membership Benefits
At the UK Association of Virtual Assistants, we work hard to ensure great value for our members. As you (probably) already know, the association is run by volunteers with all of the membership fees being invested in the online promotion of our online Directory of Members. Our web site consistently appears in the first page of Google and other search engines, so our members enjoy visitors to their web site and prospect enquiries as a result of their links in our Directory.
As well as all of this we are working to create a range of Membership Benefits for our members. This month I am delighted to announce that we have secured a deal with Insurantz which entitles all members to a 10% discount on their business insurance cover including Professional Indemnity Insurance, Office and Home Office cover. We have worked closely with Insurantz over recent months to create the UKs first insurance packages specifically designed for virtual assistants. Their packages are comprehensive, already inexpensive and you can pay monthly by direct debit, and now with an extra 10% discount for our members, this is both fantastic news and a great saving.
New members will receive full details on sign up, but if you are already a member of the UKAVA and you would like details and a link to get the full benefit of this fabulous member offer, just send an email to info@ukava.co.uk with your name and the county you are listed under in our directory, and we’ll get the information emailed to you.
If you are not already a member, sign up to the UKAVA Directory today to get the full benefit then watch this space for more Membership Benefits as they are added.
Sign up today: http://www.ukava.co.uk/html/join_the_uk_association_of_vir.html
Copyright 2009 by Justine Curtis
About the author
Justine Curtis is the director of her own successful virtual assistant business My Virtual Assistant http://www.my-va.com and founder of The UK Association of Virtual Assistants (UKAVA) which offers free resources and information to its subscribers – sign up at http://www.ukava.co.uk. Justine is the author of Setting Yourself Up As A Virtual Assistant and is delighted to be able to pass on the benefits of her vast experience of the VA role to aspiring and progressive virtual PAs as a co-founder of the VA Success Group. If you are thinking about starting a virtual assistant business, visit http://vasuccessgroup.co.uk
Virtual Assistant Marketing – Niche to Streamline Your Efforts
When you market to a niche you are targeting a very small select group of people. With research you can identify what that group of people have in common and in what areas where they will all be struggling. This way you can tailor your marketing message, the words that you use, to suit the target market. For example, if you were to target a group of individuals that were constantly away from home due to their line of work, you could say something in your marketing material like ‘Are you constantly away from home and worrying that the post is not being dealt with or you’ll come home to find that you car has run out of tax or the boiler has not been serviced?’ Do you see how someone who was away all the time would identify with that question? They may well have already experienced a situation like that or know that it will happen at some point.
Now you can follow up that question with your solution, something like, ‘Our Mail Handling and Lifestyle Management services mean that we can run your home and life for you while you are away meaning that you will never have to be reliant on public transport or have a cold bath ever again!’ Do you see how that would appeal to them?
You can of course use the same approach with any niche market. With a bit of research you can establish where you might be needed and what services you can offer to add value. So don’t forget next time you are out networking, chat to people in niches that interest you, find out what they struggle with and if these are general issues for people in their industry. Then even if that particular person doesn’t need your services yet, you can still tailor your marketing message using what you have learned and target others from their industry.
A little bit more research will also tell you where you can find these people, what publications do they read, what groups or associations do they belong to? When you know what message to put before them, and you know what channels you have available to get in front of them the rest is child’s play. So as you can see, marketing to a niche is an effective way of streamlining your marketing efforts and achieving better results..
Copyright 2009 by Justine Curtis
About the author
Justine Curtis is the director of her own successful virtual assistant business My Virtual Assistant http://www.my-va.com and founder of The UK Association of Virtual Assistants (UKAVA) which offers free resources and information to its subscribers – sign up at http://www.ukava.co.uk. Justine is the author of Setting Yourself Up As A Virtual Assistant and is delighted to be able to pass on the benefits of her vast experience of the VA role to aspiring and progressive virtual PAs as a co-founder of the VA Success Group. If you are thinking about starting a virtual assistant business, visit http://vasuccessgroup.co.uk
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