Posts by Caroline
How many billable hours in your Virtual Assistant business?
Billable hours: As a solo virtual assistant, how much of your time is billable? In other words, if you work a 40 hour week, how many hours do you charge out to clients, and how many hours do you spend on your own admin and marketing? e.g. if you work 40 hours and bill 20…
Read MoreChoose the best virtual assistant course
Virtual Assistant Training – what to look for If you’re a newbie VA, one of the first things you’ll look at is finding the best virtual assistant course or some virtual assistant training. I am probably going to get very nasty emails about this post – I know there are going to be good friends…
Read MoreMinimum prices for virtual assistants
Ah, the thorny issue of rates! We get asked all the time about minimum prices for virtual assistants; whether those charging low prices are devaluing the industry; how we can support people who do charge low rates etc. Why doesn’t SVA simply declare a minimum price for Virtual Assistants? We get asked why we don’t…
Read MoreAll in one website package
A big part of getting your VA business up and running is getting a website live – and this is generally a very steep learning curve for most VAs, as they’ve never had to build a website, deal with hosting etc. (Am I speaking in tongues? If so, check out our dummies guide to websites!)…
Read MoreEssential Virtual Assistant Software
We haven’t compiled a list of essential virtual assistant software for a while – mostly because the same ones pop up frequently: MS Office, Express Scribe, etc. Shockingly, the last time we did it was 2014! A lot has changed! Companies merge. They will move from a free to a paid model and restrict access…
Read MoreRocketbook Beacons
I have been so excited about these arriving… It has been a long wait – delays in the production process meant the original ship date got put back several months. Always happens with tech products, and I was happy they were getting it right. Firstly, what are Rocketbook Beacons? So the idea is, you put…
Read MoreWebsite Cookies: Me want cookies!
Website Cookies: So we’ve just about got everyone up to date with ICO’s GDPR guidance… and along comes an update on their cookie guidance. (I’ll admit – I grimaced!). https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/news-and-blogs/2019/07/blog-cookies-what-does-good-look-like/ Not least because we had to make some changes to our own cookie notices! Effectively the new cookie rules are: People visiting your website have…
Read MoreOffering Call Answering as a VA
Call answering – how do I charge for it? We get asked about answering calls on behalf of clients often enough that we started copying and pasting the answers from old call answering threads… So we thought we’d do a blog post on it instead! The first thing I’ll say about answering phones: You cannot…
Read MoreToday’s PA Conference – Caroline confirmed as Speaker
So remember a little while back I had to keep schtum about an exciting new project? This is it! Today’s PA Conference invited me to speak at their conference in London on 16 August. I’ll be presenting as a Speaker and on their Expert Panel alongside luminaries such as: Rob Neil OBE Darren Clark Sara…
Read MoreHiring a Virtual Assistant
We often get asked by clients to guide them through the process of hiring a virtual assistant. What questions to ask your virtual assistant; how much they should pay; what checks to make; what they should expect. A lot of these questions are obvious to us, because we hire VAs all the time… But to…
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