General Business and Finance Blog

Wharton Business Foundation asked:


Outsourcing to a Virtual Assistant (outsourced employee) can increaseproductivity, reduce costs and save you and your company time. Virtual Assistants, also known as VA’s, have been around for more than 10 years and in this day and age, utilize the technology era. They are highly qualified, educated and experienced people who basically can perform all of the same skills that traditional in-house staff provides. Many VA’s are College or University educated in business and office administration with work experience in an office setting.

We recommend a simple 3 step formula for determining what duties to assign an outsourced employee. First and foremost should be revenue producing functions. Simply write a list of what they should be. These include: appointment setting, cross-selling your existing customers on additional products and services (very important), telesales to new prospective customers, follow up sales calls on old leads that never closed, email blasting to generate new leads, internet sales, sending out online newsletters to existing clients, search engine optimization, blogging, article writing, handling your social networking (Facebook, Linked-in, Twitter, etc), updating your website with fresh content and articles, there are over 50,000 free classified advertising sites on the internet other than Craigslist.org they can post these ads for your business, and much more.

Secondly, are the revenue retaining activities. These include: customer service, technical support (online and on the phone), internet “live chat” on your website, invoicing, billing, taking phone payments, collections, sending out birthday or thank you cards and gifts to clients, fulfilling client information requests and more.

Third and last, are the non-revenue producing functions. These include: book-keeping, accounting, payroll, data entry, document and contract preparation, programming, research, answering your emails and cleaning up your inbox, scheduling and managing your calendar, acting as an answering service, fulfilling information requests from prospective clients, office management, employee scheduling, presentation preparation, making travel arrangements, desktop publishing, computer training, medical/legal transcription and more.

The benefits of outsourcing to a qualified VA are plentiful. VA’s use their own equipment so there is no wear and tear on your office equipment or a need for special equipment. By outsourcing to a VA rather than hiring an in-office assistant, you will never need to pay employment insurance, vacation pay, sick pay, or contribute to retirement plans and worker’s compensation.

There is no cost for training new or existing employees; VA’s are already qualified. There is no need for extra office space; VA’s do everything off location. There’s no need to worry about in-office employees requesting time off; VA’s are available when you need them. Like you, a quality outsourcing firm understands the needs of businesses today, ensuring the success of their clients. A good outsourcing firm values each and every client; it is because of these clients that they ensure your VA’s will aid in the success of your business.

How else can outsourcing to a VA save you money? VA’s are pre-trained and experienced individuals with the ability to catch mistakes made in-office, not only saving your business money but also protecting your business reputation.

And for those in-office employees that you cannot go without, a VA can take a little of the never-ending workload or less-important projects off their shoulders to ensure you, as a successful business, maintain your quality reputation and increase employee productivity.

So the question really should be, “why didn’t I do this years ago?”

Roy asked:


There are scores of business opportunities in the world today and each day there are much more springing up in diverse parts of the world, with the global economic crisis  staring this generation in the face, individuals are searching for paths to generate income that would support not only themselves but also their households. Lots of people around the world today today have been put off their different jobs and even more have their jobs hanging in the balance, others have their wages being reduced by half,it’s not a surprise the search for an alternative source of income have  tripled through the years.

Business Opportunities ideas out there which people tend to consider include; small-business opportunities ideas and also home-based income generation.

Small-Business Opportunities include; starting a Day-Care for kids, performing tasks like cleaning, lawn-mowing, deliveries and a whole bunch of others, these form of income generation have worked for numerous people and when done properly can generate secure income for you.

Home-based income generation which includes, affiliate merchandising, internet marketing, online store trading, outsourcing and a whole bundle of others have also been a proven kind of income for quite some time now, different individuals give good words to this and there are scores of individuals who make lots of income by this kind of income generation.

One of the major things about the forms of home-based income generation listed above is the quantity of time an individual spends in doing lots of research on various issues, like keywords, products to market, picking a lucrative niche and a whole lot more. For starters to the world of affiliate programs, internet marketing, blogging, it is really tormenting because it takes time to be able to see outcomes particularly for those that don’t understand traffic generation principles and those who rely more often that not on search engine optimization to be able to make profits, the true techniques used to make maximum revenues from products are not properly passed along to these newbies, so they end up consuming time and in most cases money for an unfruitful venture

Another business opportunity interrelated to home-based income generation is the forex market, people constantly tend to leave this view, maybe they promptly turn it down because of the risk involved, but they forget that the forex market being one of the largest financial establishment in the world and making trades of around  $1trillion daily is an option to be considered anytime. Forex trading has over the years enriched dozens of people and unlike the various kinds of job opportunities, experienced forex traders tend to see results in a matter of minutes or days,one of the most frequently asked question is, how do newbies to the forex market trade and make maximum profits with minimum losses.

Well, currently things have been highly simplified for newbies to be able to make as much earnings as the experienced forex traders who have been in the scheme for years do. Forex software or forex trading robots are systems prepared by experienced forex professional traders, these pros have been into the forex scene for decades and they know the system in and out, they have made it easy for newcomers to forex trading with the initiation of a forex trading system that users can quickly install and use to generate returns from home through the forex market.

These forex robots go into forex market scene and examine the current state of the market and decode if trading at that time would generate profit or losses, it does this without any man-like interference or intrusion. Forex robots have over the years proven to be efficient and they work as though they have been part of the forex market system for years, they decrease the propensity to incur losses on the forex market

Forex trading has its risk, you could lose everything you gained in just a matter of minutes, it is quite risky and those who mean to use this form of home-based income generation should wield extra care when trading, though there are top-gainers, there are also top-losers, you decide where you belong and one of the means to do that is through prudence when trading.

The business opportunities worldwide today are large, and people are taking advantage of some of them and are making huge returns each month, so why not join the train or continue in the rain.

Forex Trading Robots are making huge impact and yielding massive returns. Click here for more info.