Have you come up with a business idea to become a business owner? Have you become tired of being an employee and want to take your expertise to the next level opening your own business? If yes, this article is definitely a reference for you in order to do so. You might have the greatest idea of how your business will operate but there are factors to account for prior to starting up a business

Research – the key to success is being prepared on all the aspect on how the business will operate. Market research on the industry that you wish to enter is critical and must be done before reaching a decision whether your business idea is practical or not. Researching on data such as competitor analysis, target market analysis, pricing, operational cost, marketing channels and requirements and where you would like to incorporate your business. Once the research is done, you can then put together a business plan that should consist of the following:

1. Get to know your competitors and distinguish what your business can offer that your competitors can’t and also what they can offer that you can’t. See if your competitors are successful or not, if you understand why they are succeeding, you can focus on where you can provide a better solution to your customers. You can learn and avoid mistakes that your unsuccessful competitors have made resulting to their failure. Estimate the amount of competition you will experience in the market and note if there is any room for your business to grow in the future. Trends of the industry are also important so you can plan ahead the direction of your business.

• Use tools such as Google Alerts and set the keywords to monitor the latest news and articles on your industry.

1. Who are your customers? What kinds of problems are you solving for them and are there alternatives other than your solution? Knowing the trend and buying power of your customers will help you determine how you will market and the pricing of your solution. Knowing your target audience is crucial when marketing your solution especially if you plan to use social media marketing because you need to know how to communicate with them, for example what tone to use among various age group.

• 12 Questions to Determine your Target Audience

1. Operational cost should be estimated to limit your risk on unstable financial situations. Have an idea of where your office will be located, will you employ any staff or outsourcing certain tasks to virtual assistant, equipment and software that you need, if you have an actual product to sell, what would be the cost to manufacture your product, logistics of your product and do you need additional storage facility to hold your inventory? What are some cost that you can eliminate and what cannot be avoid are important decisions when summarizing on the operational cost.
2. Every solution should have a different way to market to their customers. Although online marketing would be a common choice for modern business, there are still different channels to market your solution such as printed ads on magazine and newspaper, hiring a sales representative, direct mailing, television commercials, billboards and many others. Refer back to your target customers to reach a decision on where and how you will market your solution and estimate the cost for your marketing campaign to calculate the cost of sales and evaluate again on your pricing because there is no point in launching a business if you do not have an idea of the break-even point.
3. Where you incorporate your business should be considered due to taxation and regulation factors. Online business owners may not realize that they might save a lot of money by setting up offshore companies and the restrictions they have to operate under may be minimize. On the other hand, if you will engage business with overseas companies such as import and export, offshore companies may not be an option. Prepare the documentations required to register your business and you will be all set to open a bank account and start making money.

Can you think of any other research that has to been done? Drop me a line.

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虛擬助理是一位企業家，亦是您的合作夥伴，幫助拓展您的業務。與全職員工相比，他們可以節省您的辦公室空間和設備。處理稅金，保險，醫療福利等不再是使您頭痛的問題。我們明白，經營一盤生意並不容易：日常文書，行政和簿記等的工作會非常耗時。不過，現在虛擬助理可以幫助您解決這些日常繁複的工作，免除處理時的煩擾。
虛擬助理只收取處理指定事務所需要的時間。除了一般行政事務例如普通的工作處理，虛擬助理更可以幫助您完成以下14個任務，使您的業務運行順暢，以及減輕您的工作量。
1。桌面出版，使用桌面出版軟件來製造引人注目的文件或檔案，如名片，通訊，宣傳手冊和電子郵件。
2。轉錄，若您有一個錄製會議或採訪，您可以吩咐虛擬助手把談話內容轉製成為一份文件。
3。寫作，無論是撰寫商務信函或文章去介紹您的業務，虛擬助理都能夠應付。
4。數據庫的建立與管理，幫助您建立專屬您企業的聯絡名單，如供應商，客戶和競爭對手。
5。簿記，當中包括記錄所發出以及寄出給客戶的發票，應付賬款與應收款項和結算有關賬單。
6。電話接聽，虛擬助理可以成為您的客戶服務員，回答有關企業產品或服務的詢問。您的虛擬助理甚至可以提供下班時間的電話接聽服務，讓您的熱線服務24小時運作，提高服務質素。
7。網站維護，維持您的網站有最新的公司資訊及產品消息，甚至以搜尋引擎優化您的網站，並會提交您的網站予搜尋引擎目錄。
8。電子郵件管理，如果您決定去旅行，無論商務或個人，您的虛擬助理可以協助整理您的電子郵件，您可以致電您的虛擬助理，查詢近況或任何需要立即解決的重要問題。
9。校對/編輯，虛擬助理能夠進行查閱文件的工作，以檢查語法或糾正任何格式錯誤。
10。翻譯服務，您的虛擬助理懂得超過1種語言，可翻譯任何海外文件，這種優勢有助您更有效處理海外業務，以及擴展業務至海外。
11。電腦培訓或輔導，經營企業，您需要掌握應用各種軟件的技能。通過虛擬助理可了解處理該電腦軟件的方法，維持日常運作。
12。會議與活動策劃，在某些情況下，您可能會想藉着舉辦活動來維繫您與客戶的關係，甚至是個人的活動，例如結婚，您的虛擬助理可以幫助您擬定客人名單，並發出邀請，安排場所及住宿，並協調當中各樣服務。
13。編排日程表，企業家往往有一個繁忙的日程表，虛擬助理可以協調你的時間表，以保持您的生活事務以至各樣細節都安排恰當和順利運作；提示服務則確保您準時出席會議或活動。
14。社交媒體營銷，事實上，社會媒體已主導互聯網，所以社會媒體的力量是不容忽視，通過此可與客戶或潛在客戶建立關係。虛擬助理可以透過管理您的博客，設置一個 Facebook Fanpage和Twitter的帳戶，使社會媒體認識您的企業，為您的企業增加知名度。

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A Virtual Assistant, also known as a VA, is an entrepreneur and business owner who offer various forms of tasks to assisting on daily duties of a business.  Their services are generally administrative or other related assistance and they have their own offices; therefore they are partners of their clients instead of an ordinary staff in the office.  Since VAs are not employees, businesses can benefit from overhead cutting cost of their business such as insurance, employee benefits such as holidays and sick leave, office equipment and office space.  VAs charge only on an hourly basis, so their clients are only billed for hours the VA has inputted into their business.

A lot of VAs do not just offer administrative assistance support, but also provides specialized skills such as internet marketing, social media marketing, event management, bookkeeping, web design, graphic design, concierge services, ghost writing and translation.  Some VAs also offer personal assistance services such as scheduling and reminder services, travel arrangements and even personal shopping.

A VA usually offers their service and communicates with their clients via telephone, fax, mail, email and other forms of online communication and technology, thus, giving credit to the ‘virtual’ reference in the term, Virtual Assistant.

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Benefits of Article Marketing

There are different ways to internet marketing; article marketing is one of the basic ways to spread your words on your services or products. On each article submission to different directories, it must be carefully written to bring out the message for your target audience. For example, if you are selling golf equipments, you may write about different tips and tricks on golfing and attract these audiences to your website. Giving out free information or content is the easiest way to marketing your business. In each article submitted, there can be a link to your website which may bring your readers to go to your website.

Webmaster may also post out your content on their website which will include a link back to your site which makes your website search engine optimized and getting your website a higher search ranking.

As you progress on the number of articles submitted to directories, you will also grow the number of incoming links to your website which is also search engine friendly. Search engines also index contents from directories; therefore when people search for topics on the article you may submitted, you might very likely to get these audience to read your article and become a potential customer to your products or services.

Tips of Writing Good Articles

When you’re writing free content to submit to article directories, keywords and keyword phrases are extremely important. They must be relevant to your website such as if you’re selling pianos you might want to include brand names like Yamaha, Steinway and Knabe. The number of keywords and keyword phrases must also be considered on each article. The ratio of keywords and keyword phrases should be around ten to fifteen percent of the content or the search engine might consider the article to be a spam if the keywords and keyword phrases are too high or irrelevant if too low.

The content of the article should also be useful to your audience. Good content should entertain or give out good information to the readers. Research on the content you are writing and give out facts, statistics and figures. This will bring trust to your readers giving you and your business a good reputation.

Solutions to Publish Articles without Spending too much Time or Effort

As easier said than done, writing may not be one of your expertise or you just do not have the time to do so; therefore you may need a virtual assistant to do these writings for you. A VA can research on your industry and brainstorm ideas for submitting different articles to directories relevant to your business and bring traffic to your website. An experienced Virtual Assistant can easily outline topics to be covered on the articles to promote your website. A VA should also understand what topics might interest or encourages are people to read these articles.

Outsourcing these tasks to a virtual assistant saves you time and even cost as you can remain focus on your business. Receive the benefits of article marketing without going through the fess on researching on interesting topics or facts, statistics and figures from your market. You will be surprised by the outcome of these articles which brings traffic to your website.

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Although email marketing may sound old-fashion in a way with all the social media marketing along the way, it is still a very effective medium to send out your message to your target audience. Sending out weekly or monthly newsletter about your business builds relationship to your readers, which may be your previous clients or people that have subscribe and are already interested in what your business may bring to them. Nevertheless, it helps branding and gaining awareness to your business.

Why is it Effective?

Now with a huge variety of email marketing software, a template for a promotion or newsletter can be put together with a little amount of time and effort. It only takes a matter of minutes to send out to hundreds or even thousands of recipients. Once the email has been received your message will be direct to you audience without visiting your blog or website. If the content that you have written on your email is good, your audience can easy digest the information resulting a successful click through rate. It is so effective that a survey conducted by eMarketer reveals a 40% increase in budget on email marketing for 2009 as compared to 2008. Although businesses are increasing their budget on email marketing, their overall marketing cost is lower due to the small fee to send out email campaigns.

How and Where to Start Email Marketing?

First of all you have to generate a contact list; this can be done from having a subscription form on your website for your latest newsletters and offers. You can also offer a subscription upon purchase of your products or services. Another method of obtaining a contact list is from renting from other companies’ list, therefore the email will be sent on behalf of the other company. Last but not least, purchasing a contact list, this is highly not recommended because your email might be listed as spam and could give bad reputation to your business.

Second, you will need a software or webware to generate the email. Why would you need a software or webware to send out the email, why just not use your email client that you usually send your emails with? It is simply because these email marketing software or webware can auto-generate specific name of your contact list, which feels the email a personal touch. Also, these software or webware has a tracking system of the emails, therefore you may see how many emails were actually opened, the click through rates and even delete emails of the contact list that are no longer valid.

How to be Successful on Email Marketing?

The subject line is the first key point in order for your audience to open the email. If the email is an advertisement, you may want to use subject lines with a call to action such as “Promotion Ends Today, Act Now!” or using the word free such as “Receive FREE software Upon a Purchase of a Product”. When writing a newsletter, only provide information what your audience needs, always consider what’s in it for the reader. Wording should be short and precise, avoid long paragraphs, makes the reader easier to digest. Bold and increase of font size for important message and phrases. The tone of your voice is also an important factor; email tends to provide a more conversation purpose. A lighter or friendlier tone might be more appropriate in most situations unless it is a business letter.

Still Lost and Confused with How and Where to Start Email Marketing?

Hire a virtual assistant to help you on the design of the email and do the writing for you. A virtual assistant should be skilled on creating email campaigns, designing an eye catching layout to the email and an experienced copywriter understands the needs to get the message across to your audience. Outsource your email marketing duties to your virtual assistant and start to get the results you want. Your virtual assistant can also update and maintain your contact list into a database for other marketing purposes too. Contact a virtual assistant and inquire on their desktop publishing service today.

Have you had any success with email marketing?  Share your story.

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Blogging can be a great source for traffic to your website and has become a common practice for companies to incorporate into their internet marketing strategy.  In fact, 55% of business that blogs increased traffic to their web site.  As people start to spend more and more time on social media, blogs can attract traffic with specific topics on industry news, reviews, advice, tips and expressing opinions.  Through a blog, you can establish trust between your readers and become the thought leader of your industry.

Blogs are extremely search engine friendly because search engines loves fresh content and can be index in it in a short period of time. Once you have the right keywords or keyword phrases, your blog post can be listed on the first page of the search engine result page which will give you the advantage of driving more traffic to your blog and to your web site.

Blog is also a great medium for you to communicate with your clients and potential clients.  You can post your press release such as a new service or product launch, changes to your business or directions on your future business.  You can hear feedbacks and comments on your blog.  It can be the core to all of your social media platform because you can easy pull the rss feed to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, updating all your profiles with a click of the publish button.

In conclusion, I think blogging is one of the most effective way to drive traffic to your website.  It is free and simple to integrate into your web site.  Contact me if you need help on where and how to start blogging.

Do you have a blog?  Why do you blog?

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2. Outsource Your Internet Marketing Tasks to a Virtual Assistant – Part Two
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A virtual assistant is an entrepreneur that you can partner with to grow your business. They can save you from office space and equipment compared to full-time employees. Taxes, insurance, medical benefits are no longer an issue to have a headache about. I know running a small business can be difficult; the amount of paperwork, administrative task and bookkeeping may be extremely time-consuming. A virtual assistant can take away the pain with this repetitive work you have to do on a daily basis.

A VA only charge on the hours consumed on the time required to do the assigned tasks. Except for the general administrative task such as general work processing, a VA can help you on the following 14 tasks to make your business run smoother and lighten your workload.

1. Desktop Publishing, using desktop publishing software to produce eye-catching documents such as business cards, newsletters, brochures and email champagne.

2. Transcription, if you have a recording of a meeting or an interview, ask your virtual assistant to transcript it into a document.

3. Writing, whether it is writing business letters or writing up articles to submit to directories to expose your business, a VA is ready to do the job.

4. Database Creation & Management, organizing a contact list for your business, such as vendors, customers and competitors.

5. Bookkeeping, this may include generating and sending out invoices to your clients, keeping track of payables and receivables and billing your bills.

6. Phone answering, a VA can act as your customer service and answer enquiries on your business products or services. Your VA may even offer off hours phone answering service, making your hotline 24 hours in service.

7. Website maintenance, keeping the content of your website up-to-date with fresh content and even Search Engine Optimize your website and submitting your website to search engine directories.

8. Email Management, if you decide to go on a trip, business or personal, your VA can handle your email and organize it, so you can call your VA to see what’s new or if any important issues has come up and needs to be settled immediately.

9. Proofreading/Editing, your VA can read through the documents you have written and check for grammar and formatting errors.

10. Translation Service, your VA may speak more than 1 language, that advantage of that and help you expand your business overseas.

11. Computer training or tutoring, to run a business, you will need to acquire skills in various software applications. A VA can pass on their knowledge of the software on a day to day operation.

12. Meeting & Event Planning, in some occasions you would like to host an event for gathering with your clients or even for personal matters such as parties and weddings, your VA can help you organize a guest list and send out invitation, organizing a venue, arrange accommodations, and co-ordinate with any catering services.

13. Scheduling, in many cases, small business owners has a busy schedule. A VA can co-ordinate your schedules to help keep your lives organized and running smoothly. Reminder service can also be provided to ensure you to arrive on meetings or events.

14. Social Media Marketing, social media has dominated the internet and the power from social media to build a public relationship with your clients or potential clients. A VA can maintain your blog, setup a Facebook Fanpage and a Twitter account for your business and gain exposure to your business.

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1. Rebranding AvailLive Virtual Assistant Service
2. What is a Virtual Assistant (VA)?

Although I have been blogging through http://www.availlive.com for a while, my official company name was Virtual Assistant (HK) Limited http://www.virtualassistanthk.com. Over a period of consideration, my company is now officially registered as Availlive Limited.  Over the last couple of weeks, I have been busy redesigning a logo for the company and the legal work with the change of company name.  I will be printing new business cards, new business brochures and stationery.

I came up with the name as I was thinking of the meaning for service, which became Avail.  We would like to provide our client’s with the experience that as they have been served live on the spot instead of a cold virtual experience.  We are will to go for the extra miles for our clients to feel their importance to AvailLive.

I have implemented a new business plan to ensure our clients to have regular communications in order for us to provide quality service and better understanding of each individual client’s needs.  We will be obligated to our clients our best efforts on all tasks assigned, meeting deadlines and giving out advices and opinions for our clients to run a business more smoothly.  Making everyday less stressful and freeing up their time to gain more control over their core business.

To better the transparency of our work to our clients, we will provide a Basecamp account, an internet project management software, so they can monitor our progress on their assigned tasks through the internet without any phone calls or emails.  They can assign tasks through the internet, phone call or email, whichever they felt comfortable in.  The project management software also provides a timer for our service to be timed by the second so our clients will not suffer from any unnecessary fees.  These Basecamp accounts will be secured and will not compromise with any confidentiality issues.  The tasks posted in the account will be strictly between our clients and us.

Contact us now to schedule for a free consultation or sign up for our newsletters to know our latest service and promotion.

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Viral marketing which is task to encourage passing your newsletter, blog post, articles and video along to other people through email to a friend link on email marketing or through social media networks. Your VA can assist you on sending out your message or syndicate your videos on monitor the progress of each message of video for you.

Blogging, a method that has been adopted by many companies online to maintain updates to clients or attract potential clients to your website and keep contents on your website updated regularly with fresh content. Blogs are extremely search engine optimized and will get index quickly on to the search engine. A VA can help you setup a blog, research on topics you should post of your blog and submit your blog to blog listings to increase traffic.

Social media marketing which is engaging activities such as communicating on social media sites, posting on forums, commenting on other people’s blog who are relevant to the industry and submitting podcast and videos. A Virtual Assistant can help you set up social media profiles on major social media sites and niche social networks to further expose your business on various networks and start branding your business.

Online lead generation is the action when people subscribe to your newsletter for your product or service. This also brings back to affiliate marketing where someone has to complete a form and you pay for the affiliate that provided the lead.

Email marketing that has been the most profitable way of marketing after search engine marketing. Since the people are subscribed to your newsletter, they are most likely interested in your product or service and will make purchase your product or service in the future. There are also companies that offer to send out your email campaign through their opt-in list, which is called renting a contact list. A VA can help you draft up newsletters to your subscribers and monitor the open rate of each email sent out and assess on which type of newsletters are more successful than others. A VA can also keep your subscribers’ list up to date and delete contacts from your subscribers’ list that are no longer active or they have sent out a request to opt-out of your newsletters.

So, have your virtual assistant handle the entire list above tasks or parts of the list for you. This will help you save a lot of time, which you may use to focus on the core business itself. Remember that a virtual assistant only charge by the time spent on these tasks unlike hiring an employee which you have to pay insurance, taxes, office equipment and office space. Virtual assistants often offer free consultations, contact them today and gain freedom from your business!

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Internet marketing can be extremely time consuming for online business owners, yet it is vital in order to succeed on the internet.  Some business owners may outsource their internet marketing task to consultants and can be extremely costly, some would rather do it in house so they can make decisions on how they market their business online.  For those who chose to do their marketing in-house, yet failed to have the time to complete their tasks should consider a internet marketing virtual assistant.  Although it is also outsourcing internet marketing, yet the owners have full control of which tasks they would like to outsource and also to avoid high monthly cost of hiring an internet marketing consultant.  A Virtual Assistant only charges for the time spent on the tasks delegated.

Now, here are some ideas of internet marketing services you can have a VA to assist you with.

Affiliate marketing which is a form of performance based marketing in which you pay a certain percentage of your sales or an amount per lead to your website when your affiliates promote your business through their websites or articles. A VA can help you monitor your affiliates’ performance and send out newsletters to your affiliates to motivate them in generating more sales or leads for you and notifying them on your latest promotions.

Keyword research is important in order for your website to be search engine optimized. A VA can help you perform research to determine what keywords or keyword phrases you should focus on your website in order for your website to be ranked high on the search engine result page. There are also long-tail keywords that your business may want to focus in order to get the best results because they tend to have less competition and people who searched with detailed wording usually have a better conversion rate lending from a search to a sales. A VA can also research on what keywords or keyword phrases your competitors are focusing on.

Website optimization includes using the keywords on various contents within the website. These will include the title of each page and the meta description included on each page of the website. In order to optimize a website, you need to know HTML and have well written content with your keywords or keyword phrases spread throughout your website yet the density is not too high that the search engine would consider as spam. A VA can help you analyze your website title, meta description, keyword density and content to improve listing on the search engine.

Search engine marketing tasks such as pay per click bid management, search engine submission, link building strategy such as article, directory and press release submissionand social media optimization can all be outsourced to a Virtual Assistant to manage.

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