VIRTUAL SECRETARY

Becoming a Virtual Secretary and Working at Home.

Virtual Secretary

I was a virtual secretary – and it wasn’t that bad a job. About a year ago (2003) I worked for a gentleman running a satellite dish company. He was a freelancer trying to get his business off the ground. He hired me to do his computer work for him. Simply, I input his sales, sent out bills, did estimates, answered phones (he forwarded his calls to my house), made up flyers, created forms, and even scoped out his competition. I did all this at home and made about $200.00 per week working part-time. I liked it because I was home with my son. You can do the same, here’s how:

Getting Started as a Virtual Secretary:

Drive around your local city and write down all the small businesses you see. Jot down the addresses and if you want get the owner’s name. Now, If you were a small business owner and you had a lot of paper work to do and not enough time to do it, what would you do? You would hire either a “service” or you would beg a family member to help! Well, here is where a virtual secretary can come in! If you are reading this I am assuming you have a computer. If you have a computer you can do anything a small business can do. Anyway, if you are good with a computer (word-processing, billing, advertising) then you can help out A LOT of needy small businesses out there! Keep reading it gets better!

You need to present your virtual secretary services to these small businesses. Design a nice flyer or a personal letter describing your service. Add a business card and maybe a free pen (with your name/business on it). Let them know you charge less because you run your business

out of your home. Or offer to do a free trial basis for 5 days (or whatever you prefer). Advertising is essential to ANY business, and many business owners don’t have the time to do it.

What Can a Virtual Secretary Help With?

Offer to create a nice flyer and get them distributed through the mail.

Offer to do advertising on the Internet (you can advertise for free) and charge him a low one-time fee.

Offer to send out thank-you notes to past customers, or send out “sale” notices to past customers.

Billing: Offer to process billing statements to customers. If you happen to have the same business software that the small business has, you can do EVERYTHING he does at work from your home. You can enter in all his customers and sales, when you are done save the file to disk and send it back to the owner.

Data Entry: Enter all his sales in for the week. Enter in all his expenses too. Enter in whatever the owner needs. If you know accounting this is a plus!

There are MANY things that a virtual secretary can do to help a business out. Be creative, think of all the things you are good at and can offer! Your Expenses Fortunately, this would cost you near to nothing to get going. If you don’t have a lot of money (but a lot of time) you can go speak to each owner personally and offer your services. If you are the shy type (like me) you can create business cards and a flyer advertising your services. Go to a print shop and pick out a nice letterhead and envelopes. Sit down with a word processor and type out a nice ad. Then simply mail them to the company’s on your list. Business cards are a nice professional touch. You can get about 200 done for under $20.00-$30.00. Don’t forget to sit down and think about your rates. What are you going to charge? A flat weekly or monthly rate? Whatever you decide add a “bonus” to it to sweeten the deal. Make the business WANT to hire you! Offer a guarantee or them a “free” trial period. Whatever you do, have fun and get creative with it! You can easily make a healthy second income by being a virtual secretary.

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