_It is true that today’s tough economical conditions demand every business owner to concentrate their business. However, at the same time, it is also true that an individual cannot handle all the load on his own. Every day, an individual receives hundreds of emails to reply, write blog posts, work for third party companies and many other things. No one can handle these things by himself.

Thus, every business owner believes in hiring a virtual assistant and I am sure it will be going to help you tremendously.

It is important that while you hire a virtual employee, there are certain things which needs to be considered by an employer.

•    Trustworthiness: this is the very first thing to be analyzed in a person as you are going to share a number of secrets with the person.

•    Good with computers: a VA must be very familiar with computers, its uses and basic software's like HTML coding, word, excel besides the specific software's he is required to know.

•    Organizational skills: he must be capable of organizing things very well.

•    Reasonable pricing: Virtual assistant services are mainly helpful for small and medium business owners therefore, no one has high budget for their hiring. Therefore, you must confirm about the prices before hiring.

An online personal assistant is the person who offers office assistance by means of the internet. This is a great opportunity for both the assistants and business firms as it is a win-win situation for both of them.

The internet has made it possible for people living miles apart to work together. Most of the individuals are serving the business organizations through their virtual assistant service. These services include a wide array of duties like bookkeeping, administrative, secretarial, data entry, tutoring, consulting and many other.

The best part of being a virtual assistant is that you work with complete freedom and independence. There are no travelling or other expenses except the one time investment for equipments.

If you are also thinking of being an online virtual assistant, here are a few tips:

•    Get a website
•    Get involved in social media
•    Be helpful
•    Do some research

Following these tips will help you make a base to start your business as virtual assistant services.

Keeping a virtual assistant is not only a status symbol but it's also become a necessity for the burgeoning online business. Professionals and entrepreneurs are helping business houses as virtual assistants lessening their work loads.

A virtual employee can assist you in varying business tasks like tracking expenses, ordering lunch and breakfast, assisting in document preparation, etc. All these and many other works are accomplished at rates much lower than what you pay for an on-site assistant.

The most basic advantages in getting virtual assistant services are-

·         Low cost involved

·         Free trial periods are there to satisfy yourself

·         On some projects, their entire team works

·         Your work is being done even when you are asleep

The selection process of a virtual professional is quite tough and one need to be very skeptical about various things while hiring them. You must ensure that they possess all the needed resources to execute your tasks. Moreover, it is good to verify their educational background and previous experience in a particular field.

Though, the charges of a VA are higher but if you will calculate the overall cost of a full-time employee you will realize that this cost is nothing in front of that.

Are you too much busy in booking airline tickets, ordering food for you, or calling your family? Why don’t you hire a virtual secretary who will do 10 more errands like these at around $ 20-30 per month.
 
The world has open immense  opportunities for outsourcing official errands.  These opportunities are in the form of virtual assistant services. The websites of these services are making it easier for countries to outsource their official errands overseas.

There are different types of unusual tasks handled by the professionals of virtual assistant services:

•    Attending the phone calls on behalf of you.
•    Making word, excel and power point documents
•  Arranging traveling, reserving seats for dinner, doing research for your child
•    Ordering some of the personal and professional items online on your behalf
 
One can find these assistants working in time zone shifts and are available from 9 AM to 6 PM. The best part of having these assistants is that you need not invest in office infrastructure, resources, employee benefits, payroll, etc.
 
The ease of handling duties with low cost involved have mushroomed the growth of virtual assistant companies in the world.

Outsourcing of business processes in the domains of office administration and office management is helping small business owners to cut costs and increase operational efficiency.
 
Among the priority tasks that go into outsourcing, there are tasks like data entry services usually delegated to virtual employees.
 
By outsourcing these business processes companies save on maintenance costs and employ a larger number of virtual office assistants. According to several studies, accuracy in data entry goes up when it is done off-site than on-site.
 
By outsourcing data entry and virtual administrative assistant functions, businesses get to partner with reliable offshoring companies who offer online data entry, secretarial and office administration functions at affordable prices and faster rates.

In the online world, Information is the new currency. So collecting, processing, storing, analyzing and managing information become useful in addition to storing and tabulating them.
 
Hiring a qualified virtual employee to do data entry work at lesser hourly cost cuts costs and headache of any business owner. Finding a good virtual employee having higher speed and accuracy in feeding lines of data in the software application is best done through virtual assistant firms.
 
This keeps the project cost very low. The faster one is the quickest in terms of the turnaround time. As long as the needs of accuracy and speed weigh high in outsourcing virtual assistant services will have a tight grip on this domain.

There may be a debate whether Tim Feriss’ book was the real inspiration for businesses in hiring Virtual Assistant Services. But the good news is that virtual employee is now part and parcel of all growing businesses.

Tim Ferriss book, The Four Hour Work Week flared the fantasies of small business owners unlimitedly about the merits of outsourcing. He also outlined a business model wherein supporting services are left for outsourcing and only core functions are retained in house to command the full attention and time of the business owner. This model offers better profits and higher competitiveness.

Hiring a virtual employee is a creative process in the sense it takes out busy work from a business owner’s hectic schedule and provides the cushion for drawing a virtual workforce that is spread worldwide.  The dilemma of business owners in balancing time between focused work on key priorities and the administrative tasks are better addressed.

Ideally the reins of less important tasks need to be handed over to virtual assistants for higher-level pursuits.

For a business to grow there is a need to develop economies of scale.  Hiring a VA to take control of some elements of the growing business is one good way to ensure this. Outsourcing the non-core work to virtual staff will save at least 50 percent of the staff expenses and ensures a high quality of service.

Virtual outsourcing is the gift of technology thanks to advancements in software like file sharing and telecommunication software. 

“Being your own boss is a great feeling”, and most of the individuals today want to enjoy this feeling. Thus, a large of companies are making their presence. Handling each and every task on one’s own is again a tough nut to crack. So, outsourcing some of the official duties of your business to a virtual secretary can be a fruitful option at the time.

Confusion creeps in mind while you hire these professionals. So, what attributes one should look for in the person. Here are some inherent qualities which should be considered principally:

•    Proficiency in using computer systems and especially the use of the internet.
•    Politeness and comfort ability while communication
•    Ready to work at competitive prices
•    Fluent English is a must
•    Flexibility in working hours so that you and your corporation can be benefited.
 
Do you know what is the best proposition of this idea? It is that a virtual assistant can work from any place on this earth.
When you hire a virtual assistant, you save
 
•    Money
•    Time
•    Efforts

So, what else to think of? Take your business to the next level with the virtual professionals in the world.

Do you think that a self employed, independent professional who offer administrative, technical, personal and executive support from miles away will be as effective as your in-house employee?

Well, this discussion has been prevalent since the inception of virtual assistant companies and it is still active. Though, the virtual services have proven their credibility and efficiency, but still some business individuals have some apprehensions regarding their services.

However, if you are a business owner who seeks to earn more profits and save business costs, you must consider hiring an online personal assistant over your conventional employee. You must be looking for the reasons for this suggestion. Well, these are the reasons-

·         A virtual assistant is accountable

·         He unburdens your shoulders with the heavy overload.

·         Saves you money invested on overheads and costs

·         A cheaper option

·         Provide specialized services

With the growing popularity of virtual assistant services, any small and big business entrepreneurs should not have any hesitation in their hiring.

With outsourcing becoming the buzz word to control costs and add quality, all kinds of businesses are seeking outsourced support services known as virtual assistant services. 

The advancements in communication technology and spurt in online business are providing  the right eco-system for virtual assistant services. 

Thanks to the wizardry of the internet, Virtual Assistants Services came as a life jacket for many businesses boosting efficiency and cutting the cluttered systems.
 
Now there is no looking back as far as the Virtual Assistants industry is concerned. Virtual assistant firms have also won the confidence of industries by providing crucial support to thousands of clients all across the globe.

Benefits of Hiring Virtual Assistants
1.  A larger pool of talent to choose from 
2.  Savings in infrastructure Costs 
3. Savings in Hardware Costs such as computer and other equipments
 
Since small business owners are the worst hit in terms of capital, staffing, technology and marketing they are taking virtual services as a the oxygen for sustenance. 
Businesses can find VAs of all specializations. While some of them prefer to work in niche areas that too for specific industries there are generalists also who work in a variety of fields.
 
Whatever be the needs of a business, a virtual assistant takes out the stress of lot many business owners and make their business run efficiently and profitably. 
Already many small businesses have found their survival mantra in outsourced Virtual assistant services. Seeing the tangible gains in business profits made by their peers more SMEs are coming on board to avail the remote services. 
Top 7 services

According to a recent business survey, there are seven value added services sought by SMEs across the world,

• General Virtual Assistant Services: Internet research, email management, and Data entry.
• Social Media Consulting: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs and social bookmarking
• Content: Content for websites, sales pages and landing pages.
• Content marketing: Email marketing; article submissions; ebook development.
• Blog setup: WordPress, TypePad, and Blogger
• Web Design
• Web Maintenance

It will be no exaggeration to say this hot list will keep expanding as big corporations too join the race to find more virtue in virtual services