People dream about living a luxurious life, providing the best of everything to their families, having enough time to go on parties, going abroad to the most exotic places on vacations. These dreams are the reason a person struggles for growth and expansion and following his dreams, he starts a business. Leaving aside the minority, majority of businesses start with a low income and are hence termed as small businesses. The small business, usually in the start comprises of just the business owner or owners who work on everything. They are the owners, the staff, the data entry personnel, the marketing people and any other role required to be performed in the business.

Since the budget is quite low and there are so many places to invest within the business, the business owner needs to measure every penny he spends. As work starts coming in, it barely meets the needs of the business owner but gives a ray of hope for a better future. Although the budget doesn’t get a boost in the start, but it starts bringing in the money to keep the business alive and the work load increases so the need for an assistant starts to become obvious. But hiring an assistant at this stage would be a foolish thing to do because the business already needs the money for its own purposes and paying a salary from the profits would be killing every chance of growth.

But as there is no way a single person would be able to manage everything on time every single day, the best choice in this situation is to hire an online virtual assistant. Since there is no way work can be compromised no matter how short you are in budget, the virtual assistant would definitely fit in the budget and help get work organized. While the business owner spends his time in promoting and growing his business, the VA would be making sure his administrative work is always complete. The virtual assistants of today are professionals who are capable to do everything a business requires over the internet.

Many businesses which are no more called a small business because they have now grown big enough to get out of the small business list still use virtual assistants for their administrative tasks. Hiring an online virtual assistant is not only cost friendly, it helps reduce the clutter in the office and keeps the environment friendly. The more people are working within an office the greater are the business politics growing. So in order to keep the environment healthy and the budget within control, the best an employer can do is assign work to the people who are ready to work remotely.

If you feel being crunched with the shortage of time and shortage of a professional who would provide the expertise which is needed to expand your business profits, then hiring an online personal assistant shouldn’t be a hard decision to make. Personal virtual assistants are professionals who are able to manage the tasks of any business online and help the business owner in generating more money by providing the services to handle administrative tasks. For the businesses that have enough work to keep an entire team busy with the work on a daily basis, getting in contract with a professional virtual assistant firm would be the best option.

Business needs to be properly managed and cared for to become a successful one in the long run. As the business owner needs to spend more time off the computer table, his tasks include more traveling and meetings than filling forms and other related stuff. A single business owner who has no assistant to help would attend the business matters (outdoors) during the day and then spend evenings inside the office in front of the computer. Let’s be honest to ourselves, can a person keep on performing the same routine consistently for a lifetime? Obviously no, it wouldn’t last even three months and the business owner would soon start feeling irritated will all the work load and also depressed.

Ultimately every business needs to have an assistant to manage the tasks that are usually completed on a computer. As the business owner keeps on increasing the sales and expanding his business circle, the assistant keeps updating the records on the computer and arranges the paper work for his boss. When there is no one to be left in charge at the office; hiring an assistant inside the office who you do not know personally would require someone to be in the office with him. This means that you do not need a single person to be hired but two. So, you are raising your expense which is bad for a business especially when it is a small business in need of every penny which can be saved.

With the online personal assistant you get saved from all these troubles and the constant nagging of the feeling what is going on inside my office behind my back? There is no need to worry about burglary, theft or any kind of loss inside the office when you are away because your remote assistant would be performing his duties while you are on the go and without using your office space. As you come back, all the tasks would be completed and waiting for you in the inbox. Just take a look at what you need and live a life of ease without worrying about the administrative tasks which needed to be completed every evening.

Business is all about multi-tasking. Any business owner wishing for growth and expansion without investing loads of cash will need to perform many tasks at once. But there is a limit to what a single person can do, and when the duties require to be present in two different places at the same time, there is no way multi tasking may be possible. A business owner would require being in the market most of the time for meeting clients, making new relations and generating business. These tasks would be neglecting the work inside the office and here no one can boast being a multi-tasker.

To complete the office tasks or more precisely the administrative tasks it is important to have an assistant at hand. But when the budget is low or completely restricted, there is no chance of making a hiring effective because it will either drain the entire money out of the registers or would kill the share of the business owner. Hence the office assistant can be easily replaced by the virtual personal assistant. Going virtual automatically reduces the spending and brings the expense down to a level within the budget of the business owner. It does not mean that the assistant who will be working for the business online provides the services for free. Here are the reasons why the expenses decline with this option.

No investment with the virtual assistant
You have an office big enough for the assistant to find a place to be seated so you think it is no problem to hire one. But do you have a spare PC or a laptop? Do you have an extra office table and a chair? Do you have a guard at the office who would be keeping an eye on the assistant you hire? Since the assistant you are hiring is not your relative or someone who is close to you, can you trust your office to be left completely alone at his mercy? These are the very first things you will have to think about when hiring an assistant in the office and if you are short of anything from above, you’ll need to make an investment.

Now consider the option of the virtual personal assistant. Supposedly you have nothing of the mentioned above; you do not need to worry about arranging anything. You only need to consider the budget you are easy to spend and just contact a company providing the services. Read about the prices and the packages as mentioned on their website or if the processes are not mentioned, there will always be the packages. If none of the mentioned packages suit your business needs, ask for a tailored package by explain your needs. You will find a suitable point to settle upon and begin your work without spending a penny and only to pay after the work has been delivered to you.

There comes a time in business when the activities become too expanded that a single person or even two persons cannot handle them all. Ultimately the decision is taken to hire an assistant who would look after the administrative tasks while the people performing their regular duties would continue accordingly. Expansion in work does not always mean that income sources have also expanded. The income might remain the same but the duties are multiplied. Now hiring an assistant in this situation would simply mean that extra pressure is being put upon the company’s financials and giving out an extra salary would be a huge burden.

To manage the work load without exerting too much pressure on the company’s bank accounts, the best option a business owner can take is to hire a company providing virtual assistant services. Hiring a virtual assistant company does not mean that the business is getting involved in something too expensive. Every company has its packages about the services offered in it and the amount that will be charged from their clients. In some cases where every need of a client does not fall within a package, a tailored package is designed and the fee is declared to the client.

Paying a fee for the virtual assistant services is very different from paying a salary to an employee hired as an assistant. When an employee is hired, the state laws are consulted about the salary, annual leaves, vacations and medical allowances, let’s not forget the taxes too. When all these amounts are calculated, the accumulated amount crosses the three digit figure easily and the company is liable to pay all these amounts if they want to hire an assistant in the office. Normally when an assistant is hired, he can perform the duties according to his abilities. If the work load is greater than the capacity of a single person, there is obviously a need for two or more and the company would be in need of more than one assistant but paying the salaries of them all will be an issue.

Taking the virtual assistant services would mean that an entire team of assistants get hired for a single fee. No matter what the services fee would be but it never crosses the three digit figure if the client asks for almost every service that can be performed by an assistant. But even in this case the client pays the salary of a single office assistant but gets the work which would be performed by an entire team. Hence it always pays to hire an online team rather than a bunch of in-house assistants.

A business administrative assistant holds a key position in every company because he makes it possible for the managers and the business holders to streamline their daily work. As every other person is busy in doing their tasks, nobody has enough time to take care of the other important things that are necessary to run a business. But in order to keep business operational costs within control, most business owners do not hire an assistant but later regret it. If the business needs to control on its operational costs but still need to hire an assistant because his position is undeniable even in the smallest business, the best option is to choose a virtual administrative assistant.

Who is a virtual administrative assistant?
The assistant has many roles to perform in an office. He has to act as a secretary, as a receptionist and also as an assistant. All of these roles can now be performed even without a physical presence in the office thanks to the advanced technology we have access to. Since businesses have mostly gone online, clients rarely walk into the offices to ask for details and prefer to find the information on the company website. Hence, the importance of a company website has become greater than its physical office.

A virtual assistant performing the administrative roles does all the work but instead of being present inside the company’s premises, he performs his duties from a remote place. He performs all the tasks assigned to him. And as it has become undeniable to have a well maintained website with a support option, the virtual assistant greets all the customers on the website through the online chat support. Thus, he fulfills the requirement of a receptionist.

Is it cost effective to hire a virtual administrative assistant?
The option to go online automatically boosts the chances of saving more money and get extra work done. A virtual administrative assistant can do more than just work like a typical assistant but can even provide the services of maintaining the website and keep it alive. Designing and development is a huge issue for website holders because they cannot do it without a professional and unless they hire one which is extremely costly, the website will not be looking good. The virtual assistant can provide these type of services too so this assistant becomes more of a multipurpose employee than just an assistant whose tasks are limited. The virtual assistant charges a nominal fee for the services he provides, mostly for just the hours served. His fee does not require taxes and benefits but just the amount which has been mutually agreed. So yes, the virtual assistant for the administrative tasks is definitely cost effective.

Advancement in the internet and most probably the IT industry has provided professionals to provide services remotely. One of the industries that has also benefitted from the growth of internet is the real estate sector which can now get a real estate virtual assistant. The virtual assistants providing services to the realtors can do a lot to improve their business and organize it for them before they come to the office. A virtual assistant can streamline the business activities for his client when they are available or even when they are out of the office.

Realtors have very little time to spend in the office because most of their time is spent outside in the field. They are either outside showing property to the customers or are taking pictures of the new property that has just come to their knowledge. And since there isn’t just some amount of office work to be done in the backend, the realtors who do not have a real estate virtual assistant to support them are behind in the administrative work. They already have a back lock huge enough to keep an assistant busy for the entire month before moving to the new tasks.

Since the modern times demand for a website to be updated on a regular basis, it can be a hectic task for the realtors to manage the paper work; website maintenance and dealing with clients within the days work timings. Hence they have to make arrangements for these tasks to be handled by a permanent resource. Hiring an assistant in the office would certainly be alarming for the company’s budget. Since the assistant wouldn’t be dealing any clients and just handling the paper work, it wouldn’t be a wise move. And then for website maintenance a separate person would be hired. This means that the company’s operational costs have doubled in an instant.

The real estate virtual assistant would be a handy man plus an all in one employee for the business. While the costs are automatically reduced when the employee is hired online as he does not walk in the office. The payment for the transport and coffee and other activities are automatically shed off from the company’s budget. Next, the virtual assistant for the real estate business would handle the official tasks and also keep the website updated. As he will do all these tasks, the business will get more exposure and the business owners get more time to focus on the market rather than inside their office.

Some of you may be asking what a virtual office assistant is. As futuristic as it sounds, it would not be wrong to say in this context that the future is already here. A virtual office assistant is already present for the world to make use of and this assistant is no less than any kind of a regular office assistant. But the difference in this kind of assistant is that he provides the client services from a remote office and never walks through the gates of the client or his employer. While this may sound weird to many office bearers; but a larger community makes use of his services just because of this quality.

Many business owners are now more interested to hire online virtual assistants for their official work rather than the regular office assistant. The benefits of working with the virtual assistant are many and there is no loss but profit when compared with the regular office assistant. Let’s be frank here, what duties do you expect from your assistant who walks in your office daily and performs his duties. Obviously the work you expect from him is to handle the official emails, answer queries, send a number of new emails and attend telephone calls. Rarely would your office assistant would perform any additional tasks but all the assistants who work in offices over the globe do nothing more than this and they charge heavily for it.

Apart from the wages they charge to their employers, the employers are needed to bear a lot of other expenses. When your assistant comes in and swipes his card in the attendance machine, the first thing he does is preparing a cup of coffee and then settles down for work. Now as he has clocked in, he turns on the lights and the air conditioner or the heater if it is winter. Now the electricity bill has started falling on the wallet of the employer even though he has not arrived yet. Now these kinds of overhead charges cannot be reduced as it would mean reducing the working hours and hence the work to be done by the office assistant.

Now compare the virtual office assistant in this case. No one enters the office doors hence there is no cup of coffee made on the office expense. As the virtual assistant does not walk in through the doors he does not turn on the office lights or the air conditioner or heater of his employer but does it all on his own expense in his own office. Hence the employer is saved from these overhead charges and has no concern how much electricity bill comes to his virtual assistant nor does he care about the amount of coffee cups consumed a day by the VA. This is all a win win situation for the small business owner because he cannot afford to bear such overhead charges.

Taking a business from its initial stages to the top is more than just owning an online store and adding pretty graphics to it. Maintaining your web store is the greatest task which is the only way you can take your business to greater heights. Just like any other business activity as you need maintaining the customers, answering queries and doing a lot of other important tasks to keep your office in a neat and busy condition, your website also needs to be taken care of. Unless there is someone appointed for the task, it can be the biggest disaster for your business.

We all know that the internet has taken over our lives. We search for everything on the internet. Using the online maps for guidance to our destinations and even to search for the latest movie release date or for any other kind of information we are directed towards the internet. Even the purchases are now made online and there is no secret reason behind it than just the plain reason that we are more comfortable with it than anything else now. Hence in order to keep the business on the track of growth, every business now needs to have an online virtual assistant to take care of the website.

The reason to hire an assistant online is because of the many benefits associated with it that a regular assistant in the office cannot provide. The first on the list is the cost effectiveness. A regular assistant in the office would charge a high salary for which most small businesses are not quite ready yet. As the business generates just enough money to support a single person or a family, hiring another one can put a huge stress on the budget and can derail the business’s financials. The virtual assistant can be hired in two ways. If you have enough work to keep him busy for a full day all over the month, choose him on a fixed monthly fee which obviously will be a fraction of the regular office assistant. If not, than hire him on hourly basis and pay only for the hours you take services from him.

The second benefit you get with an online virtual assistant is the low maintenance cost. Since your assistant isn’t coming to your office for work, you do not have to purchase a PC for him nor do you have to provide him office space. As you are not providing him office space you do not have to provide him a table, chair and the other items needed for work. Hence there is zero office maintenance cost from his side so you get another place to save money from even with a hired assistant. These major factors have made small businesses break free from high operational costs and get time and money to spend on expansion and growth.

Owning a business is not only a dream of some, but it is the dream of every professional who understands his industry and possesses the abilities to be a leader. It can be the sweetest dream to picture yourself as a leader of a business where people work round the clock and you get to keep all the profits. This is probably the very picture which urges the entrepreneurs to start a venture and after they have setup everything and begun working, the workload kills their personal life and instead of feeling happy about their business, they get depressed.

Since a human being is termed as a social animal, there is no way a human being can stay away from his gatherings, friends and family for a long time. Ultimately he returns only to find that either his return is too late and there aren’t enough people to welcome him like the old times, or when he returns, the business starts suffering in the backend. So, in order to have balanced life, the business owner ultimately feels the need for an assistant but if he hires one in the office, his profits would be terribly shortened and it would have an adverse effect on the business. Now what to do? The business owner is now trapped and the way out can be very difficult.

The only possible way out is to hire an online personal assistant who would not only be cheap to hire, but will also make the life of the business owner easier and organized. Thanks to the modern technology the task to hire an assistant on the internet is easier than ever. A business owner can find hundreds of assistants over the internet who are not only available to work for him, but they are experienced professionals so that there is no lengthy trainings required and the work can commence within minutes.

Small business owners face the biggest challenges when hiring an assistant because all they have is one source of income. Hiring another person would mean to cut the share of the business owner and it would create many financial problems for the business owner’s personal and professional life. Hence the idea to hire an online personal assistant is the most suitable for him because in this way he would not only be hiring a team member, but he would also be expanding his business without any investment.