Category Archives: Uncategorized

How To Find The Right Virtual Assistant For Your Needs

Posted on by

Your startup or business has gotten big enough that you’re stretched every which way—congratulations on the success. When the weight of your career rests itself as the world did on the shoulders of Atlas, you find yourself turning away work, or you’re just too tired to continue and burn the midnight oil. This is what success feels like, but you don’t have to go it alone. Wheather you're at a physical location or not, if you are spinning your wheels to get everything done and it’s too much for you to handle by yourself—you need a virtual assistant (VA).

How To Find Your Best Fit

Most VA’s have come from an office setting cognizant of how they setup their office; they take the best parts of their work experience, and culminate it into their personal package. Without corporate regulations and standards, a freelancing VA is able to bring their unique services to you. That’s something that a company just can’t do.

If you’re looking to take a load off of your shoulders and hire a VA, here’s how you should go about doing so:

  • Interview Like There’s No Tomorrow: Even if you interview a dozen excellent candidates for your personal or business VA, there’s a certain understanding that some VA’s are more experienced than others. This can come down to previous industry experience meshing with your current requirements, or anything in between. Schedule an online interview via webcam, and get a feel for how your potential VA is going to perform for you.
  • Assemble Your Top Requirements: If you’re picky when it comes to employing anyone, that’s okay—most of us are. Your potential VA may have the personality, persistence, and dedication that you need, but may not hit every single requirement you have. Make a detailed list of your absolute, do-or-die, cannot-live-without requirements for a VA, and secondary, wish-list type requirements. If they hit each of your dire marks, they’re in the running. The rest are just perks.
  • Compare Schedules and Time Zones: Is your VA willing to stay up until 1:00 AM in Florida, while it’s 7:00 AM for you in London? If you need someone who’s on-camera for the duration, you may want to consider just what time zone changes apply. If your VA is willing and able to stretch their schedule to meet yours, that shows promise. A good VA is always willing to go the extra mile.

Freelancing Platforms: Third-Rate Virtual Assistant Candidates

Thanks to numerous freelancing platforms, most notably, Freelancer, Upwork, and Fiverr, freelance services have plummeted to all-time lows. Everyone is in constant competition with one another to provide the lowest prices and garner the most work. You came here for a reason, right? Too much work equals a lack in quality, exhaustion, and more. Those low-hanging fruit freelancers are running themselves ragged to secure sales. Here’s the problem: they need ten times as many clients to make the amount of money they need, and they lose steam very quickly.

A good VA will be able to schedule his or her work week, and put quality above quantity. Through those platforms and others, people sell themselves short. In any line of work, you have to know one thing before you get started: how much you’re worth. Any self-respecting professional understands that they need to reach a certain level to break even, and make enough profit that they are happy with their tasks, and bring excellence to their clients.

Skillset

Personalities and schedule flexibility definitely matter, but when it comes down to it, you need someone who possesses the skills that you need. You need a VA that is self-motivated, knows what to do, and how to do it properly. If you’re going to hire a self-employed VA, make sure they have a website that lists their prices and a detailed outline of their skills.  Also, make sure they are readily available to answer your questions and should have a chat feature.

The Final Note

When you hire a VA, you save a ton of money viruses hiring an employee. The benefits of hiring a VA are pretty extensive.

  • No Space: The beauty of a virtual assistant is, well, the virtual element. You don’t need to purchase or assign them a desk or rent an office space.
  • No Equipment Costs: A VA has his or her own computer, office supplies, and software programs, so you don’t have to worry about renewing subscriptions, paying for extra electricity to run lights or equipment, or anything else in between.
  • No Benefits: Part of the deal when hiring a VA is they're a freelancer: which means you don't have to worry about a retirement plan, health care program, vacation or sick leave. Better yet you aren't responsible for Medicare or Social Security taxes. When you hire a Virtual Assistant, it might cost you more per hour initially, but in the long run, the savings will add up quickly. The huge percentage of payments that you pay for employees gets to stay in your pocket. You can expect to put back 20-30% back into your payroll not having to pay for all those employee benefits.

You get what you pay for: in the world of freelancing, that is practically gospel. Those who are serious about their careers will make that fact apparent, dissolving your worry. Take some weight off, or a day off—your VA has it covered.

Protecting your online accounts using two-factor authentication

Posted on by

Protecting your accounts online is a must in this day and age. Having only a password to login to your accounts isn’t enough anymore with all the hackers trying to steal your identification.  You need to have a two-factor authentication set up on your accounts.  You bank probably already has a two-factor authentication set up.  Upon Logging into your bank, you most likely have to provide a password and then they ask you to provide an email address or phone number so they can send you a code to enter in order to access your account information.  If you want to bypass this step, make sure you check the box asking if this is a personal computer, and the server will remember your device and ip address the next time you login.

 

Other accounts other than just financial also needs two-factor authentication to protect your information. Some that come to mind are Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  Basically, any account that has your personal information you login to, needs a two-factor authentication.

 

How hard is it to set up a two-factor authentication on accounts?

Well it just depends upon the account. So how does two-factor authentication work? Basically, it requires not one but two pieces of privileged information before granting access to an online account. For Example, if you already have set up two-factor authentication for your Google account, and a hacker is trying to break into your Gmail he would need your email address, password and the code set up for the two-factor authentication.  It makes it much harder for them to figure out all the elements needed to login to your account. In the case of Google accounts, the second element is a unique security code that’s sent directly to your cell phone via text messaging.

Getting started takes a little bit of time on your part. Most major sites and services offer two-factor authentication as an optional security feature, so you need to log into your various accounts and locate the security settings to find it.

Two-factor authentication might seem like a hassle to set up, however, think about how much of a hassle it will be when your accounts does get hacked.

Karen Beth