Category Business

Ever sat at your desk and thought that you would love to go freelance but didn?t know where to start? Maybe even been afraid that you didn?t have the freelance experience to make it as a new freelance professional?

The easiest way to go freelance and make it a success is to start small and utilize the power of the internet to do it by joining a freelance community.

There are many freelance communities out there to choose from including GoFreelance, Elance and Home Job Shop. They each provide ways to work both full or part-time on freelance jobs right from your own home for clients around the world.

GoFreelance is a great choice for those who are new to freelance work. For a very small fee, you can access hundreds of super cool jobs that anyone can do including taking pictures, virtual assistants, blogging, internet marketing, research and more. They also offer more specialized work for programmers, business professionals, and copywriters.

Elance and Home Job Shop are great resources for the more seasoned freelancer. They have many options to easily fill your schedule so you could quickly make freelance work your full-time job. Many freelance professionals find that they don?t even have to work as many freelance hours as they were previously working away from home in order to replace a full-time income.

So if you are looking for an easy way to get started, start with an online freelance community and just do it. The world of freelance work is right there on the internet just waiting for you to find it!

Is your to-do list keeping you up at night? Are you counting tasks rather than sheep to fall asleep?

1. Wade through emails – 2. Finalize the presentation for tomorrow?s meeting – 3. Get handouts ready for Wednesday?s meeting – 4. Make follow up calls zzz – 5. Schedule sales meeting zzzzzz – 6. Buy anniversary gift. – 7. Call my kids.zzzzzzzz

If it?s been a long time since you laid your head down on the pillow at night without a care in the world, rest assured ? there is hope. You can have sanity and sleep, too.

When business worries and personal commitments get to be too much, you need to get help. Businesses owners are faced with more and more challenges every day?finding clients, keeping clients, creating products, article and press release distribution, social networking, and the economy. So if you?re spending more of your time on administrative tasks or just plain spinning your wheels going no where fast, it?s time to make a change. It?s time to partner with a Virtual Assistant.

So what exactly is a Virtual Assistant and what can one do for you?

A virtual assistant, or VA, is an independent business professional who among many things, can help overwhelmed business owners handle administrative tasks so they can remain focused on their business. Utilizing the latest technology your Virtual Assistant can manage your social networks, write press releases and correspondence, tweak or create a presentation, make travel arrangements, be your own personal concierge, write letters, follow up on trade show leads, handle literature fulfillment, and even prepare your expense and call reports. The possibilities are endless once you start to see how many tasks you really can delegate.

“I don’t know what I’d do without my Virtual Assistant. As a sales professional who works out of my home and travels extensively I don’t have an on-site staff to keep things moving. I can rely on my VA to prepare marketing materials, organize my contacts, send out letters, and keep me on track with special projects. Delegating routine tasks and special projects to my Virtual Assistant allows me to spend more time growing the business,” says Mark Loudenslager, VP of Sales.

Partnering with a virtual assistant affords you the luxury of spending more time in front of your clients and less time behind your desk. Because virtual assistants are independent professionals they come equipped with their own office, their own equipment, the latest software programs, and the know how of running a successful business. They don’t, however, come equipped with added expenses like payroll taxes, expensive benefit packages, paid vacations, holiday pay, or “free time” (that you pay for) for talking to co-workers. They’re only there when you need them. Sometimes they’re even there when you don’t think you need them!

Virtual Assistants are also invaluable in helping to keep your business from being lost among its many competitors or overlooked because of lack of professionalism. Amidst the Internet and Social Networking craze, millions of email exchanges, and web and teleconferencing many professionals have literally ?lost sight? of their clients. In a day and age where we thrive on customer relationship management, personal sales calls have taken a back seat to technology. Further, today?s economy has forced more layoffs and corporate downsizing, which has impacted the availability of internal support systems and other such resources. The lack of internal resources has forced companies to rely on already overburdened staff to pick up the slack. Staff such as sales people who are now spending more time doing administrative tasks than they are generating sales. Where does the madness end?

It?s time to wake up and get back in the field. Get ahead of the competition and you won?t find yourself saying, ?Oops, I could have had a VA!?

Business greeting cards are very different from normal holiday or ?occasion? type greeting cards. When you print greeting cards like this, the tone of it is distinctly different since its whole purpose and goal is very different as well. Do not go about it like your normal kind of personal greeting card since people will just wonder and get ?weirded? out at the person or entity sending them. Nothing screams uncomfortable more than a greeting card that is too personal (Hi Lizzy how are you!) yet you do not know exactly who it came from.

So it is important to know how to write for business greeting cards. You have to know how to approach the customer correctly using the alternative but very effective medium of the greeting card. To help you out with this, here are my tips on writing for business greeting cards.

1. Be personal yet formal ? The first thing that you should know about for writing for business greeting cards is the approach. We all know that greeting cards are best when they are personal, but as illustrated above, you can?t just go directly personal with a potential customer. It might be construed as invasive and even creepy. So, you have to walk a fine line between personal greetings and formality. For example instead of using the customer?s first name, you have to use titles like Mr., Mrs. or Miss and then use their last names. If they have a professional title like Dr. or Atty. then you have to use them as well. You of course have to research on these things so that you can do it correctly. Format titles like this plus their last names make the greeting card appear personal (by using a specific name) without appearing too much like a mass produced medium like the ?dear sir/madam? approach. So like this, try to walk the fine line between personal and formal so that you can maximize the usefulness of greeting cards without failing in the execution.
2. Use a polite and respectful tone ? Also of course, as a standard practice, try to use a polite and respectful tone in your business greeting cards. More particularly, try to use a tone that uplifts the status of the potential customer making them feel like they are in charge and you are there to serve their needs. People like feeling like they are in control or that someone is there to help and serve them. You can capitalize on this and have people respond well to your greeting cards by using this kind of tone.
3. Try to be subtle with promotions ? Nobody likes unsolicited sales mail. Most mails like this usually get classified as junk mail immediately. So keep the commercial talk to a minimum and focus more on establishing a relationship with the customer. Just casually say that you have that new product line that they might be interested in, but don?t go too much on its specifics.

Great! Hopefully this helps you out in writing your business greeting cards. As you can undoubtedly see, there are fine lines that you must tread to make them effective and acceptable. So keep your focus and review all your content before you go into greeting card printing.