Working as a Virtual Assistant started for me in the UK back in 1999, but a move to France in 2003 made me sit up and think - how was I going to successfully run my business in another country? What immediately struck me was the importance of my Virtual Assistant Website (http://www.alternative-office.com).

Of course! I thought… this is just the place where my existing clients will know exactly where I am, even if I move and my contact details change. But what about getting new clients? My website was there to show that I was a professional; I could list my current client experiences and get some really interesting testimonials that would demonstrate I was just the type of professional that someone looking for a VA wanted to do business with.

Now when I lived I the UK, I worked both virtually and non-virtually, not by design, it just happened that way; but moving to another country with a foreign language (I assure you that I wasn’t nearly fluent in), bought it home to me that if the chips were down, I really needed to be totally virtual and that meant a great website!

I also have a great VA friend, Di Chapman who moved to France in the same year as me. At the beginning, she worked in a garden gazebo, in below zero temperatures with a little electric heater between her knees, with almost every item of clothing in that she owned, but the work still came in - “thank goodness for the internet”, she says. What struck me about Di was that as well as running her own Virtual Assistant business, she has been helping people in her own time get on track to becoming a Virtual Assistant. Di’s website is packed full of useful information and a great newsletter (http://www.iceni-it.co.uk).

So, for me, it’s totally essential for Virtual Assistants to have a website; you can be virtual, non-virtual, professional, knowledgeable, always accessible and OUT THERE! Check out Wannabe a VA (http://www.wannabe-a-va.com), and put yourself on the virtual map!

Caroline Whittle - The Alternative Office

Bookmark to: